If commodore had $$millions in `92, would the amiga still be around?

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

The problem was two fold...

1The A500 didn't even have a TV modulator built in...where did all the money go?

I think most of it was spent on the CDTV

[TCD]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Quake 1 on the other had was different, you really did need a high-end machine (at the time) to play the thing at a decent frame-rate.

Yup, *and* it has way more options to tweak the performance I'm still surprised that it runs really fast on DDNIs 1200. However, I don't think that these things really had a big impact on the Amiga going down (same with piracy). The decisions that made Commodore fail were 'homegrown', so I doubt loads of money would have helped much.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by mfletcher

Wasnt one of the problems that the Amiga faced was rampant piracy? Werent devs moving off the platform to the PC because of falling sales?

A common misconception often stated. Piracy had absolutely nothing to do with software and games developers moving platform to the Mac and PC. It was purely because the hardware sales of Amigas were dropping and the developers could see Commodore was in financial trouble. They moved to the PC to save their own businesses. Not because of piracy.

Pirating software has been just as bad on every platform ever made. The PC especially. And think about it. The more piracy on a platform will increase hardware sales of that platform, not hinder it, as more and more people buy into the platform knowing they can obtain free software. However this also increases software sales, because even those pirating software will still buy some real software during their time using the platform, and so that will still increase sales of the software.

Piracy was huge on the Amiga in the late 80's and yet games developers enjoyed big sales of their games. Piracy can even work as a marketing tool for some software sales. So often people obtain a free copy of a game and enjoy it so much that they then buy the original.

Or in the case of other software, taking Photoshop as the best example, pirated copies are used to learn the software by students, and then when they come to use it commercially the companies they work for buy a real copy, therefore making one more sale for the developer. When piracy is stated as the key reason for the failure of a software company you have to look more closely at the software they were producing and question if it really was the quality of their products that ultimately led to their downfall.

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Business customers would never adopt a non PC standard EVER, think of the training for engineers and staff and think of the costs of redesigning networks etc. Hell even IBM couldn't crack it with PS/2 architecture and OS/2 operating system.

Actually, you can blame the failing of OS/2 on Microsoft. IBM and Microsoft co-developed OS/2, but Microsoft was only really in it for the OS development technology. They then pulled out of the OS and instead used all the best bits to go on to develop NT. Something which has now become the underlying architecture for XP, Vista and Win7.

And that argument doesn't really hold water. Win9x and DOS were the industry standards. However now NT based OSs are the desktop standard and DOS and a lot of Win9x code doesn't run as standard. Microsoft managed to change the standard that PCs used. And in effect you could say that the legacy of OS/2 lives on because of these NT based OSs.

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

Commodore pissed away their advantage of Daphne Agnus Paula for nearly a decade AND stuck with a 68000 for over half a century.

The A500 and A2000 are essentially the same as the A1000 which is a 1985 design! And the A3000 was not really any better than the A2000 + 16/25mhz 030 C= cpu card inside. FAIL.

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I think most of it was spent on the CDTV

It is very true that Commodore spent too many years enjoying the fruits of the original A1000 design. Repackaging it into the A500 and A2000 and living off the profits for years. By the time the AGA chipset machines were released the PC was already ahead of the Amiga with dedicated graphics and sound cards that could surpass the capabilities of the ageing OCS chipset. Commodore had just left it too late to catch up and compete against the PC market which had the big advantage of being an open modular design with hardware components made by many manufacturers making up each PC build.

It was purely for this reason, and no other, that Commodore failed in the end.

I'm actually surprised Apple managed to hang on with the Mac and didn't go a similar way. It was eventually only the invention of the iPod that saved them. They don't really make any money on their Mac hardware any more.

I don't believe Commodore were wrong in developing the CDTV. In fact I think it was a very brave move. OK, it was a commercial failure, but they could see the possibilities for the future of home entertainment. The technology just wasn't quite there yet to deliver the full vision they had. And only really now with the PS3 and Xbox 360 are we starting to see the real ideas behind a true multimedia platform being realised. Therefore Commodore were really 20 years ahead in he ideas they had behind the CDTV.

