
PIC:barclip.ilbm

CL8:                             The Divide Within
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CL8:                          Written by Zerox of Gods

CL1:As  you all know, the scene has become
smaller  for each year that passes by,
but  it  has  not necessarily become a
worse scene than before.  During these
years new upgrades have brought joy to
a   lot   of   sceners,  but  the  new
equipment  has  also  led  to  sceners
leaving our precious community.

History  has shown us that the sceners
have   adapted quickly  into  the  new
upgrades.    The   first   Amiga   was








actually  A1000,  but the machine most
people bought was the A500.  It didn't
take  very long before it was possible
to  buy  extra memory, and soon it was
also needed.

When  the AGA arrived, it took about 1
and  a  half  year  or  so, before all
active  sceners had upgraded by buying
a new Amiga.  There were many positive
aspects  of  this,  but there was also
one  very negative thing.  Yes, really
a lot of sceners left the scene around
1994/95  because  of the change.  They
were  either  happy  about the present
configuration,  or  infact didn't want
to  upgrade  for  other reasons.  When
they  didn't  manage to see the latest
productions   anymore,  this  was  the
"push"  needed  to make them leave the
scene.

The  scene  has  continued  with small
upgrades,   with  various  accelerator
cards, extra memory etc.  All the time
more   sceners   have  vanished.   But
something  quite  weird  happened when
the PPC cards arrived as so few people
actually  bought  them  in  the start.
The   last   two   years  or  so,  the
situation  has  changed  though.  When
looking at the productions released at
the  Mekka-Symposium party a year ago,
it  was  obvious  that  the  PPC has a
strong influence on the scene now.  It
will  be  interesting  to  see  in the
competitions  here  at  the Breakpoint
party  how  many  productions that are
made with the help of PPC.

The  hardware  situation  will be even
more  complex  in the future.  Finally
after  many years without any new real
new  Amiga  hardware  and software, it
really  seems like the Amiga users and
sceners   will  be  able  to  buy  new
hardware,   in  addition  to  the  new
software.

The  Amiga  One,  which  is  the  next
generation Amiga, with highly improved
processor  power,  sound  and graphics
abilities,  will  certainly  be a long
awaited upgrade.  The question however
is  whether  the few sceners left will
buy  this  computer, or if they'll buy
Pegasos  which  is  quite  similar  to
Amiga   One   when  it  comes  to  the
hardware,  or if they won't upgrade at
all.

This  new change can be very dangerous
for our scene.  While the new hardware
can    bring    us    faboulous    new
productions,  there  will  perhaps  be
less  sceners  able to watch them.  In
any  case,  we're  going  towards very
exciting times.  Who will upgrade this
time, and who will be left behind?

I   do  fear  that  the  AmigaONE  and
Pegasos  actually  have  the  power to
divide the scene, and even destroy our
classic  Amiga  scene.  We can imagine
that  20% of the sceners upgrade, more
stay  with  the classic Amiga, and the
rest  simply leave the scene.  This is
not  a  very  good scenario.  But then
again,  it's of course possible that a
lot  more decide to upgrade this time.
However, now it seems very likely that
various   sceners   will   upgrade  to
different systems.  While it first was
expected that most of the sceners that
upgrade,  would  choose  AmigaOne  and
OS4.0,  it  now  seems like quite many
will   choose   Pegasos   and  MorphOS
instead.   Genesi has been very active
marketing their Pegasos machine, while
Amiga,  Inc.,  has  been quite silent.
Genesi  are  giving away free machines
to  certain  active  sceners,  and the
first Pegasos PPC demo called Own Love
Balance was released by Mad Wizards at
the Equinoxe party in France late last
month.   So  this is actually a divide
within.   Another  thing  is that this
new upgrade might attract new sceners.
Hopefully things will work out for the
better.
