Did piracy kill the amiga?

[killergorilla]

You can't "find out", you can "judge for yourself"

It was a number of factors, most importantly the reason for them failing was failure.

[meynaf]

Piracy didn't kill the Amiga, surely not. The culprit is the PC, and everything else, though it might not have helped, is anecdotic. Agree with me or not, I don't want to troll here

Let me explain...

Consider newcomers in the computer industry, back in the 80's or 90's. They simply couldn't build Amigas. But they surely could build PC clones, which spared them the R&D costs - that's because IBM didn't bother to put a copyright on the hardware (they just copyrighted the original BIOS code, which could easily be - and was - rewritten from scratch).

And so they did. They flooded the market with this awful - but cheap - garbage named PC.

Pushed by so many developers, the PC evolved quickly, and finally took over the market.

If the Amiga were free back at the time, it would have won.

Now look at the PC you have under your very eyes. It is sure fast. You can do a lot of things with it.
But the basic architecture is still as shitty - if not shittier - than what it was back in 1981. I programmed on both the Amiga and the PC, and I know where the fun is.

The Amiga has nostalgists - a lot are here on EAB.
If the Amiga had taken the place the PC now has, there would not have been any nostalgia.

Commodore should really have allowed clones !

[killergorilla]

Originally Posted by meynaf

If the Amiga were free back at the time, it would have won.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Photon

Software piracy didn't kill the Amiga. I'd say tons more Amigas were sold because of copy parties and quick-ish swapping. But without copy parties, cracktros, and competition to release cool stuff first, no scene. It's what made the scene blossom from 3K cracktros with color cycle+scroller to groups making multi-disk megademos.

So for the scene it was good, but you can bet your ass small developers (the 1-4 people kind) got tired in the end selling 500-2000 copies of a game that took half a year to make. £30000 hardly covers 2 people's salary + rent a place to work in, not even mentioning packaging the games and marketing them.

So I think when it went from kiddies buying some £8 tape cos they didn't have a dual deck recorder to kiddies having an X-copy night with a stash of 150 disks, devs ran out of money and they couldn't see enough money coming in, so they gave up and started another career.

Today, most kiddies don't have a "game capable" PC, and if they have a father who does, it's still a matter of setting up torrent tracker, possibly getting an invite, use a DVD burn/mount utility... if they don't know how, it's back to "knowing someone that will burn me a DVD" or maybe go to a LAN for 8yo etc etc.

Also, most games for kiddies are for consoles, PCs have "serious" games now. Roco Loco, platformers, sports games... for PC? nah. Back then a regular family could have a 10yo who knew perfectly well how to copy a game in 3 minutes flat. Same family, copy a console game? Fageddabawdit! No surprise devs prefer consoles, and make more money.

Some generalisms here, but I hope you catch my drift

ps. My drift is that piracy killed Amiga software development - which eventually led to no new releases. Which led to BBStros over cracktros and stagnation of the scene in the end. (I'm sure the HOL guys can make a chart of #releases/year and see when it happened. Interesting stuff!)

Now if you only can prove this.

It appears that game industry didn't make money because of pirates, while on the other hand we have more and more companies making more and more games?! Contradiction??

Piracy might have done some damage to the developers, but the way I see things it is just an excuse. If the game was good and worth money, I would buy it, even if I own a copy. (even today) Eventually I had games copied that I never purchased, but I wouldn't purchase them even if I didn't have a copy.

I hope this makes some sense.

Amiga started loosing ground as progress of updating hardware and getting new stuff out got slower over it's main rival - PC. World moved to 3D in the middle of 90's and amiga wasn't ready for it.

And amiga was killed by atari's superb OS. (aka TOS)

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

You don't believe me, do you ?

[musashi5150]

Originally Posted by Anubis

And amiga was killed by atari's superb OS. (aka TOS)

haha.. I do my ST coding in Devpac on the Amiga because TOS is so awful

[killergorilla]

Originally Posted by meynaf

You don't believe me, do you ?

If the Amiga was free then it would have bankrupt the company in weeks.

So no I don't believe you.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

If the Amiga was free then it would have bankrupt the company in weeks.

So no I don't believe you.

The company itself, maybe, because it made so many mistakes. But not the others cloning the computer. Look at what happened with the PC.

[P-J]

Piracy of Windows was (and I suppose still is) extremely rampant and the PC didn't suffer, so I don't think the Amiga would have either.

[viddi]

I think it´s a mixture of both sides.

Piracy helped to kill it faster in the last years of the Amiga because the Amiga was stuck in its limited commercial system while the computer market changed.

Apple did it right, Commodore and Escom went the wrong way.
Today, the Amiga could be the third system apart from PCs and Apple.

Apple can be thankful that Amiga failed.
I´m no economist, but I´m sure there is / was the place for a third (bigger) computer system on the market.

[viddi]

And don´t forget:

Commodore wasn´t able to establish the Amiga as a professional computer.
(Bad marketing and so on).
The "gaming machine" A500 was a success.

It all started with the A1000.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by P-J

Piracy of Windows was (and I suppose still is) extremely rampant and the PC didn't suffer, so I don't think the Amiga would have either.

