I’m writing this, believe it or not, in the cab of a Ryder rent-a-truck going 65 mph down I-80, driven by Roland Gustafsson. We’ve just crossed into Nebraska and are determined to make Omaha tonight.
Back up a few days…
I caught Doug before I left and expressed my concerns about Prince’s marketing. He was surprisingly sympathetic. Before I’d even had a chance to complain much, he agreed with everything, and right then and there put out a message to Sophie K. on E-mail suggesting that they redo Prince as a candy box. “I can’t really lean on her any harder than that,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry – I feel so powerless.”
I dropped by Sophie’s office too, and expressed some of the same concerns I’d expressed to Doug. She was infuriatingly unsympathetic. She was happy to chit-chat about my trip to New York, my life there, etc., but when it came to Prince – forget it. I left her office with steam coming out of my ears and my face hardened into a pleasant smile.
She didn’t even have the decency to commiserate, to say “Gee, it’s too bad this game isn’t selling better.” She as much as told me that 1,000 units a month is all this product deserves to be selling. And this is the product’s marketing manager speaking.
After that I had an even more upsetting meeting with Brian, of all people. He told me that Ann had offered to pay $2500 of the (estimated $15,000) cost of the Mac POP graphics, not a penny more, and I’d have to pay the rest out of my pocket. I gave him all the arguments as to why Broderbund should pay half the cost, at least. We argued for a while and then he said, in the heat of argument: “We just can’t justify spending that much money on a product that we don’t even know for sure there’s going to be a market for.”
I almost blew up, but then I saw the expression on Brian’s face looked so miserable, I couldn’t bear to continue. I knew he was just repeating what Ann had told him. Prince has no better champion than Brian. He’s been fighting for a year. He’s powerless, that’s all.
So we agreed to continue the discussion later, and I went to lunch with Rob. My last Broderbund lunch.
Today, from a pay phone at a Wyoming truck stop, I got Ann to agree to pay a third of the graphics cost and Presage to agree to pay a third. My share will be deducted from my royalties (cross-collateralized, at Ann’s insistence). Fine, as long as it gets done. I just hope Leila can do it all without me there to guide her, and without going over budget.
Brian says they’re desperate for Prince in Europe. Domark showed it unofficially at CES in England and it made quite a stir. I hope they can get their respective acts together and release it sometime soon. It’s already been pirated on the Amiga.





