What or Who Killed the Amiga

CPC464 · 15 March 2002, 21:03

Ok Guys I had (and still have) an Amiga and NOTHING computer-wise could touch them they were superb, but then all of a sudden they seemed to vanish PC's seemed to make a HUGE profit and why ??

DON'T get me wrong I know the Amiga is not dead, but commercially the selling of new A500/500+/600/1200's is a bit hard to come by.

So my question is this:

What or Who killed the Amiga.

I would be very very interestd in comments queries or actual knowledge of this. As it seemed to vanish very quickly

jmmijo · 15 March 2002, 21:12

The popular theory is that mis-management of the company was primarily at fault for CBM's demise and hence the Amiga

Not really sure that Jack Tremiel and his posse actually caused some of this when he was forced out of CBM by Irving Gould and his ilk. I think it was more or less greed that killed the Amiga in that everyone seemed to want to get what they could and was working side deals to embeazel from the company

Sad state really, I used to work for a small company out here that had ordered directly from CBM, we were able to partake in some of the post appocolyptic wares that were being sold off to help pay some of CBM's creditors. But at this time the company had already started down the dark path into PC oblivion

Djay · 15 March 2002, 21:21

Commodore should have followed IBM lead and released the hardware to 3rd party manufactors

I would probably now be typing on an Amiga if they had

Amiga1992 · 16 March 2002, 02:31

Commodore Business Machines, and whatever their name was at later stages, killed the Amiga.

Consoles, piracy and IBM PCs wouldn't have been a problem if Commodore would have learned a bit about MARKETING.

Something similar happened to Atari methinks

16 March 2002, 02:44

Amiga's death is a process that is not yet complete. I used to think that everything was over and it could not get any worse but with every passing day, with every coming news about Amiga Inc.'s sins I'm beginning to believe that we have not yet seen the worst.

Djay · 16 March 2002, 03:00

for me the Amiga has nothing to do with the current Amiga Inc.

for me the Amiga died, when no one stocked the machine or games anymore, i know that many will disagree with that statement, but i was at the time in the games retail industry and it was sad day when i recieved a fax saying we are no longer distributing Amiga hardware/software.

for me the Amiga lives on only through emulation, i do have an Amiga and i would love to spare the space to have it set up, but thats pretty pointless as i don't have much software for it.

i don't think anyone could make an Amiga that lives up to the legend............ but hey i would like to be proved wrong!!!!!!!

16 March 2002, 03:15

Yeah, me too

Amiga1992 · 16 March 2002, 03:20

i think Burseg, that the Amiga's death happened when Commodore died. What Amiga Inc. does today is pissing all over the grave, profaning (spelling mistake there surely :P) the corpse.

16 March 2002, 03:36

That's true, the hopes of the future was over with commodore but as long as the amiga brand is owned by someone, it will be used to ruin the name and the memory. It promises power to those who are engulfed with greed but it will only bring their own doom like it did bring doom to Commodore and Escom.

Amiga Inc is the brandbearer, their precious Amiga brand gives them unnatural long life. However, there is only one true owner of the brand and that is Jay Miner. The brand has it's own will and soon will leave Amiga inc like the way it left Gateway, Commodore and Escom.

Years passed after his death but Miner's spirit endured, not in psyhical form but he is alive within us, believing amigans. Amiga will become history and history will become legend but some day it will return as a reality.

But don't expect this to happen in a century or two.

CPC464 · 16 March 2002, 04:10

Yes I must say to me the Amiga did die when they stopped selling them in shops and all shops removed the Amiga games off the shelves

It's a shame as if they were to re-release the 1200 and some of the other, and start selling the game titles in the shops I would have no quarrels to go and buy a brand new one with games.

I always thought the PAIN-IN-THE-ARSE thing about the Amiga was changing disks, and thought "Oh well I have a PC now" but with all the damn updates and patches, and dodgey graphics I would have my Amiga back any-day

jmmijo · 16 March 2002, 04:12

We may think of the Classic Amiga as the true Amiga, at least I do

and perhaps the incarnation that Amiga Inc wants Amiga DE to be as Future Amiga.

The thing that made an Amiga an Amiga was probably it's simplicity, the compact yet powerful OS both via the GUI and the Shell and the apps that ran on it. Games not-withstanding, there was really a ton of apps that included everything from video to audio. Well since emu's allow anyone now to experience the Classic Amiga in all it's glory, I do believe it will continue to be used and it's greatness espoused until, well, Hell Freezes Over

Twistin'Ghost · 16 March 2002, 04:30

When I was using (and still using now) AmigaOS, I know I can trust it. It works with me, not against me. We seem to be on the same side. No hidden things going on, mucking up everything else. It just made sense, was streamlined and set out to perform the job in the best way possible. One cannot say that about many OS's.

