PowerPC-based "Classic Amiga" systems

In the dramatic announcements of the World of Amiga 1998 show it became obvious that the PowerPC was being sidelined in Amiga Inc's plans. It was suggested that the PowerPC would eventually become a dead end, killing the potential market for PPC accelerators and PPC-based Amiga. Why would anyone buy a PPC Amiga if it was not capable of running the next generation AmigaOS? In recognition that this would make their WarpOS Vs. PowerUP battle a mute point, Haage & Partner and Phase 5 buried their differences on the final day of the show and announced a partnership in developing a standard PPC implementation. They stated:

"We will ensure that users of the PowerUP system have a transparent integration of their PowerPC and will see a rich variety of the most powerful applications released soon."

Under the new business plan Haage & Partner would handle future development of the PowerUP software kernel, while Phase 5 would restrict themselves to producing and marketing the hardware. To protect the development of 'future' PowerPC Amigas, a proposal was submitted and authorized by Amiga Inc. to develop a PPC alternative to the Amiga Bridge system.

Although the business plan was promising it lacked some essential information that was not provided by Amiga Inc. Most notably the company did not even chose a OS partner until several months later, and then abandoned the plans to develop a Linux solution. It is difficult to see how the PPC business plan could be developed when it relied upon the Gateway-Amiga to make a decision and stick to it.