Why did the CD32 fail?

[Rebel-CD32]

Microcosm showed us what was possible with the CD32 (the gameplay might not have been great, but the graphics and sound were impressive), but no one ever expanded upon it.

The CD32 could have done alright 3D, non-textured poligons ran alright. Guardian was cool, and that was written in Basic, so I'm sure someone could have made something better than that. We also needed more arcade style 2D games, like Fightin' Spirit which came much too late.

The potential was there, it mainly failed due to lack of exclusive games. You don't even need 3D or low prices to make a console successful if it has solid 2D games, look at the NeoGeo, they're STILL making games for that thing.

[MOS-6581]

Commodore was simply too late, it's fate was sealed by not producing the AGA chipset (or something like it) by 1990. Had it been released in 1990, it would have crushed the Mega Drive, and developers would have most likely written CD32 specific games, because the Amiga was still a viable market back then.

AGA was possible in 1990, but C= choose to milk the OCS/ECS chipset for 5 years, which is insane in the semiconductor/computer business! Every product made from 1990 onwards were 2 to 3 years late. Even if the banks gave Commodore a little more time to produce more CD32s, they would have been out of business by 1995. The new CD consoles from Japan would have struck the killer blow, rather than C='s creditors back in April '94.

"Commodore -- Too little, too late™". That about sums it up for me.

For me the CD 32 failed for hardware (no hardware 3D support like 3DO, Playstation, Saturn...), Akiko was'nt right solution for this; but failed also for software, because his games were only CD version of A500 and A1200 games. there was only few original CD32-only games.
i don't think that no MPEG support and the console look were so important. (original Playstation and 3DO look was not so good).
Sorry for my english.

[Mark Thompson]

There's nothing wrong with your English zuazale and it's fine. I heard that there was something about the development of the triple AAA chip and it would've been interesting to see this in action, but as far as I know it didn't get off the ground because Commodore were in crisis at this time.

So again it's too little too late and sometimes I wish Commodore were still around as I miss them, but would they have been regarded as much of a legend as they are now? Maybe it's sometimes best to remember them as they were at their peak until it all went pear-shaped near the end.

I believe what was also the problem in the face of their competitors was that Commodore had no in-house software developers or first-party games at launch and then they could've made exclusives. Another thing is that they had a lot of terrible games at launch and Microcosm got a slating.

I'm agree, and i say also that biggest Commodore mistake was enter in console market without having know-how in hardware and in marketing.
Maybe in my opinion Commodore builted best home-computer ever, Amiga 500 (but also for me A-1200 and A-4000), but then launched a computer disguised as console, the CD32, with power for computing but not much power for 3D gaming that at that time was the future.

And ... thanks but my english is average thanks to online translators ...

... My italian is muuuch better!!!

[wanderer]

Glad to see this thread still alive and 'n' kickin'. One thing I forgot to mention about the CD32 is that... it smelled good. Yeah that's right, it smelled quite differently than other Amigas (which were almost odour-less come to think of it) and that gave it a special something. I miss it, and miss the whole Commodore - Amiga era too. It's not about nostalgia. Or maybe it is.
A big welcome to zuazale from beautiful Italy. (and kick-ass world cup winners may I add)

[Ultron]

Pardon my french, but who the fuck who'd want to buy an A1200 with a CDRom (when there weren't any CDRom games).

[Zetr0]

I was running a dual session drive in 93/94 it was awsome for aminet CD's and CDTV titles such as ("psycho killer LOL" : Eat my reboks freak face!").. there were a lot clipart and true type fonts that came out on CDROM in late 94 from the pc market and a lot of this was interchangable including PD CD collections of objects and textures etc...

Then there was the ability to listern to music via head phones at first.

Originally Posted by wanderer

A big welcome to zuazale from beautiful Italy. (and kick-ass world cup winners may I add)

Efraristo', i like very much Greece!! (and a little less european cup winners may i add ...)!
I had an Amiga 600, and i can say to you that this comp was a little (big) marvel!!! For the age it had super-sound (Paula ...) and super grafic (but only with super programmers like in order: 1) Germans 2) Swedish-Finnish 3) English (who programmed the best games, but tecnically those two was better - for me obviously!!!).
Kalimera and iassu (maybe must be wright so i hope)!

[Antiriad]

Personally I always thought that the best we might have hoped for (considering C='s limitations due to their ineptitude) was no CDTV or CD32 but a CD based 1200 (using a caddy at the side) with some Fast Ram. Course even that would have been killed off by the 486 at first and finally by the PS1, but it might have stood up better against the Mega Drive and SNES nonetheless.

[Jope]

I voted too late but partially the reason was that they couldn't crank out enough to satisfy the demand.

[Mark Thompson]

I don't know if it's right to think it was all down to Commodore's strategy of supporting older systems too vigorously through backwards compatibility with every new Amiga the graphics chip was expanded upon but certain other areas always left something to be desired. For example the sound chip never got upgraded through leaps and bounds where releasing the same 1985-based technology was dead in the water not even adding extra channels.

People seem to be forgetting that the CD32 sold very well, so in that respect it was a success and unlike consoles of today Commodore made money on every unit sold from day one, not two years into sales and developers didn't have to pay a stipend to Commodore for every game sold.

You can't look at it from the perspective of an Amiga 1200 or 4000 owner. That isn't who it was made for, you already had AGA games. It was made for non-Amiga owners or owners of older systems who wanted to play the better games without the higher price of a 1200 or 4000.

