TCD magazine finds

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Mine is actually from this one. Sorry, forgot to insert the link in the last post.

Ah, thanks. It looks like a different scan of the same ad, so it would be very surprising if somebody faked it, printed in out and scanned it in more than one way

Can't be that hard to find the original. UK ST magazines between April 1992 and November 1993... have I mentioned that I'm awfully busy?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by alexh

It depends what peripherals it has. I suspect there are lots more CDTVs than there are peripherals (black mouse, keyboard, floppy drive etc)

I bought my CDTV main unit from Amibay for £180 in March 2020 (ok so that was 3 years ago but prices cannot have gone up that much?). But all the little bits I didn't get (Keyboard, black Mouse, Floppy drive etc.) all add up. I paid £10 for the controller, £70 for the keyboard (yes that's crazy I know), £30 for the mouse, £90 for the FDD etc.

3 years ago, Amibay. Your prices are incredibly cheap compared to what that stuff is selling for on eBay. And it's been like this for a while - official CDTV accessories have always commanded high prices. I'd say you were very lucky to get your stuff so cheap.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

The article says it was in the beginning of 1993 but I looked at some Atari User issues from this period and couldn't find it.

It's in the July 1992 issue (3 months before the A1200 was launched).

Text says:-

Yes, this is reality. And yes, the World's best-selling home computer has been improved...

A lot more compact than the Amiga 500, yet packing even more punch... incorporates the latest "smart card" technology... will also run existing Amiga software titles - by far the the largest available for any 16-bit machine.

Of course, coming from the legendary Amiga family, the outstanding graphics, mind-blowing stereo sound and 1MB RAM (expandable to 8MB) will come as no surprise to anyone.

But if you really want to get serious, the unique Amiga 600HD with its impressive built in 20MB hard disk is for you.

And if that wasn't enough, we'll even come to your home to repair your machine in the unlikely event of a malfunction.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It's in the July 1992 issue (3 months before the A1200 was launched).

There we go

I wonder if the person (or group thereof) responsible for those ads really thought that people would buy a 400 pound machine in 1992 and then another newer machine a year later.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

It's in the July 1992 issue (3 months before the A1200 was launched).

Nice find. This seems to nullify the narrative from the site I linked to though. Falcon's was supposed to be released in late 1992, so mocking it beforehand didn't make much sense?


It also adds context with the first "YOU KNOW THE COMPUTER YOU'VE ALWAYS DREAMED ABOUT?" intro page. Though, yeah, advertising A600 as anybody's dream computer in 1992 is dubious at least (even if you're stuck with ST). I heard C= had surplus of these machines so I suppose they tried to push them out of the door by any means necessary, and what happens later be damned.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I heard C= had surplus of these machines so I suppose they tried to push them out of the door by any means necessary, and what happens later be damned.

It's quite obvious that Commodore by that point was lacking a 'product strategy' for the Amiga. Not sure they ever had one to begin with.

[TCD]

Sony buys Psygnosis news in ASM 9/1993 (released 9.8.1993):

Calling it a 'surprise'. So sometime in July 1993 Sony bought Psygnosis.

[dreadnought]

Most likely true, but also it really was a Wild West time. I'd struggle to name any major player from this era with a "smooth sailing" masterplan. The market was all too fresh and too many innovations happening everywhere. Unlike now, where you have a few established players and boring roadmaps.

[TCD]

CD32 report in ASM 9/1993:

"The CD32: Console of the future or flop?" Mentioning that the presentation had the CD32 crash with a guru, the German PR lady admitting that when the machine was offered to shops five months before no title would work and pointing out that the main problem with the predecessor CDTV was a lack of software.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Nice find. This seems to nullify the narrative from the site I linked to though. Falcon's was supposed to be released in late 1992, so mocking it beforehand didn't make much sense?

Correct. So the question is what were they referring to?

It also adds context with the first "YOU KNOW THE COMPUTER YOU'VE ALWAYS DREAMED ABOUT?" intro page. Though, yeah, advertising A600 as anybody's dream computer in 1992 is dubious at least (even if you're stuck with ST).

The implication is plain. As an ST owner you've always dreamed of having an Amiga - but for some reason didn't get one. Why not? Perhaps it was too expensive, or the ST was doing well enough that you couldn't justify it, or maybe you just didn't have the bench space for another computer - until now.

The A600 might not have been most Amiga fans' dream machine (except for a few people like me who didn't own a 68000 based Amiga), but compared to the ST or even the STe it was indeed a dream - not just because it had better hardware but for all the superior Amiga software that ST owners couldn't run on their machines.

I heard C= had surplus of these machines so I suppose they tried to push them out of the door by any means necessary, and what happens later be damned.

