TCD magazine finds

[TCD]

New virus strains appear in 1988:

[TCD]

"The Nintendo Threat?" found in Computer Gaming World 6/1988:

[TCD]

"Interactive Entertainment", "CD-I", "DVI" and all of that in 1988:

[dreadnought]

Hah, we've been past 1993 and it seems the "scoffers" were right

[TCD]

It at least explains why Commodore and Philips thought that the 'mass market' will adopt those systems and potentially let them be the major forces in that '2 billion dollar' market by 1995. It's still fascinating to see those early speculations and how it eventually played out.

[dreadnought]

I don't blame them for trying, especially seeing as C= wanted to be a multimedia leader, after Amiga. But there sure was a lot of evangelizing (didn't one of them say that books can now retire coz CD is here) and bad decisions/prognostics overall.

Somebody should have brought them back to earth with a cool headed assesment of how entertaining the "interactive entertainment" really was (not much) vs how much it costed (a lot).

So the CD market was definitely there, only for music and storage instead of silly games, and only when the medium got reasonably cheaper.

[Megalomaniac]

The benefits of CDs were clear - bigger than carts or floppies, faster and more piracy-proof than floppies, cheaper than carts - but the initial cost of the drives was a limiting factor.

CD systems only really took off when they had equal power to floppy or cartridge systems - the advantages of the CD format had to be a bonus, not the whole raison d'etre. Didn't the CDi have less processing power than some of Philips' washing machines? In a mouse-and-windows environment, they had something, but Microsoft Encarta aside, CD-based 'edutainment' never really took off compared to 'interactive movie' games (my own hatred of them notwithstanding, they did sell, and were killer apps for a time)

[oscar_ates]

Well we have come a long way. Storage history: punch cards-cassette-5.25 floppy-3.5 floppy-CD/ROM-DVD-Blue-ray-Flash memory sticks-Internet with 500Mb/s so no CD/DVD/flash disk needed anymore. Harddisks also evolved to solid-state disks. Commodore and philips interactive CD machines were too early on market with very weak CPU/processing powers. CD writer device in 1991 cost 120k dollars. Who would watch movies one third of the TV screen with 12fps frame-rate? In 2000's CD/DVD took off. We had CDROM drives with enough computer CPU/GPU power to do MPEG conversion. Then came the cheap CD W/R drives.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

So the CD market was definitely there, only for music and storage instead of silly games, and only when the medium got reasonably cheaper.

By 1991 when the CDTV was released music CDs at least here in Germany were pretty common. CD based PC games took off about two years later. In my opinion the problem wasn't the medium or that it wouldn't work for games, but that you had to sell the benefits to the customer. A 1000$ machine that didn't really have any added benefit (see 12 FPS movie comment above) over a home computer or a 'normal' CD player just didn't get people to rush to the stores to get it.

[TCD]

Interesting letter from then Spectrum Holobyte CEO Gilman Louie about piracy (on the ST) and sales numbers (found in Computer Gaming World 58 4/1989):

[dreadnought]

He's right. It always has been the matter of scale: the install user base vs number of pirated copies. The larger ecosystems can have piracy and still make the development worthwhile. I'm pretty sure it did apply to Amiga vs PC in later years too.

[TCD]

Indeed. Also interesting to read how the Amiga performed compared to the Macintosh in game sales in 1989.

[TCD]

Couldn't find the posts in which game prices per system were discussed, but today I found this ad in Computer Gaming World 65 (11/1989):

In the fine print at the bottom you can see that the MS-Dos PC version is 10$ cheaper than the Amiga/Atari ST versions. So the price difference was most likely tied to sales forecasting.

[Megalomaniac]

I assume the Falcon figures (also discussed on the ST's Wikipedia article) are purely for the US - in those days hardly anyone in Europe (especially the UK) had PCs at home, let alone Macs, and ST games sales weren't far behind the Amiga. Harley-Davidson being cheaper on the PC may for be a similar reason, in Europe the PC version usually cost more (which made sense, as in those days it was multiple different graphics and sound cards, with their own graphics data on the disks, so usually more disks). Also, the PC version was older, maybe it had been reduced by then?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

Couldn't find the posts in which game prices per system were discussed, but today I found this ad in Computer Gaming World 65 (11/1989):

In the fine print at the bottom you can see that the MS-Dos PC version is 10$ cheaper than the Amiga/Atari ST versions. So the price difference was most likely tied to sales forecasting.

The PC version has EGA and CGA graphics. I checked out one of the screenshots at Moby Games ("at the gas station") and the Amiga version had 30 colors, the ST version 15 colors and PC EGA version 14 colors. CGA was the usual 4 colors and particularly dire.

According to Wikipedia the game was praised for its 'better than average graphics', but the gameplay was tedious and easily beaten. They probably thought the Amiga version was worth more due to its better graphics - or perhaps they just figured desperate PC gamers would lap up it up regardless, so they would sell a lot more and could price it accordingly.

Yet more proof that it didn't matter how good the hardware was, the PC was winning simply due to force of numbers.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Didn't the CDi have less processing power than some of Philips' washing machines?

CDi had a 68000 variant called the 68070, running at 15.5MHz - more than double the clock speed of the CDTV, though it was not as efficient as the 68000. The video controller chip also had a blitter that could do 'cookie cut' operations like the Amiga, but no line drawing or flood fill.

BTW in 1991 no consumer washing machine had computer control. According to ThoughtCo the first computerized model was Fisher & Paykel's SmartDrive, introduced in 1998.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...or perhaps they just figured desperate PC gamers would lap up it up regardless, so they would sell a lot more and could price it accordingly.

Desperate?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

Desperate?

You had to be pretty desperate for games on the PC to play the CGA version of Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis.

[dreadnought]

"Desperate", as in "Mr Abbot is desperate to keep up his anti-PC narrative"

Nobody gave a toss about CGA in 1989, especially in some lame motorbike game. Those 5 kids who had to suffer it were indeed unfortunate, because everybody else would be playing either EGA version or real action games on their consoles, while real PC gamers of the time were more interested in IF/strategy/RPG/adventure/etc.

Also, if the theory of Amiga games being worth more due to better fx was correct then I guess we should be paying ~5 bucks for the likes of Tiertex ports and other atrocious fare. Or perhaps somebody could say they figured out Amiga gamers were so desperate they'd pay any price anyway?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

You had to be pretty desperate for games on the PC to play the CGA version of Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis.

John Carmack said in the recent 30th anniversary stream for Doom that backwards compatibility hardly ever paid off. Looks like that was definitely the case here. Can't imagine many people buying the game, playing it on CGA and being happy about their purchase.