Was A1200 to blame for Falcon's failure?

[Cris1997XX]

Yeah, I think the Falcon could've been mostly saved by a true 32-bit bus and a better blitter...but then it wouldn't really be that cheap, would it?

[Inner200k]

Originally Posted by redblade

It’s funny how people complain about the Amiga not having Fast Ram or chunky display yet it didn’t save the Falcon even though you can easily upgrade the Falcon with SIMM sticks. Maybe the Falcon should have went with the EC030 instead of the full 030 unless they wanted it to be used as a UNIX machine.

I don't think even that would have helped, I think personally 3 companies (Amiga/Atari & Apple) got blindsided by the PC, if you'd had told me back in the day that the PC was going to reign supreme I would have laughed in your face

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by redblade

I don’t know why anyone didn’t add a dsp to Amiga 1200 accelerators, I’m sure the musicians would have brought them even now people aren’t adding them.
If the Falcon went with the 32-bit bus maybe consumers could have used them as a cheap Mac clone because Apple was allowing it to be cloned.

It’s funny how people complain about the Amiga not having Fast Ram or chunky display yet it didn’t save the Falcon even though you can easily upgrade the Falcon with SIMM sticks. Maybe the Falcon should have went with the EC030 instead of the full 030 unless they wanted it to be used as a UNIX machine.

Like the A1200 it needed software. They should have asked Adobe for photoshop

Apple greatest fear was that the Amiga got access to Adobe photoshop.
They did all they could so that it could not happen (ahaha with a mac emulator, photoshop could be used on Amiga 1200/4000, what a joke !)

[kriz]

Here in Norway i never saw a Atari for sale or use even.. All through the 90`s ... Amiga 500 / 600 / 1200 and big boxes was in several stores..

[redblade]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

Yeah, I think the Falcon could've been mostly saved by a true 32-bit bus and a better blitter...but then it wouldn't really be that cheap, would it?

Yeah but it could have been used as a Cheap MAC clone/NetBSD machine?

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Apple greatest fear was that the Amiga got access to Adobe photoshop.
They did all they could so that it could not happen (ahaha with a mac emulator, photoshop could be used on Amiga 1200/4000, what a joke !)

Where did you read/hear this?

Was it possible to use the DSP as a modem? If so what would be the maximum speed because modems were very expensive during that era and if the DSP could have been used as a 9.6K modem that could have been a good sales pitch.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by redblade

Maybe the Falcon should have went with the EC030 instead of the full 030 unless they wanted it to be used as a UNIX machine.

The Falcon was also intended to be used with MultiTOS AKA MiNT (Nowadays available as: https://github.com/freemint/freemint)


And that can optionally use a MMU.


In addition, i am not entirely sure how this works in the Falcon but i suspect you would need the MMU to set cache inhibit on memory pages accessed by write-backs from the DSP or other DMA-able peripherals such as the SCSI controller.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by redblade

Yeah but it could have been used as a Cheap MAC clone/NetBSD machine?

I know some early Linux developers who got TT030's at close-out prices in the early 90s and used those as development machines.


Cheap at the time secondary machine with proper SCSI etc that could be used as a second-platform for verifying endian-ness portability etc.

[Galahad/FLT]

Nope, Atari were mainly the reason why the Falcon failed.

By the time the Falcon was released, the majority of software publishers and developers had already stopped writing software for the Atari ST/e computers, and to compound the misery, those same developers would have known about the Falcon before they stopped writing for the ST, so even its imminent arrival wasn't about to contribute in any meaningful way.

The price for the base Falcon was also another problem, sure the base Falcon was more powerful than a base A1200, the base Falcon was significantly more expensive than an A1200, and getting awfully close to a PC for price.

The A1200 was also released at the height of the Amiga 500's success, and pretty much EVERY publisher were onboard with supporting the A1200 from the start, the Falcon had Cubase make some press releases and Imagitec said they were working on some demos.

The A1200 certainly had some effect on the Falcon, I was one of those considering buying a Falcon when it was announced, but was put off immediately by the price point and that there wasn't going to be any killer software for it that made it an essential purchase.

But the main reason was Atari, at that price point, software publishers likely wrote it off instantly suggesting not many would be sold, there were far more Archimedes computers in existence and they didn't write software for that either, so that gives you an idea of just how successful devs and publishers thought it was going to be.

I think it was only placecs like France where the ST was a better seller than the Amiga that got any traction as the French devs and publishers thought that the Falcon would be the natural upgrade progression for those ST owners, hence the likes of Silmarils and other French publishers supporting Falcon initially.

[redblade]

Originally Posted by kriz

Here in Norway i never saw a Atari for sale or use even.. All through the 90`s ... Amiga 500 / 600 / 1200 and big boxes was in several stores..

