What will be the endgame for the Amiga?
 

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The Amiga will be buried and forgotten with the generation that used it. Its legacy is thin, apart from the demoscene, and will hardly even interest historians of the future.

Deal with it.

People willing to ignore the significance of a first popular computer to use multi-tasking & multi-media could hardly be called historians. So I wouldn't really worry about Amiga's legacy in regard to historical records.

As for real word usage, I think it will come in cycles, similar to all other human fashions. It might well be that the interest will dip significantly once our generation logs out, but am sure there will always be at least some people interested in retro gaming around. And then there might be retro revivals in some points in the future, just as it happened 5-10 years ago.

The advantage the 8-bit/16 bit generations have is that they were at the forefront when computing and gaming really took off, while being still great fun to use. So, anybody from the future interested in how it all started simply cannot skip this era (unlike the later ones, eg I doubt there will be anybody caring about RTX 3070 or Playstation 4 200 years from now).

I doubt anyone cares about Amiga in 200 years from now. Or at least, none of us will be there to find out.
Amiga, Atari or any other computer from 16bit era is for the nostalgics. It ends with them.

In all honesty, with the level of advancement over the past 30 years, in 50+ years time, we are looking at photo real if not close to it, Amiga and everything before at least PS3 is curiosity and nothing much more.

We are the ones keeping the Amiga in focus, but sadly, we as interested parties are dying. I'm almost 50 years old, assuming I have another 30 years left in me, I surely wont be doing anything with Amiga anymore, because as years advance, the audience decreases.

Most if not all Amigas will be dead by then, or at least need repair work where parts are next to impossible to obtain anymore or the skillset to repair them has long since gone.

Sadly, much as I love the Amiga, my son has a tiny bit of interest when he has watched Amiga longplays, but not much more than that.

If I cant even convince my own son that it's worth his time to explore, what chance a new audience appreciates it?

To put it into perspective, every 8 bit, 16bit and 32 bit game and machine that ever was, will and can be emulated and stored on a wristwatch.

The only problem is, will anyone want to?

This. Sad but true.

hmm I think the numbers will of course dwindle into the future even massively as these systems become less desirable to those that are used to better. However there will always be fascination in the discovery of these games because there's an almost effortless quality with a lot of older games because of their altogether different feel. Something like Knights of the sky is very endearing for example in how it's a very virtual representation but then so many Amiga games work on a level that shall always appeal because of how they are constructed

And just so many games are just timeless in this sense because it's an entirely different feel you get. Going further back you have games that capture worlds in even more crude ways but are captivating for it. There will always be people that simply cannot get on with the idea of playing primitive systems but part of the joy for many that do isn't always nostalgia to begin with

Yeah I think even hundreds of years from now there will always be those that discover and enjoy these games because as well as the games that stand up still to being good games, the system will always feel different enough to warrant interest in experiencing it. Even the games that aren't so well received can be fascinating too in terms of how they can make people feel when they play them so I think even in a niche form the Amiga and all systems in fact will enjoy a fanbase no matter how long into the future

People still watch Buster Keaton's movies and look at primitive caveman art, despite the fact that there is stuff available in the same vein, but much more advanced technically.



Videogames are not going anywhere and I have no doubt that there will always be some people curious about their origins, even when their everyday entertainement will be available via neural links in truly virtual worlds.

yup I think the thing to remember is that something great shall remain. Now there's a lot that I wouldn't include as great on the Amiga but so much of it stands up very and it comes down with some things that the experience of using something for it's unique qualities is just something people enjoy. I really can't see how everyone in the future would look what Amiga is and conclude it's worthless to them. People will still enjoy the system though not to the extent we have today

the OS, or "an" OS really needs to be made free to mess with similar to linux, then add in people making not just fpga/clones of old hardware but trying to enhance features into newer hardware and adding newer features for hardware and software.

The amiga really cant live on once us amigans slowly all die off, it needs fresh blood, and fresh blood isnt all that interested in an old obsolete static hardware/os/software set.

Two factors that could keep the amiga going for longer than other machines of th era, multitasking and a good machine for learning 68000 (like the speccy for the z80 and c64 for the 6502).
Yes it is sad to think of it going 'extinct'.

Just read this thread and put on the demo (for the first time) Planet Rocklobster - Oxyron. Has a message at the start that seems to relate to this thread, spooky timing lol

I went to a retro themed party recently* and we set up various retro machines, some real some emulated. There was a RaspPi running some Amiga games. My kids (9 & 6) wanted to be interested but they didn't have the attention span. Having 1000s of games available meant they tried one for 30s, found it hard, then tried another, and so on.

Their view of the Amiga is "daddy's old computer". I can't see them taking particularly good care of my carefully curated retro collection in the cellar.

*(following the applicable covid regulations of course)

I think today's kids do not watch Frigo and they will not care about old computers in their adult age.

Man, you guys have depressed me. :( I'm off to play Deluxe Galaga.

The strong nostalgia can only be with those of us who actually used the Amiga back in the day. There will be new people who will be interested in "old stuff" in the future and surely there will be people who will collect old machines, but there simply won't be a user base that actually experienced it first hand when it was in its prime. So number of people interested will be in very limited numbers..
So some of our kids might remember it from their childhood as "the weird old computer my dad used to have" but, that might trigger some nostalgia but it will never be the same as for this (our) generation of old geezers ;-)

So in a 100 years, they will probably be able to [insert magic term for advanced 3d printing here] ... well.. print.. perfect replica cases, the motherboards, the chips as long as the information is somehow preserved to that day... including the software library.. Of course, AI will figure out how to write an OS to run on the hardware in about 0.2 seconds :D

Funny you'd mention that.. Deluxe Galaga is the only Amiga game my son plays with some regularity ;-)

you wrote wrong you have a zero left over

One problem the Amiga has, even for those with the right inclination, is that it is extremely unaccessible. Anyone can plug and play a SNES or a Megadrive game, and the games are generally of a high quality.

The Amiga is a complex computer, with all that entails, and can frustrate even people who are used with computers simply because it is sufficiently dissimilar to other computer systems, let alone consoles. The decades of expertise in the Amiga hardware and software we take for granted is not something you can absorb in a few hours, days or weeks of study, and the system will just seem complex and alien like if one of us was suddenly presented with an X68000 with a set of Japanese manuals and a box of unlabelled floppy disks.

The fact that it was one of the first multitasking systems on a desktop is worthy of a footnote in the annals of computer history, but it was hardly the kind of breakthrough the Macintosh was.

The Amiga has done its job. It was a stepping stone to the future, and we were lucky to be there at the time and experience a really good multimedia computer at a decent price that also had a massive game library.

I don't think it really matters if it fades away and no one uses it anymore. People discovering computing today have even better and much more accessible options.

Anyway I suspect it will always have a small following of computer history enthusiasts thanks to UAE.