Well, Microsoft took the precaution of writing insane and (now) judged anticompetitive illegal contracts with computer manufacturers: "anything you make must come with Windows and nothing else". Go into a computer store and ask to buy your Dell or Compaq ..."without Windows, please". This meant an instant installed user base of millions.

Still today, a huge chunk, probably the majority of new PC buyers buy a PC that comes with a Windows license installed. Just think of all the licenses companies buy! Still millions and millions of licenses. So Microsoft isn't hurt by piracy in a major way, since not 99% of users copy it.

Small developers? Well, how attractive is it for a small developer to make a PC game today? The ISO will be on the net in a few days after its release. This is why PC games have shifted toward multiplayer - making it require an online service puts the game company in control of a kind of "copy protection" - i.e. you can't play it online with a cracked copy, the engine is tied in with servers that check that it's a valid copy. "A small dev making a great little game - and charging MONEY for it?? who do they think they are??" hehe

PC _still_ isn't as bad as Amiga, since it has a several orders of magnitudes larger user base, so quite a few copies will still be sold. On Amiga it was extreme - "every" Amiga owner had 20 originals that came with their Amiga, a handful of purchased games, and 200 copied disks in the diskbox ... Do you have 225 "commercial, copied or original" games for your PC? Maybe 2-3 cracked games? So the numbers were extreme - on PC you only hurt 2-3 large devs that have 100-1000x potential buyers.

You see what I'm getting at? Proportions. On Amiga, most devs were 1-4 ppl companies, and a much larger chunk of a smaller userbase that could play the full-featured game that everyone knew how to copy in 3 minutes.


Much less potential customers=devs get hurt and lose interest when they don't make money on a certain platform. Can't really blame them for turning to other platforms or quitting. And when no new cool stuff comes out for a platform, that platform dies.

Now, to me personally, the Amiga is very much alive, because I like beautifully designed hardware. But to people who make a living off it, well, there has to be some commercial incentive. They just couldn't make a profit anymore.

--

When it comes to the lifespan of the _hardware_, well nobody can deny C= sold tons of machines but people tend to move on after a few years. Playstation is a good example of devs extending the lifespan of a platform - if nobody did PS games anymore, it wouldn't be a fading platform, but completely dead.

[DrF]

Who cares, too late now after all.
I also belief that Commodore was behind the grassy knoll and the fall of the USSR but thats another story.

[Merlin]

I'm glad someone mentioned the Playstation, where would that platform be without all of the modchips that made piracy wholesale on the PS1? Do you think that Sony would have sold so many if modchips were not around? Not a chance.

Look at how many Doctor 64 and V64 owners there were, that could backup N64 games and stick them on a BBS, two thirds of sod all really, there was a guy who ran a Nintendo BBS not far from where I live.

I think that originally, Sony turned a blind eye to all the modchip scene, as it provided greater exposure of their PS1 to the masses. Then the piracy side of things all went ballistic and people were renting their way through Blockbuster, so they had to do something about it.

Commodore's failing was the same as Atari's, in that they created custom hardware that didn't move with the times, eventually with a PC you could upgrade a CPU and the memory far more easily and cheaply than you could an Amiga or an ST, it was purely down to economies of scale caused by the PC taking off in offices.

The PC was an office machine that eventually became a games platform as well, the reverse could not be said of the Amiga, despite some cracking DTP software like Final Writer, Wordworth etc. The Amiga was perceived as a games machine and it could never get the credibility as an office machine. The only area where the Amiga held on for far too long was in CGI and rendering where the PC could not compete for ages.

Merlin

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Photon

Do you have 225 "commercial, copied or original" games for your PC? Maybe 2-3 cracked games? So the numbers were extreme - on PC you only hurt 2-3 large devs that have 100-1000x potential buyers.

Apparently you are thinking just about new releases (and for those I'm sure most of people might have more then 2-3 as mentioned), while there are hundreds 'abandoned' games that you can download on the net for PC.

That is even without touching CD images that you can find on torrents.

It more looks like hardware limitation were the reason companies shifted from Amiga to PC. Just take a look at LucasArt, who developed for amiga until they started to use CD for storage (DOTT, Dig,...) or 3D support (X-Wing and similar series).

[blade002]

Well one day there will no REAL Amiga's left after they all stop working, so i guess what is more important is keeping our real Amiga's actually working and enjoy them while we can, because one day we again will have look back nostalgically at when we could once use an "actual" Amiga and not WinUAE.

I will concur though that Piracy really had not much to do with the Amiga's demise, but just due to Commodore and like someone said, lack of funds up against the likes of Microsoft.

The fact also that to buy an Amiga that was modular was BIG money!!.. The A4000 was way overpriced for example and way out of our budgets, but that said, the A500 & A1200 were still VERY expandable, although you couldn't exactly plug in a new chipset like you can with video cards on a PC, but even though the Amiga was this way, i probably wouldn't have had it any other way, because i used to love the way the same chipset in the Amiga was hacked away at year after year to produce amazing results.

