Did piracy kill the amiga?

[musashi5150]

Good point, I'm sure the "dudes in suits with the purse-strings" would certainly agree

[Unch]

C= killed it through apathy.

[synchro]

Commodore killed the Amiga !!
To much greed and not enough listening to its customers.
A simple thing like we wanted a CD ROM and David Pleasance said it was not the future of gaming.......Prices far to high for products and componants they released the Amiga 4000 at about £2000 which was very unrealistic.

However the Amigas Demise was the PC's future !!
Whilst we were playing amazing games on the Amiga most Pc's were still 8 colours until Doom came along to set the standard. Athough the Amiga was well up to playing those standard games commodore stood still to reap in the profits rather than look to the future of upgrading its users at reasonable prices so when commodore died there was nothing else but the PC with a clear run to dominate the computer gaming industry. ( im not refereing to console gaming )

Basicly we got stuffed by commodore.

Just my thoughts

[Charlie]

Piracy did not kill the Amiga, though it may have helped finish it off once C= was on the way out.

This argument is generally trotted out for one of two reasons:
-Incompetent vested interests looking for a scapegoat.
or
-The feeble-minded confusing a moral issue with a practicable problem.

The PC is a viable platform despite the vast majority of software running on it being of dubious origin.

Incompetence (and some bad luck) killed the Amiga. There was so much 'bad stuff' going on it's hard to lay any blame.

FWIW: I think it was finally over for C= (and Amiga) in 1987 when Thomas Rattigan was ousted. C= was already heading for bankruptcy, but in the space of a few months he turned a profit. Then instituted a proper joined-up R&D + business plan that saw C= through to 1994 despite the best efforts of Irvin Gould & the LBM to bugger things up. (among others)

[synchro]

I think once C was gone it really did not matter about Piracy as consumer confidence was gone. I have great admiration for Escom giving it its best but the damage i think was done by then. Im not saying Escom wasnt big or anything but they werent really a household name like Commodore and they really gave it a good shot and almost pulled it off.

If Rolls Royce went bust could you really trust or have the same faith in Fiat if they started producing them instead...Some would say Fiat's a nice car a big company and a houshold name unlike Escom at the time so im being generous in comparision.......But it still isnt Rolls Royce

As for the other reasons you mention you may well be right... However its all irrelivent now as we can run our Amigas through our PC's and play games better and faster than ever before

[MickJT]

I would have thought the game "Doom" was the start of it all.

[exoticaga]

Piracy of games didn't kill the amiga.

High cost of the hardware did kill it. Compared to the low cost of pc hardware at the same time. Want to upgrade an amiga one add-on hardware board, you could buy a pc for the same price. The amiga users i knew back then all wanted cheap pc hardware also for their amiga, but was not possible.

Ok some of us converted our amiga/s to sit in a tower. All just so we could buy and use cheaper hard disks and have all-in-one box sollution, pc wannabees maybe. But it gave us room for improvement, but still none of us could afford amiga specific high cost hardware. We all were in the hope of using low cost pc hardware with a cheap amiga add-on board to attach pc hardware to. Like the EID0 controller did for for connecting hds and cd drives. Yes each of us ended up with a few cheap pc 3.5 hds and 030 or 040 accelerators with memory upgrades etc.

Of note none of us kept this amiga thing going, we wanted still cheaper hardware for our amiga. The only thing to do was sell up and move over to a pc with another non amiga os, most installed ms os. We all sold at a drastic loss our amigas except one. He couldn't find a buyer and threw the lot in the bin.

This is what many amiga users did, and yes they are still using a pc loaded with an ms os.

For me i could no longer parcipitate in longing for hardware that i could never afford. I needed a usable pc with many ad-ons. I didn't like the ms os's at the time. Left computing for a short while, got back into it with advent of ms xp os, never looked back.

Now there is winuae i have the best of both worlds. A fast pc and an amiga to use on it. And the hardware i buy is cheap and affordable. Which is the reason i'm still using and enjoying computing today.

The cost of Amiga add-on hardware killed the amiga, not software piracy.

[MazinKaesar]

Originally Posted by MickJT

I would have thought the game "Doom" was the start of it all.

It was the final strike.

Originally Posted by exoticaga

Piracy of games didn't kill the amiga.

High cost of the hardware did kill it. Compared to the low cost of pc hardware at the same time. Want to upgrade an amiga one add-on hardware board, you could buy a pc for the same price. The amiga users i knew back then all wanted cheap pc hardware also for their amiga, but was not possible.

Sad but true. Even at present day it is impossible to build a decent "old" Amiga System (A1200 with 68040 in a Tower with 32/64mb, to use WB 3.1 and WHDLOAD Games) without spend a lot. Even new Amiga platforms are too exensive, and many people (not me, I know the "new" Amiga aren't "classic") don't like them because you have to use UAE anyway to play old games.

[DrF]

Originally Posted by exoticaga

The cost of Amiga add-on hardware killed the amiga, not software piracy.

I agree with that, who remembers the prices for hard drives in the Amiga mags, and the same drives in PC Mags?

I wanted a accelerator, more ram, a cd drive.... the answer I got a better deal on a 486!

[Pyromania]

@DrF

You also got Windows with that 486 so I'm not so sure you got a better deal after all.



I understand where your coming from though. They were charging too much for Amiga add-ons.

[Magno Boots]

I'll tell you what killed the Amiga..

