Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive

[defor]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Which is why the CDTV was steered far away from computer games until it had already proven a failure. Alas, the market wasn't ready for a multimedia device.

In fact, CDTV wasn't even anything original at that time. TurboGrafx-CD was released in November 1989, Philips CD-i in 1990 and Sega CD in 1991 (in Japan, 1992 in US). Yes, all failed. So naturally Commodore introduced CD32 in 1993 :-)

[Foebane]

So Philips CD-i, 3DO and CDTV were strictly multimedia, and that's why they failed?

But why did Sega CD and Jaguar CD fail? As well as CD32?

Why did the Sony PlayStation triumph over them all?

Talking of the multimedia angle, I'm reminded of the countless reference works like encyclopedias that were sold on CD-ROM for the PC, which technically were ALSO failures because of a little something called the Internet only a few short years later, making them completely obsolete. At least, that's how I saw it.

As an example: I bought two editions of the Star Trek Encyclopedia, both very hefty telephone book-sized references to every bit of Star Trek knowledge and canon going, across all the movies and TV series. The first volume was in black and white on poor paper, and the second volume was in full colour on better quality paper. But both times I lamented how out-of-date those editions would be before long, and I eventually got rid of them... only to discover Memory Alpha online, which did exactly the same job but better.

[defor]

Originally Posted by Foebane

So Philips CD-i, 3DO and CDTV were strictly multimedia, and that's why they failed?
But why did Sega CD and Jaguar CD fail? As well as CD32?
Why did the Sony PlayStation triumph over them all?

I'm afraid we digress from the thread topic.
You can see a ton of articles analyzing why Sony succeeded with the PlayStation while others did not. Simply put: A great value for a large library of exciting games.
What history of computers (and video-game consoles) teaches us is that the software sells the platform. Was Amiga lacking in that regard? Possibly. Not many killer apps were there when it was crucial to create a momentum. I guess.

[activist]

possibly add Amiga software piracy to the why didn't thrive list. Commodore happy to shift a mountain of hardware on the back of pirated software in 89/90. Commodore, being hardware only, don't do enough to support publishers. Same publishers leave as soon as PC-CDROM takes off. The entire Amiga platform burns from a commercial point of view.

[Signman]

Piracy is an issue that not many older Amiga users will address honestly. Always rationalizing.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by defor

In fact, CDTV wasn't even anything original at that time.

Define 'original'. The CDTV was the first example of a popular home computer combined with a CD drive to make a true multimedia device.

CD-i was easily the first multimedia specification, being publically announced by Philips and Sony in March 1986. But Philip's first consumer player (the CDI 205) wasn't released until December 1991, over 5 years later. So Commodore actually beat them to the market by 6 months!

TurboGrafx-CD was released in November 1989, Philips CD-i in 1990 and Sega CD in 1991 (in Japan, 1992 in US). Yes, all failed. So naturally Commodore introduced CD32 in 1993 :-)

The CD32 actually did quite well in the short time that it was sold. The CD32 didn't fail, Commodore did - for unrelated reasons (the proximate cause being not paying royalties to the XOR patent troll holder).

Philips CD-i failed for obvious reasons (too proprietary with no pedigree and limited applications, took way too long from announcement to reaching the consumer market...) despite an enormous investment - proof that Commodore wasn't the worst when it came to making bad marketing decisions.

The CDTV may have been yet another of Commodore's 'misses', but I for one am glad they did it - because it gave me the unique experience of being involved in the production of a commercial multimedia title for it and the CD32. Those were exciting times for me - being part of the Amiga developer network, getting inside information on new products, receiving praise from Commodore for my programming skills etc. - well worth it even though I lost money in the end.

[Frogs]

Originally Posted by Signman

Piracy is an issue that not many older Amiga users will address honestly. Always rationalizing.

Oh I uh, always you know, bought the game after trying it...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Signman

Piracy is an issue that not many older Amiga users will address honestly. Always rationalizing.

Yes, so much rationalization:-

"I would buy good games".

"But not at that price! They should be cheaper".

"What price? Certainly no more than a box of blank disks!"

But the relationship between pirates and producers wasn't all parasitic. Though piracy cut into producers' profits and made them rethink whether they should continue supporting the Amiga, it was also a kind of 'free' advertising which greatly increased the number of machines sold (and therefore the potential software market) and sometimes the games themselves (when the cracks weren't 100% or people liked them so much they bought the original), as well as forcing faster development to keep ahead of the crackers.