Windows is remarkable in the way that the performance degrades with each new app you install. It just leads you one step closer to either reinstalling the OS or having to reformat the HD. The only way for the OS to continue working properly is to never install anything. Thank God the Amiga OS is not like that. Sure, it's possible for something to go wrong and you might need to reinstall AmigaOS or reformat the HD - I'm not saying it is completely free of this ever happening. But the design and structure of the OS do not contribute to this happening like it does with Windows.

I can only hope that the newer versions of AmigaOS have maintained that level of smoothness and co-operation in co-existing with other software. If 3.9 can deliver what 3.1 (and 2.04 before it) has, then I have no problem purchasing it.

7-Zark-7 · 16 March 2002, 14:56

Hmm,thats the thing about history, the longer ago it happened, the more reasons & "hindsight" emerges. But like everyone here, I do agree that the Amiga died in its classic form when CBM died.

As to what exactly "killed",it off? There's a number of things which affected it in different ways.
A) CBM mismanagement. Very obvious. Despite CBM's presence & success in the days of the C64, the Amiga never really succeeded in the U.S as a gaming platform, although ironically it did seem to achieve professional recognition which it lacked elsewhere,though as Twistin' would attest,it was never because of good CBM support or management/marketing!

B)Lack of R & D. The original Amiga was & always will be remembered for being a remarkable landmark in powerful home computing,which spoke volumes for how long it lasted & took other platforms to catch up & pass it. But again,because CBM made the disasterous plunge into the IBM PC market just when that market first began to crash in price, the management just sat on their butts & refused to develop the Amiga. Despite the best efforts of their R&D teams they never received the support they deserved from upper management.
Unfortunately,by the time efforts on designs like the ill-fated AAA chipset & even the RISC developments started,there was no money left to see the projects completed.
Although the AGA development was an improvement, it was nowhere near as good as that was promised by the David Haynie led AAA project,(Or so we were always promised in the Computer magazines stories.)

I always regarded it a great shame that one idea I'd read of their future dev. plans were to converge the Amiga/PC & have a true multimedia multi O/S PC. Who knows,if they'd ever done it,we may not be debating here today...

And C) Sega & Nintendo. Once the 16bit consoles flooded the European markets with big marketing,cheap console prices & reduced piracy,it killed off the last Amiga stronghold in Europe where it was at it's best as a gaming machine with some great developers.

Though I do have some sympathy for CBM's agnst over how to "push" the machine. Unfortunately,it was a victim of it's own success. After all,on one hand you had a powerful true multitasking multimedia machine capable which existed before there ever was a "multimedia" machine/market out there, but on the other hand you had a top gaming computer that had jaw dropping titles like Shadow of the Beast,Lemmings, Defender of the Crown,Battle Chess,etc. How do you market a machine that can be a "serious" business machine & yet be a gaming beast too?

The saddest thing to my mind is that the gaming industry has never been the same since the home computer market of your C64's Amiga's ST's etc. died. A lot of home-made development teams emerged with funny, original titles which you never see anymore in this 3D FPS market thats about today. Even sadder is that a lot of those same development teams/publishers died too.

jmmijo · 16 March 2002, 20:28

Quote:

Originally posted by 7-Zark-7
The saddest thing to my mind is that the gaming industry has never been the same since the home computer market of your C64's Amiga's ST's etc. died. A lot of home-made development teams emerged with funny, original titles which you never see anymore in this 3D FPS market thats about today. Even sadder is that a lot of those same development teams/publishers died too.

or they were gobbled up by the now big EA or one of the somewhat smaller publishers like Activision, Interplay or Sierra

zombie_dk · 16 March 2002, 23:20

Unreal Tournament has been the only PC game ive been addicted to.
I miss the good gameplay from the Amiga days, all the PC games have nice graffics ect. but that doesnt really make them more fun.

i guess thats why i use the WinUAE emulater and play some Sensible WOS

Fifa 2002 sucks.

Tim Janssen · 19 March 2002, 13:24

When the Amiga was introduced in the mid-eighties, it was a kind of revolution with its crystal clear sounds and hig-resolution graphics. The Amiga was a revolution. It was lightyears ahead of the consoles and PCs in that time. Softwarepublishers immediately produced ground-breaking titles like Marble Madness and Defender of the Crown which were much better, smoother and prettier than on other platforms. For Joe Public the Amiga became the machine one must get for these titles alone.

