Why did the CD32 fail?

[tin]

see I KNEW it was something like that!

[wanderer]

tin & utri007: Looks like you' re for the "Too late for Commodore" approach. But surely it wasn't the success they hoped for?

[tin]

I think it was, but they were physically unable to make any more, so went bankrupt. So I think u can say it was a success but it was too late for C=

[DrBong]

@Akira
Yep C= didn't have an in-house team in 1993/94, but I'm sure that they commissioned Bill Williams to produce MindWalker for bundling with A1000s back in 1985/86 and published the game themselves. They perhaps could have done the same for the CD32 or offered some financial incentives to, say, Psygnosis developers and co-published titles with them if they were too cash-strapped to commission and publish anything outright.

Originally Posted by utri007

CD32 didn't actually failed it sold quite well.

Launched in Europe during 1993 it quickly grabbed a large portion of the prototypical CD market, even beating PC CD-ROM. It's US success was also cut short when the U.S. government declared that Commodore could not bring anything into the country, as they had not paid the $10 million they owed for the XOR patent infringement lawsuit. The last ditch attempt to save the company failed and Commodore entered bankruptcy on April 29th 1994. The unshipped Amiga CD32 units were were seized by the Philippine government as payment for the use of their factory.

Whether the CD32 was a commercial success is debatable IMHO. It sold quite well in Europe....that much is true, but not well enough to save C= from bankruptcy (which was the goal they had in mind). However, penetration of the US market more than any other market, even back then, was probably the yardstick of commercial success for consoles. The CD32 didn't achieve it and I doubt that C= would have been able to achieve it in any case, irrespective of their bankruptcy. C= hadn't been able to achieve anywhere near the same sort of market penetration of the C64 in the US with any Amiga product up until that point, so I can't see that anything would have changed with the CD32 had the US govt. allowed their shipment in.

Although these events killed the CD32 as a viable platform it remained popular for several years, demonstrating a demand for Amiga CD titles. In 1994 a third party developer launched the SX-1 and SX32, allowing owners to turn their rejected console into a fully fledged Amiga

Popular for several years, demonstrating a demand for Amiga CD titles?? How so? Developers produced so little in the way of titles for the CD32 after mid-1995 that the last of the 2-3 magazines dedicated to the console had disappeared by early 1996. The quality of CD32 Gamer issues took a real dive around mid-1995 simply because they didn't have anything to review. The page count almost halved while the price almost doubled.

[Bombjacker]

The CD32 was crap.

Just didn't do anything to persuade anyone with half a brain to purchase it.

It wasn't much more than an A1200 with a CD drive (without the keyboard).

The Megadrive and Snes hadn't been out long enough for their owners to invest in another machine.

Much better games (and a lot of them) were available on Megadrive and Snes anyway.

Made the 3DO look good and the 3DO failed - what chance did the CD32 have?

Nintendo and Sega just had more financial muscle and quality in-house game designers that made 'killer apps' (I hate that term and wish to banish the originator of it to Room 101) such as Mario and Sonic games amongst many others.

Commodore struggled to do anything right after the A500/600.

The CD32 was crap.

I apologise to anyone who has fond memories of the machine, although I pity those who bought one.

[dreamkatcha]

It was only crap if you already had an A1200. If you hadn't owned an Amiga before and only wanted to play games then it was the best option IMO, especially considering that gaming was shifting away from the floppy format.

I had an A600 at the time and even I was hankering after one of the new CD32s because it would have been worth the expense just to get away from all that disk swapping which plagued the Miggy. Logic kicked in in the end and I stuck with my A600.

Many people wouldn't have considered buying an Amiga previously if they weren't into computers. Consoles were a different kettle of silicon. Commodore were likely targeting a fresh audience so I see the CD32 as a worthy addition to the Amiga line, even if the differences between it and the A1200 were miniscule.

[Bombjacker]

Originally posted by Echostryker

If you hadn't owned an Amiga before and only wanted to play games then it was the best option IMO, especially considering that gaming was shifting away from the floppy format.

The success of Nintendo and Sega (for a while at least) and the complete failure of the CD32 speaks for itself.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Bombjacker

The success of Nintendo and Sega (for a while at least) and the complete failure of the CD32 speaks for itself.

I think if Nintendo and Sega went bankrupt within 6-9 months of releasing their respective consoles, then they too would have enjoyed much less success! As it is, the CD32 wasn't a complete failure by virtue of the fact that it sold quite well in Europe prior to C='s collapse.

[Doc Mindie]

I think it was the marketing techniques.

With the CDTV, they put restrictions on where the stroes could put the machines. Did they learn from that mistake? Hardly.

I think, that all in all.....Commodore shouldn't EVER have tried the console market. They should have stuck with what they knew: Making good computers.

[Zetr0]

I would say the primary reason was the incredibly poor marketing stragem provided by CBM.


1. Doomed before Launch ?
after all launching modified A1200 with no dedicated software... i cannot name one game that used the akiko chip (chunky to planner / vice versa).
there was no real NEW technology brake through a 32bit console had been SOooooOOoo done.... look what happened to the Jaguar

2. Would it not be better to develop more?
Released in an age where the console market was saturated with good and CHEAP consoles (SNES / MEGADRIVE) with fantastic games and support (peripherals etc)

3. Better competition ? prelude the PSX
The 3DO was released in and arround, the same time and this could watch movie cd's that needn't be converted to CDXL format first. because of this the inclusion sceens were much better thusly making the game feel better produced etc..

