VisCorp Overview
For a short time during 1996 Viscorp were set to be the Amigas
owners, buying Amiga Technologies from the troubled Escom. But
where did the company come from and what was it about? This page
examines the Amigas brief relationship with the VisCorp and what
might have become if they had bought the Amiga.
The company's origins can be traced back to its formation in
Chicago, Illinois on May 1st, 1990 under the name Information on
Command, Inc. The name lasted for less than three weeks, changing
it to Visual Information Service Corporation on May 22nd, 1990. The
first years were spent assessing the developing set-top market and
producing a market plan for the companies future in that market.
After deciding that the set-top market could be profitable Viscorp
began development of the ED technology, producing the first
prototype in May 1993.
The next year was a time of rapid expansion for Viscorp, hiring a
number of people for its management team. It was a time of
expansion for the company, when they established a relationship
with its first interactive service provider, NTN Communications,
Inc. during December 1994. The companies development continued in
1995 when Viscorp licensed the rights to the former Commodore Amiga
technology, from its German owners, Escom AG. Their choice was
based upon Amigas efficient chipset and operating system, which
they chose to incorporate into the ED box. The set-top market
relied upon cheap hardware, making the Amiga the perfect choice at
the time for an efficient hardware design. The choice would also
enable the ED box to utilize the vast library of Amiga software,
allowing Viscorp to break into the commercial market.
Amiga ED
The ED project finally made it into the final stages of development
during 1995. The machine was aimed at a different market than the
Amiga, Macintosh, and Windows platforms of the time. The set-top
boxes name was derived from this market, being dubbed the ED, or
Electronic Device. The products market lay in simple consumer
electronic devices that proliferate every home, such as a
calculator. The user does not have to understand how the machine
works to use it. To measure the devices response in this new
market, Viscorp conducted a six-month market trial in conjunction
with focus group studies in up to 25 homes on a cable system in a
Detroit suburb. After this study was completed and making a few
refinements and modifications to the ED, VisCorp planned to license
the hardware to a range of communication companies.
The ED's market
The ED is unique among "Classic" Amiga technology, being aimed at
the information appliance rather than home computer market. Viscorp
estimated that the online market would increase at a rate of 20%
every month. The mid-90s was a time of new technologies being
tested by a range of cable and telephone companies, which were
launching trials of broad band video-on-demand interactive
technologies. The set-top market was based upon the desire to bring
interactive television and the world wide web to the masses.
Studies of the time suggested the price and complexity of computers
prevented the average John and Jane from using the internet.
It is VisCorp's belief that there is a market
opportunity to provide
revenue producing interactive services to the mass market that
do not
involve deployment of such technologies and which are far
cheaper and
easier to use than the typical PC.
The efficient nature of the Amiga allowed VisCorp to create a
system that had both an efficient hardware and software
design, greatly reducing the amount of memory needed to
manipulate graphics. The choice of the Amiga was deeply grounded in
the cost of hardware at the time. Although chip cost repeatedly
dropped, memory was the one irreducible cost in digital
electronics. By reducing a dependence on memory, VisCorp suggested
they had reduced the cost of the device to a point where it could
penetrate the mass market.
Licensing
One of Commodore's biggest mistakes was not licensing the Amigas
operating system and hardware to other manufacturers. For the ED to
succeed VisCorp realized they would not be successful unless they
took advantage of the marketing power of several manufacturers.
VisCorp had preliminary discussions with several manufacturers,
including Pioneer, Zenith, Toshiba and Freedom Star. The company
believed licensing allowed greater market penetration, making the
Amiga ED a success.
The set-top market differs in many ways from the home computer
market. For cheap hardware to succeed it must make profit somewhere
else. Nintendo hardly make any money from selling the Nintendo 64
console, balancing the low price with the cost of third party
payments to develop for their machine. Similarly, VisCorp expected
a relatively low revenue stream from manufacturing licenses,
instead planning to receive revenue from the variety of services
they intended to make available through the ED, such as unique
telephone management features, on-screen TV program guides, fax and
e-mail, Internet access, and the ability to download and play
arcade quality video games right on the TV.
BACK |