I agree with 7-Zark-7 that Commodore's R&D efforts weren't that great in the Nineties. In 1992 there were rumours about a brand-new Amiga family with AGA-capabilities: the A1200. I was shocked when I found out the soundchips weren't improved and the AGA display could 'just' match the VGA-palette that was common on PCs those days. The A1200 was more an evolution in the Amiga family. This time the softwarepublishers did not take up the task in producing ground-breaking titles for the AGA-machines. Their business-rule was simple: the old Amigas (A500, A2000) had a much larger userbase, so they would get much more profit on these machines. The result: they just churned out AGA-updates of existing Amiga games and if an 'AGA-specific' title was produced it could be easy converted to the old Amigas.
Around that same time Doom, a new groundbreaking experience, was released on PC. It astonished Joe Public, so they chose that machine. It was impossible to convert a game similar to Doom in a short time to Amiga. The game proved the Amiga was laying behind in this new 3D era. It turned to be the final nail on Commodore's and Amiga's coffin.

zombie_dk · 19 March 2002, 22:16

yep, i also think Doom on PC kindoff killed the Amiga.
I had a Amiga 1200+1.8 HD, damn it was fast, took around 4 sec to boot into Workbench.
Later i got Doom 1+2 running on the Amiga and it had much better graffics than on the PC

But after that it was like there didnt come any new games and thats when i bought a AMD+Voodoo2 card.

whiteb · 06 April 2002, 07:26

Quote:

Originally posted by CPC464
Ok Guys I had (and still have) an Amiga and NOTHING computer-wise could touch them they were superb, but then all of a sudden they seemed to vanish PC's seemed to make a HUGE profit and why ??

DON'T get me wrong I know the Amiga is not dead, but commercially the selling of new A500/500+/600/1200's is a bit hard to come by.

So my question is this:

What or Who killed the Amiga.

I would be very very interestd in comments queries or actual knowledge of this. As it seemed to vanish very quickly

The popular, and my favorite belief is that commodore, when making the Amiga had one hell of a hit machine, they sat on it and didnt develop it, mass market it and openly promote the machine as it SHOULD have.

Before it was too late, Pimple faced Billy (Willy) Gates gave heaps of free PC's to schools. little johnny and jenny ran home to mum and dad and got a Peecee for them.

Peecee's will never surpass Amiga, now we have a company, like a few already made this quote, to develop the Amiga in the way it was supposed to. Amiga will never shake the Games image and make its way into business setups. BUT amiga will not die 100% like the ST as long as we have improvements being made.

15 March 2002, 21:03	#1
CPC464 Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: York Age: 54 Posts: 393	What or Who Killed the Amiga Ok Guys I had (and still have) an Amiga and NOTHING computer-wise could touch them they were superb, but then all of a sudden they seemed to vanish PC's seemed to make a HUGE profit and why ?? DON'T get me wrong I know the Amiga is not dead, but commercially the selling of new A500/500+/600/1200's is a bit hard to come by. So my question is this: What or Who killed the Amiga. I would be very very interestd in comments queries or actual knowledge of this. As it seemed to vanish very quickly

15 March 2002, 21:12	#2
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,396	The popular theory is that mis-management of the company was primarily at fault for CBM's demise and hence the Amiga Not really sure that Jack Tremiel and his posse actually caused some of this when he was forced out of CBM by Irving Gould and his ilk. I think it was more or less greed that killed the Amiga in that everyone seemed to want to get what they could and was working side deals to embeazel from the company Sad state really, I used to work for a small company out here that had ordered directly from CBM, we were able to partake in some of the post appocolyptic wares that were being sold off to help pay some of CBM's creditors. But at this time the company had already started down the dark path into PC oblivion Last edited by jmmijo; 15 March 2002 at 21:53.

16 March 2002, 03:36	#9
oldpx Posts: n/a	That's true, the hopes of the future was over with commodore but as long as the amiga brand is owned by someone, it will be used to ruin the name and the memory. It promises power to those who are engulfed with greed but it will only bring their own doom like it did bring doom to Commodore and Escom. Amiga Inc is the brandbearer, their precious Amiga brand gives them unnatural long life. However, there is only one true owner of the brand and that is Jay Miner. The brand has it's own will and soon will leave Amiga inc like the way it left Gateway, Commodore and Escom. Years passed after his death but Miner's spirit endured, not in psyhical form but he is alive within us, believing amigans. Amiga will become history and history will become legend but some day it will return as a reality. But don't expect this to happen in a century or two. Last edited by Burseg; 16 March 2002 at 03:42.

