RE: Amiga users didn't upgrade

[Turrican_3]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Maybe in the latter days of the PlayStation that was the case, but when the original PlayStation launched the cost of CD-R technology was still sky high. To the point where just being on CD was seen as a form of copy protection in and of itself (since the storage capacity was too big to be faked with a floppy based solution like those that existed for some cartridge based consoles)

My memory is becoming more and more fuzzy nowadays but I think you're right, this very likely didn't happen at launch.

I'd argue the point about piracy dynamics (for a lack of a better wording) still stands though.

[sokolovic]

Nope. The PlayStation was released in late 1995 in Europe. Around 1996/97 you could have any game pirated. I even remember that there was a thing of putting upside down the console to play warez games . It was very common, like the Amiga days (I even remember seing intro of classic Amiga pirates teams before launching a game).

[paul1981]

Weren't the cd's black I seem to remember? Did it make them harder to copy?

[Etze]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I even remember that there was a thing of putting upside down the console to play warez games .

No, that's the trick to be able to play even when your Playstation started to die.
With the right timing you could switch the discs while booting to be able to start a copy.

It was very common, like the Amiga days (I even remember seing intro of classic Amiga pirates teams before launching a game).

But it still was harder than on the Amiga because you needed a modded console and an expensive CD-burner and even empty discs were expensive. I still think that on Playstation warez weren't as common as on Amiga (Ratio between original games and copies).

[Etze]

Originally Posted by paul1981

Weren't the cd's black I seem to remember? Did it make them harder to copy?

They were black but that was just cosmetics. They only looked cooler that way.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Etze

No, that's the trick to be able to play even when your Playstation started to die.
With the right timing you could switch the discs while booting to be able to start a copy.




But it still was harder than on the Amiga because you needed a modded console and an expensive CD-burner and even empty discs were expensive. I still think that on Playstation warez weren't as common as on Amiga (Ratio between original games and copies).

Lol. In France (Marseille at least, not the France known by the average UK/German/US people) you could buy PlayStation copies in stores around 1996 easily.
Who need to have a CD burner when one shop was providing everyone with pirated copies at a very low price ?
This console was build and sold partly on piracy. And Microsoft tried to make the same thing with their Xbox.
I had Friends that had a store at the time when the Xbox was released. Absolutely nobody wanted one, than a magical chip appeared on the market making the console able to vacuum any CD game on the HD. And then everyone wanted one.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Etze

They were black but that was just cosmetics. They only looked cooler that way.

There was some additional copy protection around the edges of the disc, IIRC. Some kind of code the normal CD copying would ignore. The black discs were often claimed to be copy protection, but it was mostly to distract people form the real protection.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

The black discs were often claimed to be copy protection, but it was mostly to distract people form the real protection.

Pretty much this People were lead to believe that normal silver CDs wouldn't work. Here's an article about the PS1 protection: https://wololo.net/2012/12/10/how-ps1-security-works/

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TCD

Good point Here's the second page of that poll:



86% had a HD
82% had more RAM
42% had a turbo card

Here's a poll result from CU Amiga 6/1997:



81% had a HD
73% had more than 2 MB RAM
48% had an accelerator

That poll is a year later than the one in the German Amiga Joker though.

[Megalomaniac]

The forms were in January 1997 apparently though. And since 80% have an A1200, that implies that at least 39% (80% of 48%) of Amiga users at the time had an 030 or faster. What few Amiga games there still were usually had specs designed around those kinds of systems, making a game require an A1200 with hard drive and 4Mb RAM wasn't cutting off many regular Amiga users, even then.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

What few Amiga games there still were usually had specs designed around those kinds of systems, making a game require an A1200 with hard drive and 4Mb RAM wasn't cutting off many regular Amiga users, even then.

Yep. So it wasn't just the rich Germans that pimped their Miggies during the 90s

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by TCD

Here's a poll result from CU Amiga 6/1997:



81% had a HD
73% had more than 2 MB RAM
48% had an accelerator

That poll is a year later than the one in the German Amiga Joker though.

No real surprise as it was mainly just the Amiga hardcore guys left past 1996, i still kept my setup from 1994 but didn’t buy any additional hardware and only bought the odd Amiga mag for the Cover CD contents.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

No real surprise as it was mainly just the Amiga hardcore guys left past 1996, i still kept my setup from 1994 but didn’t buy any additional hardware and only bought the odd Amiga mag for the Cover CD contents.

Just wanted to add it as there were a few comments that pointed out that the situation in Germany was different and I think the numbers are close enough that we can say that the situation in the UK was comparable.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

No real surprise as it was mainly just the Amiga hardcore guys left past 1996, i still kept my setup from 1994 but didn’t buy any additional hardware and only bought the odd Amiga mag for the Cover CD contents.

Yeah once you get past about 1995 and reduce it down to the self selecting group who both buy Amiga magazines and bother to fill out surveys, you're pretty much expecting the more hardcore audience responses.

[Daedalus]

Maybe in southern France piracy was generally accepted, but in the UK and Ireland you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy pirated Playstation games. You had to go to dodgy markets or car boot sales, and it was nowhere near as common to have or see pirated PSX games as it was to have pirated Amiga games. Everyone had the tools needed to pirate floppy-based games, but burning CDs at home was an expensive business as pointed out, so much of the schoolyard warez trading that was a staple of the Amiga scene simply didn't exist. People swapped original games at school.

I bought my first CD burner around 2000 (for my Amiga incidentally), and even then it still cost me around £250 - a lot of money for a student.

[LynnDrumm]

I didn't know anyone over here (NL) that didn't have their PS1 modded -- the whole reason my dad got me one over an N64 was "you can copy the games"

I think this was late 90s though, so maybe by then it was more trivial.

[oscar_ates]

We hard-cores updated the A1200 with 68030/fast ram and harddisk but total numbers were not enough
That is why professional game companies left the Amiga after 1996. Released games after that was coming from individual enthusiast people. I had to switch to ps1 therefore

[TCD]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

Released games after that was coming from individual enthusiast people.

Only exception being ClickBOOM that released their first game in 1996. Quite interesting that they started in 1994 to develop for the Amiga.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by TCD

Only exception being ClickBOOM that released their first game in 1996. Quite interesting that they started in 1994 to develop for the Amiga.

I still respect what they do but you can read on the internet that Clickboom boss was a Serbian/Canadian who used/abused the cheap Serbian programmers' workforce controversially. His idea was to become known as a company using the gap on dying Amiga market. Capital punishment graphics were good btw but gameplay was awful. You get three hits and you find yourself on a butchers hook

[TCD]

I read a few articles in Amiga Format and CU Amiga about them recently. Would be interesting to know how many copies of their games they sold.