The fact that the PC was actually so modular, actually made it "for me" very boring and uninspired. Mind you though, i did upgrade my Amiga as much as i could at the time, with external disk drives, accelerator, memory, CD rom..etc. It was catch up time!.

[Paul_s]

Carp management - read Little Brown man (if you've seen the deathbed vigil )

Some carp product decisions - e.g. scrapping A500. CDTV flop. Introduction of A600 (should've kept the A500+ imo and jumped to AGA from there on).A1200 should've appeared much sooner.

Amiga Inc. Bill McEwen and his band of merry idiots.

Lack of investment for hardware development.

Carp Marketing strategies.

Replacement of Workbench 1.3.

Mitchy the dog ousted with a dog bone as payment.

Sensiblefan sacked for poking fun of management.

Replacing Klix drinks machine for a real waitress.

PETJet catching fire when flying at Mach 1 trying to race Airwolf.

etc etc.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Apparently you are thinking just about new releases (and for those I'm sure most of people might have more then 2-3 as mentioned), while there are hundreds 'abandoned' games that you can download on the net for PC.

That is even without touching CD images that you can find on torrents.

It more looks like hardware limitation were the reason companies shifted from Amiga to PC. Just take a look at LucasArt, who developed for amiga until they started to use CD for storage (DOTT, Dig,...) or 3D support (X-Wing and similar series).

Glad to know someone knows what I'm thinking ! If you read, I'm suggesting that the majority of PC user doesn't have hundreds of copied commercial games for his PC, while the vast majority of Amiga users did, so more devs were hurt. Non-commercial games are irrelevant, since they don't take away incentive for any dev by being copied.

Originally Posted by Merlin

I'm glad someone mentioned the Playstation, where would that platform be without all of the modchips that made piracy wholesale on the PS1? Do you think that Sony would have sold so many if modchips were not around? Not a chance.

Sure, piracy sells hardware, just as with the Amiga. But if 99% of the users know how to copy (modchip, download torrents, transfer...) developers can't make money and _software_ will halt to a trickle. For consoles, millions and millions of families with young kids have only the console, so there's still a huge software market.

It seems it's all about the definition of death of a platform. For me, it's the end of the "golden age" of cool stuff happening and the dev (game/util/demo) scene is so busy that nobody can quite keep up.

Now, as soon as a platform hardware is out of production (or a much nicer platform comes along), it's doomed to fade out. But devs ofc still look at sales, and if people buy games, they'll stretch out its life by a few years, as for the PS. If not, they'll happily jump over or expand to new exciting hardware.

But I perceived the death of Amiga a sudden one, _despite_ new hardware coming out. If you look in HOL, from 91 to 94 there just a slight decline - but in 1995, commercial releases are halved, and only a few of the old die-hard devs stay on, like Team17 and Core.

Now, 1995 is what, 18 months after A1200 came? Usually platforms have much longer lifespans, and I don't perceive the A1200 as so crap for games that nobody wanted to play games on it.

Why would they stop making Amiga software if there was a big market, and new Amiga models were coming out?I think devs simply looked at Amiga sales, looked at Win95 PCs with CDs, and made their choice. Even before that, many had switched to consoles. Maybe because piracy wasn't so extreme on those platforms? They haven't abandoned PS, and I advance the reason is piracy isn't as extreme on PS. Still a big market.


That's the death of the golden age, which is different from when the manufacturer decides it's time to give the platform up. Like I said, ofc any hardware has a natural lifespan, and other platforms pop up that are much more impressive. I think it finally sunk in that impressive 3D was something an Amiga would never have, and PCs and consoles were it.

C= made a bunch of mistakes, but I think people decide for themselves if it's for them - by seeing something cool being done on it. CD32 was C='s shot at the console market, but AFAIK the few cool games drowned in a sea of rereleases with marginally better sound or graphics.


To sum it up, I'm just saying when "all" who own a platform has loads of copied games, that platform will die as far as new cool software for it is concerned. Every time. For consoles, that's simply not true. In an ideal world with no piracy (and decent game prices ), a console could last until new hardware is giganormously better - not just a little better. PS is still "good enough", so stuff that doesn't look extremely dated can still be sold for it.


I base this on talks with game dev friends I had around when the SNES became a household item. No sales on Amiga, expensive (and very selective) license for consoles. Small devs couldn't get a license, and I couldn't see me making games as a future either, so I let life happen to me.

[Dizzy]

I think the answer is:

Cocal Cola....

I once spilled Coca cola in my Amiga and it died..



I think a few thing kill the amiga, first of all many amiga owner didn't upgrade their old A500 and complaining when games didn't work for their machine.
Commodore didn't make HD standard in the amiga 1200, so the software company had to produce multi disk games taking ages to load.
They made some crap machines like 500+ & 600 who should never been made. This way people start thinking bad about Commodore, and didn't support them when the 1200 arrived. (Sega made the same mistake with megaCD & Saturn so no one bought the cool DC).
And then people didn't buy games just copy them

[Sensi]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

Sensiblefan sacked for poking fun of management.

You f****r, I'm gonna kill you!!! Your signature is fake!!! You are fake!!! You fag!!! I hate you!!! You want war? You got it!!!