The CD32 on the other hand was a big mistake. It was a last ditch attempt to try and catch up with the games industry, which it could see was quickly moving away from home computers as the main platform for gaming, and into the console market. They should have instead concentrated on delivering an official CD drive for the A1200 and A4000. I think had they done that we would have seen a lot more software and games development for CD on the Amiga. With limited funds Commodore were never going to be able to take on the big players in the console market, and with the arrival of Sony and the PSX it was the end of even some already big in the console marketplace.

Originally Posted by alexh

Commodore UK had $$ in 1994 and it didn't last too long...

Commodore UK was the only profitable part of Commodore at the end and were making money. The UK was probably the most successful location for the A1200, along with some other EU countries such as Germany, because Commodore UK knew what they had in the hardware and how to market it at the right customer base.

Commodore US never really knew how to market the Amiga. With the C64 they had been so successful because it was a great home computer that could easily be marketed at the home computer market for games and education. But with the Amiga they instantly tried to be too ambitious and greedy and tried to take on the PC market, marketing the Amiga as a professional business machine. Something that wasn't its key strength. Yes the Amiga could do anything the PCs of that era could do, but it was so much more and Commodore US just didn't market the Amiga to those strengths, so initially the A1000 didn't sell as well as it should have purely because of bad marketing decisions made by corporate suits who didn't understand what the Amiga was, and aimed it at a price point out of the reach of home users.

If it hadn't been for the A500 I think Commodore would have gone bust a long time before it did. The A500 was the model that really made the Amiga popular as a home computer and games machine, and was responsible for the majority of sales in the 80's (especially in Europe). It was affordable, and it delivered what C64 fans wanted in their next platform.

Originally Posted by Paul_s

Nowadays if the Amiga was still around it'd just turn into a glorified Intel based PC - pretty much like a Mac i'd imagine (the mac went to PPC and then, look at it now.... Intel... ) and that wasn't what the Amiga was about....

I don't think we will ever know what form the Amiga would have taken had it survived.

Had the history of the Amiga been different and proper development happened throughout the 80's and into the 90's the Amiga would have been far more advanced by 1992, and the A1200 wouldn't have been the system we now know. Continued development of the Amiga would have kept it ahead of anything the PC market was developing and we might have seen the computer market place moving in a completely different form or direction.

That is the dream of pretty much all Amiga fans still around. That Commodore had developed the Amiga throughout its lifetime to keep it ahead of the game. Rather than living off the profits of the original Lorraine design.

[Cammy]

This is how a new Amiga looks now - http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.p...hardware&pid=1

It runs AmigaOS 4.1. You can use standard PC keyboards, mice, hard drives and even PCI graphics cards.

It just seems like some people are ignoring the current Amigas, and while they might not be ground breaking like they once were, they're still fun machines with an awesome Operating System. At least by using a Sam you get to try all of the very latest Amiga software which is still being made, and support the remaining Amiga community.

Oh yeah, and being a MiniITX motherboard, it'll fit in the smallest PC cases available, some are about 20cmX20cm, so they're really compact and energy efficient too.

[gilgamesh]

I think Commodore would face hard times today. The computers market has changed considerably since the early 90s. I bet the last round of nVidia vs ATI/AMD cost more money for development than the whole Amiga series. Plus there isn't much to earn from yet another OS.


I can imagine Commodore mobile phones. Not as cool as iPhone, but on a level with Samsung etc. If Commodore would really be loaded, then they even might have done something similar to the PS3, without crippling it for desktop use. But PS3 was a flop.


The key to the Amiga's fame is the devotion of its makers. They just wanted to do it right.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Cammy

It just seems like some people are ignoring the current Amigas...

The current Amiga OS 4 is in reality just another OS that can be run on PPC based computers. That doesn't make any of these PPC systems an Amiga.

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

piracey is rampant in and on all platforms, the reason they may change platforms is more lucrative deals to be made in different markets..

With the exception of the PS3

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Harrison

The current Amiga OS 4 is in reality just another OS that can be run on PPC based computers. That doesn't make any of these PPC systems an Amiga.

This is so true, i can't quote it enough times. The last Amiga chip was an 060 CPU, then it ended....forever.

