For any type of software you wanted to sell to the retail chains, you had to find a software distribution company, since the chains would not deal directly with

For any type of software you wanted to sell to the retail chains, you had to find a software distribution company, since the chains would not deal directly with you. So you were paying one cut to the software distributor, and another cut to the retail chain. Then there were costs things like creating and shipping physical inventory, swapping out the unsold inventory in the stores when you did a major version update, shared advertising costs, etc. You definitely were not getting to keep anywhere near 70% of the price consumers paid for your product.