Re: Marketing, was Re: C


Thu, 07 Dec 1995 15:37:53 -0500

Greg Alt wrote:

>> How about this idea... With all of these cheapo spell-checkers,
>> computerized bibles, organizers, etc. selling for under $50, what
>> about making a dedicated thing using the same hardware but different
>> ROMs? I'm sure some of those things have more powerful computers in
>> them than some of the old 8-bit machines that ran infocom games. You
>> could probably charge $40 or so and include 5 games. I seem to
>> remember someone saying that some of those spell-checkers/etc have
>> 6502 CPUs and a system similar to the old Apple II, with the only
>> difference between the different models is the ROMs. You might even
>> be able to do something like a spell-checker, a scrabble dictionary,
>> and a few IF games.

Greg,

An excellent suggestion! That ties in closely with what someone else (sorry,
can't remember who) recently said about porting Inform to the Newton. PDAs
are an IDEAL platform for IF, and I think that people who routinely use PDAs
and recognize their inherent limitations would be thrilled at having a library
of IF available to them.

Your point about making an IF-specific PDA is neat, because of course you
could sell additional games on flash cards - which don't require much shelf
space and can probably be made & sold cheaply.

-- Ivan