We can now officially say that the broad Sinclair ZX Spectrum market is a multi-million pound industry
Overall, there are a lot of commercially dead computers from the 1980s and early 1990s that are back; various solutions that emulate or simulate your favourite personal computer exist, with the most accessible being on your modern days PC, or even your Android or Apple Smart Phone.
Specifically, the Sinclair-branded (and now misnamed) ZX Spectrum Next (it should more accurately be called a ZX Multi System or something) has passed the £2m milestone. So in terms of absolute numbers, it's done very well. Whether anyone is getting rich quick on the back of this is an unknown, but this is the second Kickstarter campaign for the ZX Multi System that has raised over £1.5m. I'm sure there is a business model in here somewhere. I'm sure that someone could come along and do what Commodore.net did with the "new" 64 Ultimate machine, and have it on sale (or pre-sale) for longer than a few weeks ever three to five years. I've spoken about that elsewhere.
This multi-system approach is something pretty new: I still maintain that just because you can doesn't mean that you should. But anyway, we are where we are. And revisionists may claim that this was always part of the Next ecosystem, or that it was always intended to be, but this isn't true: there was no indications from the first Kickstarter campaign, nor do I remember anything overt from the second, to suggest the ZX Multi System approach. It just happened, and rather than spending time making it the best ZX Spectrum and Next possible, improving the user experience or user interface (maybe incorporating SymbOS or something), good development time is now going to be spent making the platform do Commodore and even Amstrad CPC stuff (though on the latter point, you'll have to provide your own ROM images, legally or not).
So the Kickstarted III campaign has been a success, and if you look at absolute numbers, it's smashed the previous two campaigns by many thousands of pounds. In the Summer of 2020, when the second Kickstarter campaign ended, it managed to raise (some might say fleece) £1,847,106 from backers. Now, I know this is only five years ago (at the time of writing), but we've had inflation since then. Everyone knows that the money in their pocket is worth less than 5 years ago. If we assume that inflation has averaged 3% annually since 2020, which is a very conservative estimation, that total adjusted for inflation is approximately £2,141,153; in other words, unless something changes in the next few days, this third Kickstarter campaign hasn't necessarily done much better than the second campaign, which is a shame. I would have tried to aim for at least 10,000 backers somehow, and forget how much cash is raised; I would have wanted mass units produced in many more thousands, but hey, there is still time (unless you're reading this in the future, when the campaign has ended).
Someone will point out that the number of backers for KS2 was 5,236, whilst the number of backers for the ZX Multi System is over 6,000. I do worry that many of these backers already own a Next in some form: be it a clone, or one or other or both of the previous campaigns. This means that whilst the numbers look good, there hasn't been a focus on growing the total number of users: sure, the extended cores might bring some new people to the party, but I doubt this will be significant. And I can't imagine that anyone will be procuring this ZX Multi System only for one of the available cores. I mean, if you want an established multi system like device, there is the MiSTer FPGA, which isn't dependent on a time-limited Kickstarter campaign. From what I can tell too, prices are cheaper for the MiSTer, though I don't know that much about it. And as the ZX Spectrum Next specific bits of the ZX Multi System are open source, it might also be available on the MiSTer?
My biggest frustration is, of course, that I was once sold on the idea of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next as a platform. The original specifications seemed great, and 14Mhz, I thought, well that ought to be enough for anyone. Since then, it's become diluted and, as I like to say, it's the "Snakes on a Plane" of the retro computer world. If you know, you know.
On a more positive note, I’ve thrown my hat in for the C64 Ultimate, choosing it over the ZX Multi System. I know the 64U platform - it’s mature, well-developed, and driven by a singular vision that delivers an excellent user experience. Its interface is refreshingly straightforward, requiring little effort to master. And best of all, it’s the ultimate C64: crank it to 48MHz, eliminate bad lines, toss in up to four SID chips (two real, two emulated) with ease, and add 16MB of REU RAM — perfect for running GEOS smoothly. The potential is thrilling, a true next-gen Commodore 64. While I’m hoping for a pre-Christmas 2025 delivery, I’m bracing for possible delays. Still, when that modern bread bin lands on my doorstep, it’ll spark the same joy as unwrapping a C64 in the 1980s. Huzzah!