Loss of interest.

We all grew up and found more adult hobbies, ie women, drink and drugs.

Not so bad after all (says the voices in my head)

[DrF]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

@DrF

You also got Windows with that 486 so I'm not so sure you got a better deal after all.



I understand where your coming from though. They were charging too much for Amiga add-ons.

I only had DOS 5, I swiped it from the school IT dep. because they had literally tons of software still sealed up (licensing and all that), Windows 3 I was given, alas my true love the Amiga was still around and soon I thought maybe Amiga parts have fallen in price now, maybe... but alas I took that £200 I had made from the sale of the 486 (and saved) and baught a Cyrix 686 PR200 + mobo + S3 vid card + 32Mb ram and I think that lot was equal to a decent A1200 in price!

[adgloride]

I think being able to pirate games on the amiga kept it alive a little longer. Just look at the quality of games at the time that were available on the megadrive/genesis or the SNES.

[Monsterland]

Originally Posted by Exit

this bbs (the real boondocks run by sal-one/TRSI) was the fastest in holland. i used to courier there....illegal warez ofcozz. damn these were the days....

I'm probably entering a world of shit for saying this over here but you know that piracy was the main reason for the Amiga's demise don't you?

I'm guilty as well but now I'm older it's not something I'm really proud of really.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Monsterland

you know that piracy was the main reason for the Amiga's demise don't you?

No it wasn't. Commodore was (and this is a subject that has cropped up many times in the past).

[Monsterland]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

No it wasn't. Commodore was (and this is a subject that has cropped up many times in the past).

As far I know, a lot of the bigger software developers stopped developing games for the Amiga because of the notoriously known warez scene all over Europe, I can't imagine this wasn't an important factor.

Anyway, I don't want to resurrect old and gone discussions from the past, I'll use the search function

[Thalion]

Originally Posted by Monsterland

As far I know, a lot of the bigger software developers stopped developing games for the Amiga because of the notoriously known warez scene all over Europe, I can't imagine this wasn't an important factor.

You schould know that's bullshit. If warez would have really been the reason we wouldn't have any softe for the "PC" either. YOu don't really belive that there wasnt a warez scene too? And so i wonder why that platform survived? So warez is total bullshit as a reason for gong down the drain.

Thalion

[Graham Humphrey]

Nail. Head. Hit.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Monsterland

I'm probably entering a world of shit for saying this over here but you know that piracy was the main reason for the Amiga's demise don't you?

I'm guilty as well but now I'm older it's not something I'm really proud of really.

in a word 'bollocks', and if you don't know that word, look it up.

1). Commodore going down the shitter didn't help
2). Commodore not updating the Amiga to compete with new machines didn't help
3). Migration to C programming on newer consoles meant that software companies were less inclined to do a separate asm version for Amiga, because for Amiga to get the best out of the machine means avoiding the OS, something you cannot do with C.

Piracy frankly had little to do with things, piracy was present on SNES, Megadrive, PC and every new console since.

[Monsterland]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

in a word 'bollocks', and if you don't know that word, look it up.

1). Commodore going down the shitter didn't help
2). Commodore not updating the Amiga to compete with new machines didn't help
3). Migration to C programming on newer consoles meant that software companies were less inclined to do a separate asm version for Amiga, because for Amiga to get the best out of the machine means avoiding the OS, something you cannot do with C.

Piracy on the Amiga was for several reasons more present then for example on the pc. First of all that pc users on average where more capital powerful and a lot of people had one in their home not only for playing games..Second there wasn't really a scene present which seeded a culture of demoshaping, musiccomposing, programcracking atmosphere. Let's not start the snes or megadrive, you can´t compare console piracy with homecomputer piracy as most console gamers do not buy consoles while having piracy in mind. Loads of people chose homecomputer because the games are so cheap..(yeah, right pirated games) while console games are so expensive. Back in the days it was part of the homecomputer scene, because the games are so cheap and cartridges are so expensive. Man, I know lots of parents who decided to buy an ST or Amiga for their kids because you can just copy the games instead of buying them in the shops like if it´s the most normal thing in the world.

For your second point.
The amiga 1200 never really took off because during that period developers didn´t consider it´s market as profitable and that IS because of the piracy problem. People doubted about getting a 1200 because the lack of software on the horizon. It was a vicious circle. Software do sell computers/consoles and not the other way around, developers lost interest in the amiga scene because their lack of profit.

I cannot really judge on your third point but anything will be done as long it is profitable.

Finally, I do see you what you are getting and I do understand that commodore and some other factors besides piracy are to blame but just lightly saying piracy was never any problem is just being naive or hypocritical.

Every person I know who owned an amiga only played cracked games, I've never seen someone taking the effort to buy one in the shops, amiga games disapeared rather quickly in the shops therefore. You can't say this has nothing to do with amiga's demise, stop putting your head in the sand because it might also have to do with your own actions. I see everyone over here showing a lot of love towards the amiga, which is great but it really looks awful to see (ex)crackers and distributors going all in denial. I've read (like most of you) a lot of gaming magazines back in the days, I've seen plenty of interviews with game developers and designers complaining about the piracy problem and their growing doubts of developing on the amiga, their slow but certain move towards the console market and I'm sure your points are also valid to a certain extend but let's be realistic about it all as well..

We all killed the amiga, thinking you didn't do it any harm by cracking, copying, distributing thousands of programs is a tragic denial