What about sceners or was Atari bigger in Sweden than Norway?

[Karlos]

For a machine I never had, I feel an obdurate pang of nostalgia for the Falcon. I'd definitely have one, if I had any room and the wife would permit it

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

By the time the Falcon was released, the majority of software publishers and developers had already stopped writing software for the Atari ST/e computers, and to compound the misery, those same developers would have known about the Falcon before they stopped writing for the ST, so even its imminent arrival wasn't about to contribute in any meaningful way.

Yep, it was pretty much DOA. Just going through German game magazines from 1991 and Atari really tried to push the 1040 as a 'all-in-one' machine. At the same time games support for the ST got less and less.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep, it was pretty much DOA. Just going through German game magazines from 1991 and Atari really tried to push the 1040 as a 'all-in-one' machine. At the same time games support for the ST got less and less.

I don’t use the expression DOA a lot, but for the Falcon, it fits like a glove ;-)
It never stood a chance. However it is only with the benefit of hindsight that it becomes so obvious.
I remember seeing one in some shop in Sweden (dont recall exactly when but probably spring 1993. I remember I wanted one badly just after reading the specs, but it was too pricey for me then.
In August 1993 I got the A1200 instead, and I was not satisfied with it. i think my brief encounter with the Falcon made the A1200 look bad.
It wasnt untill I added a small harddrive and a Blizzard 1220 that I fell in love with my A1200 and forgot about the Falcon. (although by then it was obvious the Falcon had flopped big time).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

It never stood a chance. However it is only with the benefit of hindsight that it becomes so obvious.

Also true The specs of the machine were impressive at the time, but like you said it was too expensive for what it was. The main problem (which quickly became obvious) was the lack of software for it though.

Atari did know which niche might still buy the machine though (Recording Musician, Nov 1992):

[Megalomaniac]

I wanted the Falcon to do well and continue the Commodore v Atari rivalry for another (half) generation, but there was just too much wrong with it. Aside from brief media coverage it sank without trace in the UK too.

Considering how much better Workbench was than TOS (even overlooking that horrid shade of green, everything was more usable and intuitive on the Amiga, even before WB2), using an OS even remotely derived from TOS was a mistake. Had Atari had the funding to spend an extra 6-12 months on rewriting the OS, giving it a proper case, erasing the bugs and glitches, and teaching programmers how to use it properly, given it more than 1Mb memory out of the box, and perhaps added fuller ST/STe compatibility, the results might have been different. Launching the Falcon at £100 (or, with those issues fixed, maybe even £200) more at a slightly later date would not have mattered if the overall package was better than the A1200, as the A500 was compared to the ST.

[sokolovic]

A part from Silmaris games (Ishar serie, Transarctica and Robinson Requiem), I don't even remember any commercial game being released for the Falcon.
They even released Ishar 3 and RR in CD format. How many of them could have been sold ?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I don't even remember any commercial game being released for the Falcon.

There weren't many. If you fancy a trip back to the beginning of the internet here's a list: http://christophe.bray.free.fr/infor...lcon_jeux1.htm

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

There weren't many. If you fancy a trip back to the beginning of the internet here's a list: http://christophe.bray.free.fr/infor...lcon_jeux1.htm

Thanks !


Didn't knew that Pinball Dreams had its Falcon version...


The rest is mainly PD games or ST version that runs better on Falcon.


At the end, about 10 games released commercialy in physical format... Even game commissioned by Atari



It is hard to pretend that the A1200 was a failure when you compare both games libraries.

[jizmo]

Falcon was built for already small base of Atari users and really did not have any chance of luring in PC or Amiga users. Few people not happy with what Commodore did with A1200 made petitions in the community to jump to Falcon camp, but I can only assume this number was really insignificant.

It was a losing battle to start with – even if Falcon had offered substantially more power for cheaper than A1200. Perhaps if Atari had architecture not available to others, coupled with deep enough pockets to pay top developers for a wide library of games and apps exclusive to the platform, market the thing widely, and then keep that up with 100% commitment they might have had a chance or luring people in.

Tl;dr Building something, dumping it to few stores and publishing an ad in Atari ST magazine was not enough.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

A part from Silmaris games (Ishar serie, Transarctica and Robinson Requiem), I don't even remember any commercial game being released for the Falcon.
They even released Ishar 3 and RR in CD format. How many of them could have been sold ?

I made an advert PDF for the Falcon a while ago, i also made a list of the games and spec needed at the back - https://archive.org/details/atari-fa...e/n61/mode/2up

Reads for grim reading, just 3 commercial games after a year on the market, and even grimmer for those who opted for the 1MB model, i suspect most models got upgraded at extra expense just to be able to use most of the software written for it.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Answer to the question is clearly: no.