Elite: Claims about numbers sold etc. (very poorly researched Guardian article from very poorly researched material by Francis Spufford)

From - Sun Oct 26 16:52:49 2003
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Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 16:51:28 +0000
From: "W.Scholten" <whs X hccnet.nl>
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Subject: The writer needs to do some fact checking (Re: [BBC-Micro] Elite feature in today's Grauniad)
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Tim Matthews:

> In the magazine section on today's Guardian there's quite an interesting
> articile about Bell & Braben and Elite.
> To think - we could have had 280,000,000,000,000 galaxies!!


tom X tomseddon.plus.com:

> It seems to be available on the web too!
> 
>     http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1064107,00.html

The writer uses "prose before facts" and the style is that of a novel...
yuck.

Examples of errors and omissions:


1 & 2
--------------
When you turned on the Atom or the BBC Micro, the ROM chip booted up its
two pieces of cargo and on your television screen appeared this: 

  BASIC
  >
and nothing else. The machine did nothing else, unless you made it. 
--------------

Which is *part* of what is shown when you start a BBC micro, but an Atom
shows
  ACORN ATOM
  >

Also, "The machine did nothing else, unless you made it" is of course
the case for any computer. If you want specific programs for a PC, you
have to buy them and install them, same as for a BBC. The only thing
that springs to mind is that a PC can play a audio CD usually without
installing extra programs. But still, the concept is the same: You want
to do something: You have to insert media (mp3s, CDs ...) and/or
install/LOAD programs.



3.
--------------
The classic action game of the early 1980s - Defender, Pac Man - was set
in a perpetual present tense, a sort of arcade Eden in which there were
always enemies to zap or gobble, but nothing ever changed apart from the
score.
--------------

Rubbish. The games get *faster* and for other games of that era, more
aliens come at you in the higher levels, therefore more difficult with
time. Also, movement patterns of the baddies usually vary per level. No
'perpetual present tense'.



4.
--------------
 Sales of Acornsoft's Elite would finally reach a total of almost
150,000. There were only 150,000 or so BBC Micros in the world at that
point, so the ratio was almost 1:1, one copy of Elite for every computer
that could run it. 
--------------

 At that point seems to refer to when the last copy of Acornsoft Elite
was sold, which would however have to be ca. mid 1986...


Firstly: this number of 150,000 machines is wrong whichever way you
look at it. I felt this had to be wrong, made a rough estimate based on
figures of 25,000 machines a month I've seen for peak production, which
confirmed my suspicion so I looked up some more detailed figures: in
Micro user vol 9 no4 jun 1991 it says:
-------------
In january 1982, production was 1000 a week; In February it went up to
2500 and in march, 5000. But demand kept increasing and by april the
backlog exceeded 20000. By mid-1982, the pressures on Acorn were
intense. Rapid expansion was brought in and by October 1982, the backlog
had almost disappeared with more buyers opting for the 32k model B in
preference to the 16k model A.
-------------

I assume 'weekly' is an error, and that 'monthly' is meant:
So, monthly production:
 1982 jan: 1000
      feb: 2500
      mar-jun:5000
      jun-dec: say. 15000 (in 3 months a backlog of 20000 removed, so at
least 70000 more than 5000)
 1983: say 20000
 1984: say 25000

Lets make a crude estimate of machines sold up to the approximate launch
date of elite. I will assume this is about 1 oct 1984 (first review oct
1984 AU, Nov AU bestselling charts page has a comment about Elite not
being in it as it was hardly available in the shops. Taking account of
publication delays and partial counting (software charts probably per
month, so mid-month release would give half the per-month number), 1 oct
seems a good estimate).

 
 1982: 1,000+2,500+5,000*4+15,000*6 = 113,500
 1983: 20,000*12 = 240,000
 1984: 25,000*9 = 225,000
Total: 578500 up to 1 oct 1984.

This seems to fit with total amounts of beebs manuafactured (rest of
1984:  25,000*3=75,000, 1985+1986 lets say 10,000 (reduced production
after finacial problems) * 24 = 240,000, total up to and including 1986:
893,500)

Now look at the following cases:
 - 1. Almost all copies of Elite ever sold, were sold in 1984
 - 2. Almost all copies of Elite ever sold, were sold in 1984 - mid-1986

(1) Machines sold until 31-12-1984: ca. 578500 + 25,000*3=653,500
(2) Machines sold until mid 1986: ca. 578500 + 25,000*3 +
10,000*(12+6)=833,500

Very very distant from a 1:1 ratio in either case.

Even if one considers half the BBCs went to education and striking those
(this is however inconsistent the article's 'BBC Micros in the world at
that point', but I'll give the writer a break), and then considering
model As not upgraded enough to run Elite (32k + user-VIA), a 1:1 ratio
is still nonsense.

Secondly, other sources say 100,000 copies of elite were sold. Where do
the extra 50,000 come from?


5. Where's information on Robert Holdstock's involvement? Apparantly he
wrote the manual (which is an essential element of Elite, without such a
well written and occasionaly humorous manual it would have been a much
lesser game), and I wonder why there wasn't a sequel to "the dark
wheel" (well, I couldn't find it in e.g. 'Books in print' long ago. Was
there one after all?).

There's some interesting information in the article, but how can I trust
any of it if the writer didn't do any effort to check basic facts?

@@ This is an edited extract from Backroom Boys: The Secret Return Of
@@ The British Boffin, by Francis Spufford,

I wonder what the editing did?

@@ published by Faber on November 6 at 14.99.

I'll pass.

Regards,

Wouter