"Commodore" Sold To Americans!

[eric_ruck]

Am I the first here with the scoop?

 

U.S. Company Acquires Rights to Commodore (AP, on Yahoo, no registration required)

 

Eric

[Flojomojo]

There has been some speculation, rumormongering, and poo-flinging in the cbm newsgroup about this. Looks like it's true. I assumed the buyer was in Asia, based on the name.

 

They look to be a pay-to-download outfit, looking to "cash in" on the retro trend. IMHO they overpaid for the name; I seriously doubt there's $33 million to be made on the brand. It would be neat if they were to make a new/old console though, and it sounds like they just might have the resources to pull it off.

[Flojomojo]

"We have heard a lot from the existing community of Commodore users, asking 'what's happening' with what they see as their brand," Van Weijhe said.

 

"We plan to talk with them and listen to them" in deciding what products and services Commodore will offer, he said.

 

He added that Yeahronimo was "starting to take actions" against possible copyright infringements of the Commodore name in the United States.

I don't know about you, but I've leeched everything I wanted from http://arnold.c64.org/ in preparation of the big software lockdown. The folks at Tulip must be ecstatic that they got this kind of money out of idiot venture capitalists.

[Lifeguard]

I was under the impression that Gateway Computers held the rights to Commodore Computers - ? - . Maybe they just bought a lot of their their technology patents. I know Gateway had something to do with Commodore; I used to work for Gateway before I got laid off. I was going to bring in a broken Commodore Vic-20 to the service dept as a lark but it never happened. Oh well, missed my chance. Maybe next year / career.

[Bratwurst]

I don't know about you, but I've leeched everything I wanted from http://arnold.c64.org/ in preparation of the big software lockdown.

 

I wouldn't worry about it so much, there'll be other avenues of finding software. Look at Nintendo- it's a little harder to find their ROMs once they got proactive about shutting sites down, but not impossible.

 

Sorta funny when an entity can swoop in and buy something it had nothing to do with previously, huh?

[Inky]

I was under the impression that Gateway Computers held the rights to Commodore Computers - ? -

Gatway at one time owned the rights to only the Amiga.

[Dones]

The articel says Yeahronimo plans to market the logo and name to sell games and mp3 players. That's quite broad isn't it?

[SteveW]

Gee, Commodore MP3 players and re-released games? Isn't that what Tulip had done? Very original.

[tyranthraxus]

I wouldn't mind if they wanted to revive the corporate brand name by

slapping it on some electronic gadgets. Still seems like a ton of money

on what was mainly a hardware company. There weren't a lot of games

produced under the Commodore banner and most of them are bad. All

the cool games were by other companies so unless those copyright

owners start getting active those rom sites will continue to flourish.

[eric_ruck]

I think the idea is that the name resonates with 30-something consumers who buy electronic gadgets. I was at BJ's the other day and saw a "Sylvania" LCD TV (really cheap by the way, but that's beside the point). I'm thinking, gee, don't they make light bulbs?

 

Then I notice the big lettering on the side, "Sylvania Name Used Under License". So basically this TV has nothing to do with Sylvania except that some Chinese company or importer paid them to use their name.

 

But that makes sense. I'm not going to drop a few hundred bucks on a Moo Shoo brand TV, but Sylvania, sure, I've heard of them. And if the TV sucks, well, I don't much look at the brand names when I buy lightbulbs anyway.

 

Eric

[Dones]

Well said man. Sometimes it does pay not to follow this logic. For example I recently bought (on impulse) a no-name DVD player for $40 bucks. The little unit has more features and plays all disc formats (including all the DVD-R/RW's +/- DL's media that is out there). My $150 Sony dvd player can't even play Video CD's.