4. Longevity or dead platform ?
biggest let down for the CD32 after the debacle of marketing stratagy was no dedicated software, if you had an A1200 with CDROM and HDD a cd32 was a poor runner in comparison and anyone whom knew an amiga user new that.

5. Style, good / bad or just indifferent.
Personally i didn`t mind the syle of the Cd32, but in truth i was not inspiried by it either, take the small sleek lines of the SNES or the MEGADRIVE, perhaps even the sheer dominating style of the 3D0 block next to the VCR.

6. Sega / Nintendo V's Bullit Proof CBM
After the Amiga / ST wars left a lot of smugg peeps at CBM believing that after a hit with the C64 then the A500 followed by the A1200 (not to mention the HUGE business sucess of the A1000 /2000/3000 and 4000)
they where infalible.

7. the 4 year itch
CBM had not realised that the first 2 years in a consoles markets life you opperate at loss but the remainder at proffit.. something Atari's Jag, Philips 3DO, Segas Saturn, Nintendos Game Cube and more recently Microsofts XBOX proved. Had CBM done thier homework it would of been obvious that to release an non hardware competative in a relatively young market. please note the Atari Jaguar had a lot more technical and hardware abilities and even this failed. why?

8. And back to the marketing structure.
Exatly how do you advertsie? is it the machine or the software. I have been in the IT indusrty for many years and to make THE money you dont sell the hardware or the software indepenently you sell the SOLUTION, whom rembers the adverts for mortal kombat on tv? i can even remember some nintendo adverts cool were they not? *anyone remember an Amiga game on tv?* I remeber the CD32 advert "just the console none of the games". Today's marketing stratagey has all these games looking fly and yummy on TV / Cinima etc and then at the end its Nintendo XBOX or PS2 the solution..

[Mark Thompson]

Originally Posted by EmuChicken

ooops, I clicked the wrong button

Does anyone know where I can get them old ads from ? :-) I wanna see em!

[ Show youtube player ]

[Fred the Fop]

You forget, Amiga was a subdivision of an American company, not a European one, and the CD32 (and most Amiga computers) are almost unknown and invisible here in the USA. If Commodore would not market an item here, I don't think they bothered much to sell it beyond Europe. I think if Amiga was part of a European company, it would have survived much better, or even to this day as a REAL company.

[Fred the Fop]

Originally Posted by Mark Thompson

[ Show youtube player ]

Example of a horrible ad.

[wanderer]

Originally Posted by Fred the Duck

Example of a horrible ad.

It might look horrible now (looks cool to me though ) but at the time maybe it didn't look cheesy.

[Fred the Fop]

Originally Posted by wanderer

It might look horrible now (looks cool to me though ) but at the time maybe it didn't look cheesy.

Not that it was cheesy, it did a terrible job of showing the game. Only one game is seen, Microcosm, and there were too many shots of the scientists and alien robot thing. People would look at it and say "What the fuck..I want to see the games!"

[Magno Boots]

You forgot one important option on your poll...

'I didn't buy the CD32 because it was too expensive'

[shillard]

Poor marketing - the answer to most of the "why" questions that come up about the Amiga.

[boing_1000]

Originally Posted by shillard

Poor marketing - the answer to most of the "why" questions that come up about the Amiga.

Yeah pretty much. I saw a CD32 once at the Commodore computer store by my house. I was still into lemmings and shadow of the beast at the time so I didn't really care for it. I got a Sega Genesis for Christmas and completely forgot about the CD32.

Certainly not for being ugly, it looks awesome! Not that looks count for much of course.

[AmigaHope]

There were several things wrong with the CD32.

1. Released too late -- it really should've been developed in parallel with the A1200/A4000. The Saturn (ultimate 2D gaming system with some 3D capability) the PSX (first real 3D console), and the NEC PC-FX would all come in late 1994 to smash it. If the CD32 had been released in 1992 it would've had way more lead time to build a following.

2. Had only CHIP RAM -- The AGA chipset *HOGS* chipram bandwidth. If they'd included 2 megs or even *1* meg of fastram as standard, it would've doubled the performance of the machine! I think a 2M + 2M configuration would've definitely made the console more impressive.

Things that would've HELPED if it could've been done affordably:

3. Could've used a 3D processor -- it wouldn't have to have been a very good one to compete in 1992, or even 1993. I think they could've done without. Remember in late '94 only the PSX had any real 3D support in hardware. The Saturn had a lame, slow coprocessor that was so slow that its two main 25Mhz SH-2 CPUs could outdo it with software rendering, and the NEC PC-FX had no real 3D capability at all other than rudimentary software rendering in its 20Mhz CPU.

3. No FMV as standard -- Something the PSX and NEC PC-FX had built-ing, and the Saturn could do semi-okay in software thanks to its much more powerful processors. Honestly I don't think this could've been done in hardware affordably in 1992 or even 1993, but a 28Mhz 020 with 2M+2M memory configuration would've been able to do okay FMV in software.