Most evil person against the Amiga development

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by stevelord

I'm with Bruce Abbott on the whole Pleasance front. Great sales guy, little understanding of the products being sold. Wasn't the A1500 his baby? You can tell Pleasance is a salesguy. He's not the only person to hype his position in the story but I think he's the only one to write 3 books about it.

Disagree with Bruce about RJ and Dave. I guess it's a bit much for me to suggest Pleasance sucked because of a lack of product knowledge and RJ and Dave blew the Lynx by it not selling well. Lynx had some great games (and crap ones too), but for all it's faults it was the best hardware out at the time. Same with the 3DO. Those guys have form for stuff that blows away the status quo.

Agree with your take on RJ and Dave, engineers have nothing to do with sales of what they create and shouldn't be involved in the sales side. Their focus is in providing the best solution possible within the budget given.

The Lynx failed because Epyx failed to meet their contractual obligations towards Atari, went bankrupt and Atari got all the hardware.

3DO was a mess, because it was licensed it drove the hardware price up beyond what regular gamers could afford. The licensing model was terrible as console manufacturers generally sell hardware below cost and their return on investment is licensing software.

Neither the outcome of the Lynx or 3DO had anything to do with their hardware engineers.

Would have loved to see lynx hardware in a new Amiga though

[ImmortalA1000]

The 3DO was too expensive I agree, and that was down to EA deciding it would be an MSX style thing with loads of people making consoles but adding to the retail price.

Still the ARM CPU in the 3DO in the equivalent Acorn RISC PC alone (with something between A500-1200 spec graphics) cost more than twice the price of the 3DO.

LYNX, PC Engine GT and Gamegear were all slaughtered by the Gameboy because of battery life really, well the magazines told people that was a problem for the rivals.

Either way both of their chipsets were top end and way beyond anything Commodore engineers ever did with the A1000 chipset after forcing out all the engineering talent that made the Amiga chipset. I'd rather play 3DO Need for Speed than F1GP on a £2000 A4000/040 that's for sure.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Agree with your take on RJ and Dave, engineers have nothing to do with sales of what they create and shouldn't be involved in the sales side. Their focus is in providing the best solution possible within the budget given.

That's the attitude that got Commodore into trouble. People fault Bill Snydes for killing AAA, but it needed to be done. Not just because it was dragging on but because the machines it would go in were too expensive.

Good engineers are always keenly aware of the sales side. It's what led to the success of the ZX Spectrum, VIC-20, C64, Amstrad CPC and the Amiga 500. It failed in cases like the A3000 and CDTV, where the engineers were given free reign within a budget. Sales price matters much more than development cost. A model with the right combination of features and price will sell many times more than enough to recoup development costs, while one that flops is a waste of even the smallest budget.

A common theme that crops up here again and again is suggestions that some hardware could have been added for only a few bucks, with no consideration of the total production costs or how it would affect the retail price. For example, why does the Amiga use two identical CIA chips when each one could have been custom designed for specific jobs? Answer:- using the same chip in two places is much cheaper than having to produce and stock two different chips. Even small items like resistors and capacitors are often chosen to minimize the BOM rather than have optimum values.

A well designed system is as cheap as it could possibly be and still be marketable. That applies to the entire production and marketing effort. Some apparently 'minor' change like adding 2 inches to the case width could have major effects like making the box too big to stack neatly in a standard container, leading to increased shipping costs and missing a 'magic' retail price point.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I'd rather play 3DO Need for Speed than F1GP on a £2000 A4000/040 that's for sure.

I've never even seen a 3DO, but I would much rather have an 4000/040 thanks - even if it doesn't play 'Need for Speed' as well as an overpriced console.

A console needs to be cheap because it is just a means to an end (playing games) while a computer is also the end for hobbyists like us. We spend way more time tuning the system up for highest performance and making the desktop look pretty than we do actually using it. We play Quake just long enough to check the frame rate, and spend hours organizing files that we will probably never use again. Then we hate on the Vampire 4 Standalone because it's just an unassuming little box with no character - a perfectly valid criticism!

[fxgogo]

People are a lot more nuanced. We do good thing and we do bad things. A lot of those good things and bad things are subjective and change depending on who is viewing them. We also basing this on the most slim amount of knowledge of what went on in Commodore. Companies are complex organisms and no decision is really taken by one person.

[Pyromania]

Personally I love the Vampire 4! What a sexy beast! Too bad we didn’t have this machine in 1994.

[Arc Angel]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

SNIP

Still the ARM CPU in the 3DO in the equivalent Acorn RISC PC alone (with something between A500-1200 spec graphics) cost more than twice the price of the 3DO.

SNIP.

???
The ARM60 in the 3DO runs at 12 Mhz when 1st series of RISC PCs have a 30 Mhz ARM610.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TCD

Oh yeah: 14 - David Pleasance

Originally Posted by gimbal

It isn't really fun to have a list of people, what is fun is their list of (mis-)deeds.

[ Show youtube player ]

[kremiso]

can i add a developer himself?

in specific who coded the scrolling into ICE Software games

Turbo Out Run, Chase HQ II, Cisco Heat

...persevering is a crime

[alkis21]

I vote for Stuart Campbell.

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by alkis21

I vote for Stuart Campbell.

That requires quite the over-inflated view of Stuart Campbell's importance, I'm not sure we've seen that since Amiga Power was in print


(I'm joking of course, but reading that felt like the ghost of the old Team17 was whispering in my ear)

[BastyCDGS]

I vote for nobody.

Why?

I wouldn't call any of the people involved in Commodore's demise evil.

Remember that evil means having a bad character and traits which actively(!) seek to destroy someone/some stuff. I don't see this having happened with Commodore back in the old days.

The demise of Commodore is mainly caused by incompetence and bad decisions. But there is AFAIK nothing that shows it was a conspiracy or something like that.