The Amiga died a natural death. It was the last popular "so called" homecomputer. The PC prices sank drastically in the mid 90's, 3D software was on the way, just like consoles with 3D capabilities. Discussed here on EAB several times. I don't think that Commodore had detailed plans for a "better future".

[gilgamesh]

I'm not so sure about this. AAA and Nyx were quite promising.

[Retro-Nerd]

The PCs weren't stoppable in 1992/93. It was too late.

[gilgamesh]

Yet Apple survived and thrives today.

[Retro-Nerd]

Apple is a US phenomenon. Style over technology. Well, it worked and still works...somehow.

[Retro1234]

Ive asked the powers that be to drop the Amiga name from OS4, but...............
OS4 is as much related to AmigaOS as TripOs, maybe they should call it TripOS4

Apple only an OS only a name now that it runs on IBM compatible hardware.

[JACK98]

i think 1992/1993 was the make or break time for commodore.I don't think their current machines at the time could had ran doom/wolfeinstein without a upgrade of ram at the time.cant really justify myself paying for the sam when modern p.c is way cheaper...

[gilgamesh]

Gateway/AI would have been insane to continue AAA. It would have been
revolutionary if released in 1990, pretty cool in 1992, ok in 1994 (the
earliest it could have been released on the schedule we had, with a
healthy Commodore). Today, it would be a horribly expensive thing with
less graphics performance than any old everyday $10 PCI-based SVGA
graphics chip. There is simply no point whatsoever. And that's spelled
"HAYNIE"...
- Dave Haynie, Team Amiga ML, 3/5/99.

found here

[Photon]

The PC got cloned, and this opened up a much nicer licensing option for component manufacturers. The PC was built to replace everything on the bus, CPU, bigger harddisk, etc. Whereas for Amiga, C= didn't make or actively help bring replacement cards and components to make the Amiga stay ahead.

Business people could see that, and also Microsoft had jumped on first the IBM bandwagon and then the clones bandwagon. IBM, cheap clones, and Microsoft were the hottest buzzwords then. With hundreds of companies being able to promote the PC via its (fill in the rest, cheap computers, components, software,...), the PC was hugely promoted from all kinds of places, and Amiga was really less known than the rest of the "home computers" in the USA, which is where the "PC happened".

IBM and later PC manufs spent gazillions on supporting devs of hardware and software, tbh I dunno where all the Amiga profits went.

Perhaps to CDTV and CD32, if so, it was a bad bet. People who pay for software and components don't spend their money on CD players and consoles, assuming they could be expanded or "installed to" in the first place.

Maybe if they had spent the money on an "expandable enough" desktop computer for serious work and serious games (that didn't cost $3000 and was actually advertised) in 1987... but in 1987 the IBM PC was 6 years old and had already gained velocity in the hardware race.

[Jakodemus]

Originally Posted by JACK98

i think 1992/1993 was the make or break time for commodore,i dont think their current machines at the time could had ran doom/wolfeinstein without a upgrade of ram at the time,cant really justify meself paying for the sam when modern p.c is way cheaper...

Doom is completely playable on A4000 with A3640. Its even playable with A3630 or A3000. For some reason ID just didn't want to do Amiga port of Doom. Maybe Microsoft made an offer they couldn't refuse or maybe John Carmack is just a bad programmer.

[TCD]

Or maybe it was just not profitable to make that conversion for a nearly dead platform. Ever seen the SNES port? It's awful, but since you could make some bucks with it, it was done. Simple as that.

[switchblade]

Er... Doom was not ported to the Amiga til 1998 (was it?), so by then, John Carmack would obviously have not cared about making an Amiga source port, since it wouldn't have been profitable. Calling him a bad programmer has to be the most idiotic thing I've ever heard of. The man was responsible for programming the game engines for Doom and Wolfenstein 3D for fucks sake.

The suits at Commodore literally dug their own grave, because they never fully understood what the Amiga was capable of, and as a result, they've completely ignored or neglected to look at their competition in the long run, as a result of their shitty business practices. There's really nothing else to it.

[Jakodemus]

Originally Posted by switchblade

Calling him a bad programmer has to be the most idiotic thing I've ever heard of. The man was responsible for programming the game engines for Doom and Wolfenstein 3D for fucks sake.

No need to take things so seriously. I guess I should use those smilies...