>The consumer is not weighing the merits of a $20 Gameboy game vs. the VCS
>when thinking about a 2600 game purchase. People buy 2600 games because
>they specifically want to play a 2600 game. Therefore, the 2600 market
>does not compete directly with any other market. Any new 2600 game
>competes only with comparable new games, and there isn't much competition
>at all which means any new 2600 game can be assured of a certain amount
>of sales within its niche.
Having been forced to take Honors Economics in College *groan*, I'm going
to have to refute this one. First of all, where there are finite funds,
any and all expenditures have an influence on any other potential
purchases. Gameboy games and 2600 games are no exceptions. If I do buy
GB Donkey Kong (or perhaps something more pressing like Jag Battlesphere
or that 3D accel card Matt's getting me so danged jealous of), I'm not
going to have the dough for Edtris and Oystron (both carts I'd like to
have). And if Quake 2 comes out for the Mac before I get money saved up,
Oist and Ed will get pushed back even further!
I'd love to have an Oystron cart, but since I've got it on my emu,
there's no rush (sorry, Piero. It _is_ pretty high on my list,
however!). Battlesphere, Civ 2, and even a rigged up circuit for the now
non-functioning brake lights on my Jeep all come first. All of these vie
for the money that might support my share of the Atari 2600 cart market!
;) And yes, I'd probably buy the cart from Randy before Telegames or the
like. Not only do I pay less, I also encourage the homebrew
"infrastructure" much more directly.
Which of course begs the question that Randy brought up earlier and that
I've been struggling with: Shouldn't we be more protective of our .bins?
With every attachment on the list going up on the net, isn't this going
to hurt sales? Edtris demand is still high lo these many years later,
but will Oystron keep pace?
My hope is that the people on this list are somewhere between freeware
and shareware developers, less worried about the economics of their 2600
games than enjoying their creation and sharing the games with others.
That said, I know I'm going to release a different version of [...the
seemingly mythical game of almost pipe-dream proportions...] JW on cart
that I do to the list! ;)
Thanks for reading my two cents!
Ruffin Bailey
rufbo at cetlink.net
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