Estimation on size of the Amiga scene

[Dynamic_Computi]

TheGuruMeditation.org has over 7000 subscribers on youtube, and I think the average for an Amiga youtube channel is about 1000-1500,
I was an avid Amiga user since 1987 and I spent almost no time on the forums - just an occasional lurk on Amiga.org (R.I.P) - I would assume there are thousands more like me out there, having fun on our Amiga's without getting involved in any forums.
My guess?
Truly active community less than 3000
Occasional dabbler in the community Maybe 5000 more
Amiga Sleeper Cells - maybe 3500
People with an Amiga in their attic that they have not touched in 25 years - 20,000+

[nexus]

think you guys are forgetting retro as a whole
you have users/collectors/gamers
users are those that actually use this stuff
then you have the collectors reason why most retro is through the roof in $
then you have retro gamers who like gaming on the real deal
then all those in between or in all the above

retro is smoking hot and is really big atm

im in the all above category
also those just getting in or back into the scene like to max out the hardware so they can do/play anything on the platform

[Tigerskunk]

a couple milliona people with fond memories.
20000 who still like the Amiga enough to keep up with news about it or are using emulators and real hw.
around 2000 real hardcore fans buying new and old hardware.

[plasmab]

2000 subs on my channel. 500 ish sales of TF328s... regular enquiries/demands/suggestions. I think retro has come back in a big way in the last few years.

Dan Wood has about 31,500 subscribers.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Then people who still own an Amiga but not necessarily use it or spend any money on it... Say 5,000?

How can you own an Amiga and not spend money on it? The damned things are money pits.

The retro scene is huge and encompass people who use an emulator because it's free to hardcore devotees who can recite blitter register addresses from memory. Easily tens of thousands.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

How can you own an Amiga and not spend money on it? The damned things are money pits.

If you have working Amiga(s), for example, since 90s and you have upgraded what you need when the prices were cheap, where would you spend money now? There are many people happy with what they have...

[plasmab]

I guess people are always looking for the next thing. vampire for example.

[jPV]

It's a rare minority of active users who are looking for Vampire and new stuff, at least here in Finland.. most I know are happy with 030 etc accelerators and their old stuff.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by jPV

It's a rare minority of active users who are looking for Vampire and new stuff, at least here in Finland.. most I know are happy with 030 etc accelerators and their old stuff.

My email/eab/ebay/youtube inboxes are spammed almost constantly with feature requests. I dont recall seeing many from Finland though right enough.

[Predseda]

My guess is up to 5000 ACTIVE Amiga users, so people who contribute to forums and occasionally play some game (na matter if emulated or real HW). Only few of them are really active meaning do some work for the community (build new HW, write new SW, run Amiga websites / shops / repair services, organize events etc), these are in less hundreds.

I do not count those nostalgics, who only watch videos and comment them. These are in tens of thousands, mostly former Amiga users.

So my answer to the topic is up to 5000.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by plasmab

My email/eab/ebay/youtube inboxes are spammed almost constantly with feature requests. I dont recall seeing many from Finland though right enough.

Even if it'd be a rare minority, it doesn't mean they'd be inactive, quiet, or even that small group. On the contrary, Vampire users are probably the most active part of the Amiga scene currently and that shows to developers, but it still doesn't mean they wouldn't be minority of the total amount of Amiga users, it only tells that the total size of the Amiga scene is still quite big and probably underestimated by many.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by Predseda

My guess is up to 5000 ACTIVE Amiga users, so people who contribute to forums and occasionally play some game (na matter if emulated or real HW).

So my answer to the topic is up to 5000.

I think that's way too low. If Vampires have sold something like 3000 units in the recent years, total amount of active users must be much bigger.

Counting forum users also doesn't mean anything, most of users in our Amiga events don't babble on forums, it's enough they can do Amiga hobby on their own in real world. If they do discussion on Internet it's spread to different medias... IRC, Facebook, and other social media, but quite rarely to forums anymore as I see.

[Predseda]

I personally know Amiga users with multiple Vampires and also people who are registered in one Amiga forum usually have account on others too. It is really not easy to guess. But I do not think the total ammount of active users exceeds 10.000.

[nobody]

5 thousand is too low. My estimation of 15 maybe too low after reading the vampire sales figures. Probably 10 times that 5 thousand. So 50.000 at minimum. Maybe much much more if you add those occasionally interested to the Amiga.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by nobody

5 thousand is too low. My estimation of 15 maybe too low after reading the vampire sales figures. Probably 10 times that 5 thousand. So 50.000 at minimum. Maybe much much more if you add those occasionally interested to the Amiga.

Never ;-)
If you look at the msot successful Kickstarter campaigns, you'll see about 800-ish backers.. If we had 50,000 active users (and assuming they are mostly grown ups with jobs aged 35+ with money to spend) we'd be able to do all kinds of shit. There is nothing that points to figures in that region. (Forum members, facebook groups, youtube channels, people bidding on ebay, kickstarter and indiegogo campaigns, and (reluctantly) WinUAE only-users..).. etc..

[plasmab]

The definition of active is very vaguely defined here... as a passing observer i think you are all going to disagree on the definition of that term. It’s pretty subjective

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

and (reluctantly) WinUAE only-users..).. etc..

That's got to be one of the stupidest comments I've read on EAB.

...so what if some people decide to go down the emulation route; especially with lagless VSync now available.

Please tell me how that doesn't make us part of the Amiga scene in terms of mcgeezer's original question???

Just because I'm not crazy enough to purchase old, over-priced, original hardware, upgrades, need to recap, blah, blah, blah... not to mention having no the space to house all this...

If it wasn't for emulation I'm positive this forum and many others would be reduced in size dramatically

People can emulate many different types of Amiga; in order to achieve the same you'd have to spend a shite load of money.

Toni Wilen has done so much for this Amiga community. Besides WinUAE he has created / fixed many programs that you use on your "real" Amiga.

Let's also not forget that many "real" Amiga people use WinUAE for convenience / speed when setting up hard drives / CF cards etc. to put in their chosen Amiga.

...and then there's coders / programmers who use WinUAE initially to do everything; again for ease of use; before finally testing on "real" Amigas and releasing.

I could go on but there's really no point.

[saimon69]

@DamienD
And there is people geographically living far from where their original HW is stored (me)

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Never ;-)
If you look at the msot successful Kickstarter campaigns, you'll see about 800-ish backers.. If we had 50,000 active users (and assuming they are mostly grown ups with jobs aged 35+ with money to spend) we'd be able to do all kinds of shit. There is nothing that points to figures in that region. (Forum members, facebook groups, youtube channels, people bidding on ebay, kickstarter and indiegogo campaigns, and (reluctantly) WinUAE only-users..).. etc..

I actually find it hard to believe that 800 of 50,000 Amiga users agreed with something enough to back it with money. Amiga users love to be individuals all want to do it their own way. Kickstarters are a pipedream when everyone wants something different.

[nobody]

It's true that WinUAE kept the Amiga alive. I even fixed my Amiga hard drive with it then just transferred everything to Amiga. Every time I want to add some game to whdload I just plug cf to WinUAE.
It's the column that holds the entire building. Amiga would be nothing without this program.