Could it have done better if it came out earlier? Of course, anything would. If Commodore was on track, the 1200 and 4000 class machines would have been out around the time of the 3000, instead of the 3000 which offered little additional for people who already owned Amigas at the time.

Problem was, Commodore couldn't make enough of them since they couldnt aford enough parts and suppliers weren't interested in loaning Commodore anymore money. Couple that to the fact that Commodore couldn't get many into the US, it 'failed' simply because they couldnt make anough nor could get enough to markets where it would have sold more. Other than that, it was a decent success.

They were even in use in a line of arcade machines and in Scala's rack mount box.

[TheBoss]

Yeah I too read that the CD32 did sell well, fact is that it was just too late to save Amiga but we cant just blame it all on them as there was another problem not created directly by Amiga but by its users...piracy.

Here is an artical by Amiga Force from august 1993 where the CD32 was presented in their mag, the newsletters is something to note.

In truth, that's not the only issue users created. The other was a lockdown of the computer to not much better than the originally released A1000. People refused to upgrade. This wasn't new back in those days. In reality it started with the Atari 2600 VCS.

When you had a massively popular system people bought it, but its own success hampered future development since people didnt want to give up compatability with their purchased software base (forget that you can always have kept the old system when buying a new one, but I think most people had to sell the old system to either have the money to get a new one or to maximize their purchase with the addition of peripherals and software).

The problem was seen again with the Commodore 64. Even the Amigas release was gauged by Commodore 64 owners by wether or not it could play C64 games. The 128 had to be designed with a C64 inside it for compatability to even be considered following the user responce to the TED releases.

Then along comes the Amiga 500. WB1.3, 1MB RAM, floppy drive was the Amiga norm even after the release of the 1200. If an OS 2.x or later on AGA only game was released, these users would complain. This tied down most Amiga development to the lowest common denomonator even though there were more capable machines out there and allowed other manufacturers with less of a legacy to deal with to leapfrog over Amiga like they had with the 2600 and C64 in the past.

CD32 would have been a huge help with piracy back then if enough had gotten out. You probably would have seen development for it first, with a company making their money on the CD32 release (hard to copy when CD burners weren't common and media was expensive) then release to the disk based 1200/4000 later. That would have also helped the adoption of CD-ROMs on 1200s for users who didnt want to wait.

[Ultron]

Originally Posted by MayhemMaybe

When you had a massively popular system people bought it, but its own success hampered future development since people didnt want to give up compatability with their purchased software base (forget that you can always have kept the old system when buying a new one, but I think most people had to sell the old system to either have the money to get a new one or to maximize their purchase with the addition of peripherals and software).

I think i'm a good example of that since i went from a Spectrum128k (~2mhz) to an Amiga 500 (~7mhz), to a PC 200mhz mmx.

But look, from the point of the consumer... so you own an expanded A500 with 1 meg...

Then they release an A600. What's the interest? I'm going to buy a new computer all over again for what? No new software either.

Then comes the A1200. Ok. Somewhat better, 2 megs (only doube but wtf), 256 colours, ok now were talking. But it's pretty expensive. So i waited for new games to use the AGA chipset to justify a new buy... what games were there? Alien Breed 2? Looked worse than Alien Breed 1 and it was using AGA!

To make matters worse some serious heavy hitters wouldn't run on it!

Then comes CD32. What the hell did i care. Yay, an A1200 with a CDrom. Only lord knows what the game makers would do with the thing. They did nothing, obviously.

This even totally destroyed the people who kept buying Amigas contrary to me. Those who bought the A600 got serious fucked with the A1200. And those who got the A1200, were seriously screwed by an Amiga that couldn't run some of their best games, nor kept the promise of releasing serious amazing games using AGA. They never came.

So basically Commodore offered nothing, and kept releasing new machines. The market got fragmented. Nobody knew what to do. The so called amazing A1200, AGA games never came - The vast majority of quality inventory of the Amiga are all pre-A1200-AGA. Even years after amazing games like Ruff N'Tumble didn't use AGA. It was pathetic.

One of the biggest mistakes was never having the care to make sure the hardware had amazing games that could hook the user. Why in the hell would you buy a computer with nothing to use it on unless you're rich. Commodore was a disaster, they didn't even document the post A500 hardware well so programmers didn't have the necessary info to use the new features.

Everyone that was everyone pissed of the Amiga to the PC or consoles even as interviews in magazines in 93 yapped about the bright future to come with all this "great hardware".

Bullshit. Lipstick on a pig. The CD32 was useless. Nobody knew what to do with it other that shite compilations or an added CD track.

We all know what happened next.

[Fred the Fop]

Originally Posted by MayhemMaybe

People seem to be forgetting that the CD32 sold very well....

Where? West Bubblefuck?
I never even heard of the CD32 until I joined this forum 5 years ago. And i live in New York, where selling and marketing was perfected.

[Ironclaw]

Here in Sweden the CD32 were quite known... I knew two people that had one and I played on one of them... long ago now though.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Fred the Duck

Where? West Bubblefuck?
I never even heard of the CD32 until I joined this forum 5 years ago. And i live in New York, where selling and marketing was perfected.

Commodore had the best sales / marketing successes in Germany, United Kingdom and the nordic countries.

No thanks to Commodore USA though.. :-) The local Commodores did the marketing themselves..

[Fred the Fop]

Originally Posted by Jope

Commodore had the best sales / marketing successes in Germany, United Kingdom and the nordic countries.

No thanks to Commodore USA though.. :-) The local Commodores did the marketing themselves..

Thank goodness. The Amiga was not well known here at all. No wonder a huge proportion of Amiga games were European coded or produced. And That's why the Amiga rocks.