It's a pity that a path couldn't be found between rampant piracy driving developers out of the market and excessive profit-making via expensive copy protection dongles (game cartridges). iD software found a path on the PC - release extended shareware games with easy upgrade to the full product. Casual players were satisfied enough with the shareware version to not bother trying to crack it, and they 'distributed' the product for free, while direct sales netted the developers a greater share of the profits. Retailers might not have liked it, but we weren't selling much anyway due to piracy so... (I made more money selling shareware disks for the PC than commercial games!).

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Signman

Piracy is an issue that not many older Amiga users will address honestly. Always rationalizing.

Nonsense.

I'll address it honestly. Whilst I never had an Amiga when I was young, my cousin did and his entire collection of games were all copies. It was wrong, but we didn't care and we thought nothing of it at the time because we were young and stupid and neither of us could afford to buy any.

When you get older your perspective matures and you think differently. And now, being older, it's all too easy to get all preachy about the subject. Just remember what it was like being a kid.

[grelbfarlk]

I'm not rationalizing either way here was my experience.
When I had my Amiga 1000-2000 through the 80s, we lived near an Amiga shop that rented games out for $10. Usually I would get 1 or 2 games every two weeks, which I'd try to copy. Usually it worked. That Amiga store got to buy one copy of a game and rent it out for at least 4x more than it would have sold for.
Basically twice a year I would get one game for a birthday and x-mas, those were straight up purchases at retail price.
Then when we moved away from that store it was too expensive to buy games, which eventually lead me to find a BBS.

[freehand]

I copied every thing on the planet not because I was young or short of money because .... I liked it, I had an agent for a small period of time who knew most of the developers and they was all at it not just kids.

[Signman]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

Nonsense.

I'll address it honestly. Whilst I never had an Amiga when I was young, my cousin did and his entire collection of games were all copies. It was wrong, but we didn't care and we thought nothing of it at the time because we were young and stupid and neither of us could afford to buy any.

When you get older your perspective matures and you think differently. And now, being older, it's all too easy to get all preachy about the subject. Just remember what it was like being a kid.

You really are full of it aren’t you. I’ll bet you are a piece of work now.

[Signman]

I work in signs and graphic design. Much of the same attitude and excuses used when other designers skirt the issues but hell and damnation on you if you even use the same color blue from one of their designs. They call out the gods for justice then.

[Frogs]

If e-commerce existed then it would have been a different outcome for a lot of devs. My dad bought most of his stuff but if the store didn’t have It, he’d pirate it. It was all about convenience.

So EA and Cinemaware got sales while games that didn’t get easy shelf space got pirated (Libyans in Space).

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Signman

I’ll bet you are a piece of work now.

Yep I sure am. Playing all those pirated Amiga games stunted my development and ability to function as a contributing member of society and now I've turned to a life of crime.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by sean_sk

Yep I sure am. Playing all those pirated Amiga games stunted my development and ability to function as a contributing member of society and now I've turned to a life of crime.

Admit it, you were always a criminal!

My first exposure to piracy occurred when I joined the local Sinclair computer club, thinking they would help me learn more about my new ZX Spectrum. Imagine my disgust to find out that their sole activity was making pirate copies of tapes, which a chain-smoking old guy ordered from overseas. That was the first and last time I attended any of their meetings!

Then I got friendly with the owner of a local electronics shop, who gave me the task of choosing which games to order. I also took home new computers and did demonstration sessions with my computing friends which helped to sell his products. Strictly no piracy! I bought an Amstrad CPC664 from him and learned how to hack games for the sole purpose of transferring tapes to disc. Then another local guy started a computer club in his garage, mostly for Amstrads but anyone was welcome. Again, piracy was strictly forbidden.

I bought my A1000 from a computer store in Auckland which was run by friend of mine (I live in Hastings which is about 400km away). He gave me a few original games with the computer, but when I got back home he kept sending me pirate copies of games that were riddled with viruses. I treated them as demos and wiped them immediately after trying them out. Eventually I got sick of it and told him to stop sending me viruses!

Apart from that I only bought original games from a local video shop whose owner sold a bit of Amiga stuff, and relied on magazines for demos. In the early days there wasn't much around, but I tried to support the local guy by buying what I could.

In 1991 I opened my own computer shop which gave me access to anything I wanted. Of course I had to try out all the new games before selling them (to make sure the disks loaded etc.) and bought a few that I liked for myself. Magazines were a good source of demos and I stocked all the major publications (which took 3 months to get to New Zealand, so all the reviews etc. were out of date). Meanwhile most of my customers were getting pirated games on disks sent to them from friends overseas or via international BBSs, often before I could stock them in my shop. My biggest selling item was blank disks!