16 March 2002, 04:10	#10
CPC464 Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: York Age: 54 Posts: 393	CPC464 Yes I must say to me the Amiga did die when they stopped selling them in shops and all shops removed the Amiga games off the shelves It's a shame as if they were to re-release the 1200 and some of the other, and start selling the game titles in the shops I would have no quarrels to go and buy a brand new one with games. I always thought the PAIN-IN-THE-ARSE thing about the Amiga was changing disks, and thought "Oh well I have a PC now" but with all the damn updates and patches, and dodgey graphics I would have my Amiga back any-day

19 March 2002, 13:24	#16
Tim Janssen Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Den Bosch / The Netherlands Age: 47 Posts: 1,271	Commodore, softwarepublishers and Doom killed the Amiga When the Amiga was introduced in the mid-eighties, it was a kind of revolution with its crystal clear sounds and hig-resolution graphics. The Amiga was a revolution. It was lightyears ahead of the consoles and PCs in that time. Softwarepublishers immediately produced ground-breaking titles like Marble Madness and Defender of the Crown which were much better, smoother and prettier than on other platforms. For Joe Public the Amiga became the machine one must get for these titles alone. I agree with 7-Zark-7 that Commodore's R&D efforts weren't that great in the Nineties. In 1992 there were rumours about a brand-new Amiga family with AGA-capabilities: the A1200. I was shocked when I found out the soundchips weren't improved and the AGA display could 'just' match the VGA-palette that was common on PCs those days. The A1200 was more an evolution in the Amiga family. This time the softwarepublishers did not take up the task in producing ground-breaking titles for the AGA-machines. Their business-rule was simple: the old Amigas (A500, A2000) had a much larger userbase, so they would get much more profit on these machines. The result: they just churned out AGA-updates of existing Amiga games and if an 'AGA-specific' title was produced it could be easy converted to the old Amigas. Around that same time Doom, a new groundbreaking experience, was released on PC. It astonished Joe Public, so they chose that machine. It was impossible to convert a game similar to Doom in a short time to Amiga. The game proved the Amiga was laying behind in this new 3D era. It turned to be the final nail on Commodore's and Amiga's coffin.

15 March 2002, 21:21	#3
Djay 95th User Join Date: May 2001 Location: Brighton/UK Age: 48 Posts: 3,120	Commodore should have followed IBM lead and released the hardware to 3rd party manufactors I would probably now be typing on an Amiga if they had

16 March 2002, 02:31	#4
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,646	Commodore Business Machines, and whatever their name was at later stages, killed the Amiga. Consoles, piracy and IBM PCs wouldn't have been a problem if Commodore would have learned a bit about MARKETING. Something similar happened to Atari methinks

16 March 2002, 02:44	#5
oldpx Posts: n/a	Amiga's death is a process that is not yet complete. I used to think that everything was over and it could not get any worse but with every passing day, with every coming news about Amiga Inc.'s sins I'm beginning to believe that we have not yet seen the worst.

16 March 2002, 03:00	#6
Djay 95th User Join Date: May 2001 Location: Brighton/UK Age: 48 Posts: 3,120	for me the Amiga has nothing to do with the current Amiga Inc. for me the Amiga died, when no one stocked the machine or games anymore, i know that many will disagree with that statement, but i was at the time in the games retail industry and it was sad day when i recieved a fax saying we are no longer distributing Amiga hardware/software. for me the Amiga lives on only through emulation, i do have an Amiga and i would love to spare the space to have it set up, but thats pretty pointless as i don't have much software for it. i don't think anyone could make an Amiga that lives up to the legend............ but hey i would like to be proved wrong!!!!!!!

16 March 2002, 03:20	#8
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,646	i think Burseg, that the Amiga's death happened when Commodore died. What Amiga Inc. does today is pissing all over the grave, profaning (spelling mistake there surely :P) the corpse.

16 March 2002, 04:12	#11
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,396	We may think of the Classic Amiga as the true Amiga, at least I do and perhaps the incarnation that Amiga Inc wants Amiga DE to be as Future Amiga. The thing that made an Amiga an Amiga was probably it's simplicity, the compact yet powerful OS both via the GUI and the Shell and the apps that ran on it. Games not-withstanding, there was really a ton of apps that included everything from video to audio. Well since emu's allow anyone now to experience the Classic Amiga in all it's glory, I do believe it will continue to be used and it's greatness espoused until, well, Hell Freezes Over

