=============================================================================  NEWSFLASH FINITO ? ============================================================================= Yes readers, my last editorials already mentioned the recession on the AMIGA market and because UGA Software is also a victim of piracy and economic re- cession, it can be the last year of Newsflash. We have always produced Newsflash because it was fun and we could finance it by selling our commercial products. But because sales have dropped with over 50% we are now in a situation that we have a break even point. Further decrease of our sales will mean that we can't finance some products anymore and have to spend more time on less risky products (PC). To give you an idea: Of our first issue of PC Newsflash we sold in Holland (!) 2 times as many copies as from the AMIGA version worldwide (!!). And on the PC we are only just starting. We seems to become victim of our own popularity because our two most popular products (Powerpacker & Newsflash) face such huge piracy that e.g. in Germany and the UK (2 million users !!) we sold less than 1000 copies of Powerpacker V4.0 ! You will understand that even this is for a small flexible company like us with very low overheadcosts, unacceptable. Our second problem is the feedback and contributions. In our first two years there were many people writing us and sending nice tools, sources, articles etc etc but many of the old group have now chosen for the PC or just quitted their AMIGA activities because of different reasons. Also many programmers have no idea what to write now because there are already many utilities made. Also among the new group of AMIGA users there seems to be less creativity and many users just bought their AMIGA for the games. I noticed that the amount of PD is also lower than ever. In the past many slideshows, 1 parted demos and handy tools were released by many European groups. Today the only thing that seems to be interesting to make are megademos and megamusic disks and no smaller projects. The last 6 months also the reader-feedback is lower than ever. I received perhaps 5 letters in 6 months. You would perhaps say okay, no mail means no complaints. If I ask people their opinion it is mostly positive and they like our style and especially the music and tools. For me feedback is very important. I can improve things and it stimulates me. The last 3 years I have worked my bud off to make UGA a success but many things seems just to be impossible to do on the AMIGA market. I introduced a good series of PD disks, Newsflash and the Powerutilities and tried to help talented artists. I managed to build up a good reputation and the name UGA is quite known among AMIGA users. We have had many good reviews of our products but the effect on our sales was always too low. I hoped that Newsflash would become known as a good diskmagazine and would attrack interest of the serious AMIGA users. At this moment I ask myself, is the AMIGA worth all the time I am putting in. After all I have to run a healthy business and I want to pay my artists a fair amount of money for their work. My American friend Mr S. Oakland suggested to make an issue every 3 months because it would be better to have less issues than nothing at all ! So the coming 6 months we will produce 2 issues only to see what the public does. If we see more sales of Newsflash we will go on in 1993 and perhaps every two months again. But for the moment I am not really positive about the AMIGA market so I leave it up to our readers now..... If you want us to continue this magazine then write us and let us know what you like and if you have suggestions then please tell us. If you are an artist and you like to contribute your material then don't wait and mail it to us. Good material will always be used on future issues so material (tools, art, demos, music, sources etc) from every country is welcome. If you have utilities you like to see then mention them and we publish them is a special request list on Newsflash. So I leave it up to you know, if you want us to continue give us some feedback/suggestions so I know that it is worth to make new issues. I also hope that people who now read an illegal copy will be fair enough to buy the original next time or another popular AMIGA product will disappear from the market. We have new distributors in Australia and the UK so if the people in these countries will buy Newsflash we will have a future. At last I like to say that we are not the only AMIGA minded company that seems to fight a lost battle. The last months 3 AMIGA magazines went out of business (Info from the USA, AMIGA Dos in Germany and the Amitech magazine). In Holland we started with 3 magazines and only 1 magazine is left. Also many smaller developers of serious software and shareware have moved to the PC market. Newsflash 28 will be the last issue of this year and then I will take a decision if we can continue releasing an AMIGA version of Newsflash. If I get support there is a chance. Sorry for this negative piece but I had to get rid of some frustation after all the energy I have put in fine software for many AMIGA users. If I have to stop Newsflash I will also stop our PD series and spend my time on Newsflash PC and our PC products only. Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy this issue. =============================================================================  NEWSFLASH FINITO ? =============================================================================