Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

FEATURE
miga owners are used to talk. In an industry that seems
thrive on hot air and unsubstantiated speculation, no-one
knows better than they that certain promises should be
taken with a pinch of salt.
So when Manfred Schmitt stood up at the Frankfurt press
conference to announce the Amiga's new key role at the head
of his ever expanding multimedia empire, Ifs not surprising it
everyone's scepticism didn't evaporate overnight.
Escom's plan to build on the Amiga's technological superiority
as a multimedia platform was obviously encouraging, but a number
of questions remained. After all, in the Amiga's absence the PC had
been marketed so successtuily it was almost synonymous with the term
multimedia in the eyes of the general public, With even Escom themselves
pushing PC multimedia solutions, could the Amiga ever regain
lost ground.?
Fortunately the promises seemed infinitely more credible thanks to
the contribution of twe companies. Scala and Viscorp. Both could lustifiably
claim to have invented their own brand of multimedia, and both
teams have experience from long before PC owners had even
encountered the winning term. If any third parties were needed to
Amiga CompostWig
OCTOBER 1995 _••
the new e y were the ones. But are
committed, L 1 s t more talk ?
To take Scala irst, their decision last year to
into PC development was so shocking to so
Amigaphiles it was seen as a death knell. The roll
having the company that invented computer televi
back at the helm of Escom's multimedia drive
understandably intense.
As reported in our August issue, the first good
was the plan to bundle Scala's MM300 package with n
Al200s. The fact that the software won't run on the b
machine, however, left some commentators puzzled. "What is
point,
- can't user
s oBarry
Thurston, MD of Scala UK. thinks differently: On
mlace e of it it's a strange package.
s-
the hAl200 e c into o nthe c multimedia e d e d , environment and almost trying
a" encourage i B u the t purchaser to get interested — which is no hi
d ithing," , t ' s
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No bad o thing indeed jrcelle Al200 ctilkinly needs to