16 March 2002, 04:30	#12
Twistin'Ghost Give up the ghost Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: U$A Age: 33 Posts: 4,662	When I was using (and still using now) AmigaOS, I know I can trust it. It works with me, not against me. We seem to be on the same side. No hidden things going on, mucking up everything else. It just made sense, was streamlined and set out to perform the job in the best way possible. One cannot say that about many OS's. Windows is remarkable in the way that the performance degrades with each new app you install. It just leads you one step closer to either reinstalling the OS or having to reformat the HD. The only way for the OS to continue working properly is to never install anything. Thank God the Amiga OS is not like that. Sure, it's possible for something to go wrong and you might need to reinstall AmigaOS or reformat the HD - I'm not saying it is completely free of this ever happening. But the design and structure of the OS do not contribute to this happening like it does with Windows. I can only hope that the newer versions of AmigaOS have maintained that level of smoothness and co-operation in co-existing with other software. If 3.9 can deliver what 3.1 (and 2.04 before it) has, then I have no problem purchasing it.

16 March 2002, 14:56	#13
7-Zark-7 Zone Friend Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Brisbane/Australia Posts: 1,270	Hmm,thats the thing about history, the longer ago it happened, the more reasons & "hindsight" emerges. But like everyone here, I do agree that the Amiga died in its classic form when CBM died. As to what exactly "killed",it off? There's a number of things which affected it in different ways. A) CBM mismanagement. Very obvious. Despite CBM's presence & success in the days of the C64, the Amiga never really succeeded in the U.S as a gaming platform, although ironically it did seem to achieve professional recognition which it lacked elsewhere,though as Twistin' would attest,it was never because of good CBM support or management/marketing! B)Lack of R & D. The original Amiga was & always will be remembered for being a remarkable landmark in powerful home computing,which spoke volumes for how long it lasted & took other platforms to catch up & pass it. But again,because CBM made the disasterous plunge into the IBM PC market just when that market first began to crash in price, the management just sat on their butts & refused to develop the Amiga. Despite the best efforts of their R&D teams they never received the support they deserved from upper management. Unfortunately,by the time efforts on designs like the ill-fated AAA chipset & even the RISC developments started,there was no money left to see the projects completed. Although the AGA development was an improvement, it was nowhere near as good as that was promised by the David Haynie led AAA project,(Or so we were always promised in the Computer magazines stories.) I always regarded it a great shame that one idea I'd read of their future dev. plans were to converge the Amiga/PC & have a true multimedia multi O/S PC. Who knows,if they'd ever done it,we may not be debating here today... And C) Sega & Nintendo. Once the 16bit consoles flooded the European markets with big marketing,cheap console prices & reduced piracy,it killed off the last Amiga stronghold in Europe where it was at it's best as a gaming machine with some great developers. Though I do have some sympathy for CBM's agnst over how to "push" the machine. Unfortunately,it was a victim of it's own success. After all,on one hand you had a powerful true multitasking multimedia machine capable which existed before there ever was a "multimedia" machine/market out there, but on the other hand you had a top gaming computer that had jaw dropping titles like Shadow of the Beast,Lemmings, Defender of the Crown,Battle Chess,etc. How do you market a machine that can be a "serious" business machine & yet be a gaming beast too? The saddest thing to my mind is that the gaming industry has never been the same since the home computer market of your C64's Amiga's ST's etc. died. A lot of home-made development teams emerged with funny, original titles which you never see anymore in this 3D FPS market thats about today. Even sadder is that a lot of those same development teams/publishers died too.

16 March 2002, 23:20	#15
zombie_dk Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 16	Unreal Tournament has been the only PC game ive been addicted to. I miss the good gameplay from the Amiga days, all the PC games have nice graffics ect. but that doesnt really make them more fun. i guess thats why i use the WinUAE emulater and play some Sensible WOS Fifa 2002 sucks.

19 March 2002, 22:16	#17
zombie_dk Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 16	yep, i also think Doom on PC kindoff killed the Amiga. I had a Amiga 1200+1.8 HD, damn it was fast, took around 4 sec to boot into Workbench. Later i got Doom 1+2 running on the Amiga and it had much better graffics than on the PC But after that it was like there didnt come any new games and thats when i bought a AMD+Voodoo2 card.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Have I killed the Floppy Drive?	fitzsteve	support.Hardware	11	23 April 2010 15:32
Welp! I think I killed my A600 :(	mfletcher	support.Hardware	4	11 January 2010 22:04
have I killed it?	Gracie	New to Emulation or Amiga scene	9	28 March 2006 20:33
Did the pirates killed the Amiga before it's time?	Tolismlf	Nostalgia & memories	60	25 November 2004 16:12
Amiga Forever Killed My IEplore	Djay	support.WinUAE	15	19 February 2002 13:15