Well over half of CD-ROM titles are available for MS-DOS, over 38% for Macintosh and approximately 20% for Windows, says a recent study released at Milia ’95 by London-based researchers TFPL Ltd. Windows titles are multiplying the fastest, having gone from 5% of the market in 1992 to nearly 20% last year. At just over 1,700 titles, Macintosh versions continue to show steady growth, says TFPL, noting also that almost 70% of those titles are also available in personal computer versions. The economics of selling CD-ROM titles in great volume favours the iAPX-86 personal computer system, said Florian Langenscheidt, an editor at Germany’s Bibliographisches Institut & FA Brockhaus, at one of Milia’s seminars. He said that the company wins 15% of its revenues currently from electronic book titles, but that Macintosh versions sell only 15% to 17% of the Windows version of the same title. Nonetheless, developers appear to favour the Macintosh. The way titles are produced at London-based Dorling Kindersley Multimedia, for instance, is reflective of a Dataquest study showing 63% of titles to be Apple-authored.
Created in the Mac
Says Alan Buckingham, managing director of Dorling Kindersley (which is 20% held by Microsoft), Everything we do is created on the Mac, put onto Windows and then put into a Mac version later. He added, however, that the company will probably eventually do both versions because while the machine [installed base] ratio may be 90% personal computer and 10% Mac, [CD-ROM] sales can be as much as 60%:40% or 70%:30%. He said he believes it is partly because Macintosh owners tend to be more interested in this kind of thing. At the show, Apple announced further enhancements to its QuickTimeVR to try to ensure that interactive multimedia developers will continue to choose its system. Since the product was announced last June, it has been converted into a native Power Personal computer form, has optimised formats, full-screen playback and reduced file size, said programme manager Eric Zarakov. Now, he said, the product requires only 540Kb for a dozen photos instead of 800Kb. Bandai Co Ltd president and chief executive Makoto Yamashina also announced that his company will introduce a Pippin system for $500 in the US, France and Japan, with software for it priced at between $40 and $60. TFPL notes that some 15% of available titles are Mac-personal computer cross-system disks. This neatly illustrates the trend towards system convergence, although clear ‘plug and play’ functionality needed to optimise CD-ROM sales volumes through mass merchandising channels is not yet a reality, the report said.
