Amiga Technologies, VisCorp and the future

[Tszchenko's Piccie] [AMiGA Logo]


Amiga Technologies (ESCOM):
The saviours of the Amiga from Commodore

These are the guys who purchased the remains of the Amiga from the once mighty Commodore, who were in 1990/1991 thought to be the leaders of technology in their field. After Commodore went into voluntary liquidation with heavy losses in April 1994, no one was sure what would happen with the computer known as the Amiga, but one thing was for sure almost no one had predicted it to take a year for it all to finally be resolved due to a legal web described as the most complex of any company in years. The winner of all this was ESCOM, with a winning bid of $13 million US.

They had already prior to this bought the Commodore logo rights for use in building their range of PCs so they could own most of the PC market sales made in Europe and the UK. But for some reason, they decided to bid against the contenders who were still around come auction time (who where several US Amiga companies, Commodore UK, Dell Computers, and some others).

ESCOM's then boss hired Peter Kittel, one of the last remaining Commodore Germany employees to head up a new Amiga devision in ESCOM, which was to be called Amiga Technologies, and they were amoung other things to create the logo you see above this bit of text. Peter Tszchenko was shortly later nominated to run this new operation along with alot of ex-Commodore Germany staff and other talented Amiga users. Peter Tszchenko is the one in the photo above.

It has now been a year since they have bought it and thoughts on them have been mixed since the rumours about this have started filtering out. During the year the re-established links, got Amigas back into stores, commenced advertising in the UK for a while, got the Amiga back on the production line, launched two new Amiga packs, the Amiga Magic Pack (a pack full of great software for home and business/school use as well as some not so great games), the Amiga Surfer Pack (Same as Amiga Magic Pack but with a modem and pre-installed internet software). As well as this they announced two new Amigas, the first the PowerAmiga (a PowerPC version of an Amiga), and the Amiga Walker (which was later on scraped) which integrated high-end Amiga and PC technology into one as well as a new operating system and a case which could only be compared to a vacuum cleaner. It shouldn't be denied that they have done alot of work, but was it sufficient? Only time will tell, but with Viscorp about to take the reigns who knows what tommorow shall bring! Ironically though, the company which acquired the Amiga from Commodore died like Commodore did, forced into Voluntary Liquidation, this is a wierd paradox. Both once might companies which reigned supreme.


[VisCorp Logo]


VisCorp:
The successors to Amiga Technology of the Amiga:

These are the guys who wish to purchase the rights to the computer off Amiga Technologies (a subsiduary of the large IBM Clone manafacturer, ESCOM are a dominating force in the European IBM Clone market). Viscorp have already purchased the rights to use the Amiga Operating System and its custom hardware from Amiga Technologies, but have now offered a sum of approximately $40 million US to take the company (and the technology) off ESCOMs hands, who originally purchased the company for $13 million US, (but have subsequently spent somewhere near the value of the $40 million US in order to get manafacturing re-established, to re-establish links with the existing Amiga community (being its users, its developers, the retailers, and wholesalers who create and promote the products/services).

Viscorp is made up of Carl S. (who wrote the Amiga's pre-emptive multitasking Exec library, as well as working on the CDTV and several other Amiga-related projects, prior to leaving Commodore to join Viscorp), and also other ex-Commodore employees who designed things in Commodore over the years (albiet mostly failed products such as Commodore's worst disaster, the CDTV). Thier priority is making 'ED' set-top-boxes which integrate a standard Amiga into a i-TV (Interactive TV setup) which allows services such as interactive tv shows, playing games with upto thousands of others, surfing the net, movies on demand and other things. They state they are also commited to bringing out a 'Killer Amiga', while this may be so, till we see the products we won't be satisfied. It is rumoured the ED Boxes will be integrated into Sony's TVs. (As well as an ever more FAR out rumour Viscorp is a subsiduary of Microsoft). They have already range a deal with a huge TV Firm to license the Amiga SetTopBoxes to for integration into their TVs. The Amiga's destiny may just lay in their hands, and if they do a good job it could be a great thing, if they fail is it the end??

[Cyberwlf's Amiga Domain]

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