That's the standard role of marketing. But the A600 flew out the door once they got the price right - even after the A1200 was announced.

Anyway it was well known that the A600 was the end of the 68000 Amiga line, and who knows how long they would continue making it. So if you still wanted that Amiga you always dreamed of then now was the time to get it.

Perhaps the ad was trolling, or just trying to get as many sales as possible, but it also told the truth. Every ST owner had always secretly wanted an Amiga even as they publicly denied it, and Commodore was giving them one last chance to give in to their desires.

[Megalomaniac]

I'm not sure how successful advertising the A600 to ST owners was. ST owners who'd bought it for games (especially arcade game), perhaps before the A500 launched or when it was £300 versus £500 or when it came with all those games, will have certainly been jealous of the Amiga by 1992 - it got a lot more games (only the UK and France were really making ST games by then, Thalion aside), most of them first, most of them noticeably better.

Did more serious users want an Amiga though? The perception on the ST side, rightly or wrongly, was that the Amiga was just a games machine. For music production the ST was still ahead, for serious productivity a monochrome monitored ST was still ahead. If you'd been using an ST for those tasks for a time, had spent money on hardware and software, were used to how it all worked, replacing it with an Amiga (especially a 'toy Amiga' with no keypad and no acceleration support) and having to relearn everything probably wasn't worthwhile. It's only really art production and the Amiga's video production niche where an Amiga was ahead of the ST (and, though not by as far, the STe). Getting a SNES or Megadrive to augment the ST for arcade games probably made more sense.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

...will have certainly been jealous of the Amiga by 1992...

It wouldn't have lasted for long though That A600 ad was a waste of money. 'Aiming' at ST users to expand your user base as Commodore doesn't make much sense. Then again by 1992 little that Commodore did made sense. A few months later you could have tried to get ST users to switch to the A1200 which would have made some sense at least.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

It's quite obvious that Commodore by that point was lacking a 'product strategy' for the Amiga. Not sure they ever had one to begin with.

On the contrary, the A600 was a core part of their product strategy. You could argue that it was a bad strategy, but not that it didn't exist.

The A600 continued the same strategy they had followed under Tramiel and early Amiga years - cost-reduce the existing model while developing a new more powerful one to replace it. They did it with the TED series (supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the C64), the C64C, and the A500.

The A600 also served as the vehicle for transitioning to a full surface mount motherboard, which had the potential to be much cheaper. It crammed everything the A500 had in it and more, onto a motherboard that was half the size. That also allowed the use of a compact wedge-shaped case, and all this became the blueprint for the A1200 (which was effectively a 'stretched' A600 with A500 keyboard, AGA chipset and 68020 CPU).

At the high end they had the A4000, a redesign of the A3000 but with IDE and AGA which made it cheaper (no SCSI controller, no flicker fixer). These 3 Amiga models all sported a classy white case with clean lines that made the entire lineup part of a family, with the size of each model reflecting its capabilities - in contrast to the mishmash of different designs they had in the previous lineup.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

On the contrary, the A600 was a core part of their product strategy. You could argue that it was a bad strategy, but not that it didn't exist.

Okay, I'll bite. So the A600 was and the A500+ wasn't? Or they both were part of their 'product strategy'?

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Every ST owner had always secretly wanted an Amiga even as they publicly denied it, and Commodore was giving them one last chance to give in to their desires.

That's probably as true as saying that every Amiga owner secretly wanted a PC

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

You could argue that it was a bad strategy, but not that it didn't exist.

This seems like a rather moot point.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

On the contrary, the A600 was a core part of their product strategy. You could argue that it was a bad strategy, but not that it didn't exist.

The A600 continued the same strategy they had followed under Tramiel and early Amiga years - cost-reduce the existing model while developing a new more powerful one to replace it. They did it with the TED series (supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the C64), the C64C, and the A500.

The A600 also served as the vehicle for transitioning to a full surface mount motherboard, which had the potential to be much cheaper. It crammed everything the A500 had in it and more, onto a motherboard that was half the size. That also allowed the use of a compact wedge-shaped case, and all this became the blueprint for the A1200 (which was effectively a 'stretched' A600 with A500 keyboard, AGA chipset and 68020 CPU).

At the high end they had the A4000, a redesign of the A3000 but with IDE and AGA which made it cheaper (no SCSI controller, no flicker fixer). These 3 Amiga models all sported a classy white case with clean lines that made the entire lineup part of a family, with the size of each model reflecting its capabilities - in contrast to the mishmash of different designs they had in the previous lineup.

The only cost saving I could see with the A600 was in terms of logistics snd warehousing. The smaller size meant being able to ship more for the same price and warehouse storage was cheaper, similar for retailers, more computers stored vs A500 meant higher margins.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

Okay, I'll bite. So the A600 was and the A500+ wasn't? Or they both were part of their 'product strategy'?