[grond]

I only got an Amiga in 1993 when there weren't many active users around any more from whom I could have copied games. I therefore used to rent games and copy them but the copies often didn't work because I didn't know about XCopy. When I bought my A1200 used to replace the broken A600 I had I got it "complete" with a big box of copies. At that point in time I didn't play much any more. I don't think I even tried half of the games in the box. In any case I never bought any Amiga software. I wouldn't even have known where to buy any. After my Commodore 64 years the first games I actually bought in a shop were linux ports of Myth and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. The one pirated piece of software that I really wanted and definitely couldn't have afforded was SAS/C. When I switched to coding in asm, I only used public domain software. Of course, I kept the illegal copy of SAS/C just in case...

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Admit it, you were always a criminal!

My first exposure to piracy occurred when I joined the local Sinclair computer club, thinking they would help me learn more about my new ZX Spectrum. Imagine my disgust to find out that their sole activity was making pirate copies of tapes, which a chain-smoking old guy ordered from overseas. That was the first and last time I attended any of their meetings!

Then I got friendly with the owner of a local electronics shop, who gave me the task of choosing which games to order. I also took home new computers and did demonstration sessions with my computing friends which helped to sell his products. Strictly no piracy! I bought an Amstrad CPC664 from him and learned how to hack games for the sole purpose of transferring tapes to disc. Then another local guy started a computer club in his garage, mostly for Amstrads but anyone was welcome. Again, piracy was strictly forbidden.

I bought my A1000 from a computer store in Auckland which was run by friend of mine (I live in Hastings which is about 400km away). He gave me a few original games with the computer, but when I got back home he kept sending me pirate copies of games that were riddled with viruses. I treated them as demos and wiped them immediately after trying them out. Eventually I got sick of it and told him to stop sending me viruses!

Apart from that I only bought original games from a local video shop whose owner sold a bit of Amiga stuff, and relied on magazines for demos. In the early days there wasn't much around, but I tried to support the local guy by buying what I could.

In 1991 I opened my own computer shop which gave me access to anything I wanted. Of course I had to try out all the new games before selling them (to make sure the disks loaded etc.) and bought a few that I liked for myself. Magazines were a good source of demos and I stocked all the major publications (which took 3 months to get to New Zealand, so all the reviews etc. were out of date). Meanwhile most of my customers were getting pirated games on disks sent to them from friends overseas or via international BBSs, often before I could stock them in my shop. My biggest selling item was blank disks!

Somehow, Bruce, when you say demos, I'm assuming you mean game demos and not Demoscene productions? There is a stark contrast between the two, to be honest.

I bought Amiga games back in the day and saw many games on demos on magazine coverdisks, of which I bought a LOT of Amiga magazines, but since 2000, when Amiga games are basically no longer commercially viable, then I've downloaded them for free. Sue me.

[defor]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Define 'original'. The CDTV was the first example of a popular home computer combined with a CD drive to make a true multimedia device.

I was continuing on discussion about video-game consoles and Amiga's potential in that regard. That's why I wanted to add some examples of other systems equipped with CD-ROM and demonstrate that it wasn't such an original idea. However, I admit that it was possibly more original (or rather unique) on home computer market at that time, besides Philips CD-i a year or so earlier.
Especially the public knowledge that Sega was planning to extent its tremendously successful Megadrive/Genesis by a CD-ROM drive the same year in Japan, and bring it to the US market soon, might have negatively impacted the CDTV release in 1991. However, it's only my speculation.
What I wanted to say (and demonstrate) that it wasn't easy for Commodore to create a thriving (if I should use a word from this thread's topic) video-game system either.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...proof that Commodore wasn't the worst when it came to making bad marketing decisions.

Well, I totally agree. The history of consumer electronics is full of products which failed miserably. What we usually remember are success stories. I honestly believe that Commodore did quite well with Amiga at that time, given all circumstances and an aggressive competition they had to deal with. Sure, Amiga was never a standard in professional or home personal computing, but it lasted longer than many contemporaries which also tried to face an avalanche of PCs and video-game consoles.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Commodore wasn't the worst when it came to making bad marketing decisions.

Oh, it WAS, without a doubt. No question about it. Absolutely was.

Philips doesn't count, they didn't sell computers, Commodore did.

Damn Commodore, maybe I need to dig up my rant about it, needs much more input.