Yes.

The original A500 had a 512k Agnus and 16 256kx1 DRAMs onboard. Then the rev 6 A500 was introduced with a 1MB Agnus and 4 256x4 DRAM chips. Finally the A500+ came out with a 2MB Agnus and the whole 1MB onboard with real-time clock - equivalent to an A500 with A501 RAM expansion. The A500+ also had the latest Kickstart 2 ROM, which set the stage for the A600.

Each step involved not only enhancements but also cost reductions. In 1987 the A500 debuted at £499, dropping to £399 in 1988. The A500+ sold for the same price but with double the RAM and onboard RTC. The A600 was introduced at the same price as the A500+, but with an internal modulator, IDE port and PCMCIA slot.

However there was some resistance to the A600 at £399, so they dropped the price. By 1993 it was selling at £255 for the base model and £325 with a 20MB hard drive - much cheaper than an A500+ with A590, but not (officially) as expandable - as befitted a cost-reduced 'end of line' model.

The only big 'oversight' in the A600's design was the lack of an official path for upgrading the CPU. However considering the target market this is understandable. The A600 already well exceeded the specs of the 'standard' 1MB A500 that games targeted, and with a 2MB PCMCIA RAM board even matched an A500+ with A590. Not bad for a machine that was both cheaper and more portable.

In 1992 there was only one 'official' CPU expansion for the A500, the very expensive GVP A530. All the other A500 turbo cards were hacks that plugged into the 68000 CPU socket. Commodore could have put a CPU socket in the A600 too, but that would have raised the price and perhaps compromised reliability - which was one of the reasons for going surface mount (Agnus's PLCC socket was a major cause of reliability problems in the A500).

But of course Amiga fans were hanging out for more. They already had an Amiga 500 and wanted something better. The A1200 was that machine - everything the A600 was but with a full-size keyboard, 14MHz 68020 CPU, 32 bit expansion bus and next generation graphics. And this is where Commodore misstepped. They didn't appreciate how fast the PC market was changing and how important it was to keep existing users by giving them a worthwhile upgrade path. Instead of just continuing down the road of 'cost reduction with small enhancements' while taking their time introducing the 'next generation', they should have prioritized getting the A1200 out ASAP.

For many Amiga fans the A600 was the last straw that proved Commodore would never give them what they wanted, and as usual Commodore did nothing to disabuse them of that notion because they didn't want to be hit by the Osborne effect. But in this case it didn't matter, since Amiga fans looking to upgrade wouldn't buy the A600 anyway. They could have pre-announced the A1200 while it was still in development and not hurt A600 sales at all. Even better would be if they had started development of AGA a little earlier and announced both the A600 and A1200 in April 1992.

Bill Sydnes got dissed for stopping development of the A3000+ and designing cost-reduced models instead. But this was the strategy Commodore had generally adopted in the past which up until now had been successful. The A3000 was an anomaly, an engineer's wet dream that didn't translate into sales because it was overpriced and yet didn't offer much more than an A500 or A2000 for most users. Putting the AGA chipset in it was another mistake. What they really needed was an AGA machine like the A1200, a quantum leap over the A500 without compromising compatibility too much and still cheap enough to be attractive. This should have come out while most 'consumer level' PCs were still 286's and 386SX's with similar or worse specs (ie. early 1992 or before).

The high end could have been serviced by upgrading the A2000's expansion bus to 32 bit and going RTG, while applying cost-cutting measures to it too. This should have come out in 1990 instead of the A3000. IOW, they screwed up by not following their standard strategy of 'cost reduction with small enhancements' when they should have. The A3000 was the opposite - cost inflation without a quantum leap to justify it. People talk about how the A600 was a mistake because it cost more than they expected, but the A3000 was way worse - and I say that as someone who bought one at full price.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

the German PR lady admitting that when the machine was offered to shops five months before no title would work and pointing out that the main problem with the predecessor CDTV was a lack of software.

I don't remember anything about that, and I was a CD32 developer so I got advance notice of issues. So what caused 'no title would work' and what did they do to fix it? Were the machines 'offered to shops 5 months before' production units?

I don't think lack of software was the main problem with the CDTV either. The big problems were trying to sell it in hi-fi stores instead of computer shops, and being too expensive for what it offered consumers. Like the Philips CDi it was targeting a market that didn't exist, without features that would create one.

[TCD]

Sorry, the article mentions the '5 biggest mail order companies' and 'some months ago'.
This is the relevant paragraph:

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Yes.

I mentioned it before, but you would really have been a stellar fit for the Commodore management back then