23 October 2023, 19:23 | #61 |
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How many falcons and how many A1200s were sold?
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23 October 2023, 20:04 | #62 |
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Many many more A1200 than Falcons. I even think that Commodore sold more A4000 than Atari sold both Falcons models.
The A1200 was selling well before C bankrupcy. I even remember a line in French magazine Joystick (which weren't particularly Amiga fans) in early 1994 where they were saying that sales were unexpectedly high and surprised many publishers. Of course everything collapsed after may 1994. Last edited by sokolovic; 23 October 2023 at 20:10. |
23 October 2023, 21:06 | #63 |
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Lots of quotes of the Atari Falcon selling 13-14k units by Sep 1993, before they sold the rights to C-lab and 4k units of unsold stock, so a maximum of 18k by the end i should imagine.
From what i can find going through old Amiga mags, UK wise of the 44k A1200’s sold in 1992, 30k were in the UK, 70k more were by end of Q2 1993, Com UK stated 46k sold in ‘summer quarter’ taking it to 146k by end of Q3 1993, and a reported 160k were sold Q4 Christmas 1993 period which were the last numbers reported (total of 306k) before the A1200 shortage in early 1994. Other countries are harder to find numbers, Germany we had that 115k number quoted of March 1994. I’ve seen numbers low as 5-10k for some Scandinavian countries. So my guesstimate would be 500k Commodore A1200’s sold worldwide. Then add the 50k Amiga Technologies unit sales from 95/96. |
24 October 2023, 02:17 | #64 |
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I remember seeing early previews of the Falcon in maybe May/June 92, wow on paper the specs looked fantastic and completely trashed the new leaked AGA specs. However when u saw the price I just completely wrote it off.
I had an A500 at that state with 2.5Meg if RAM, there is now way I was going back to a 1 Meg machine and the 4Meg version was just beyond what I could afford, May as well go horrible PC at that stage. However, when I did get my A1200 around late October 92, I loved it but it did feel it wasn't that much of an improvement over the A500 and that the Falcon really was next gen. I'm glad I did choose the A1200 but I've always wanted a Falcon but the prices are insane. I was also really disappointed to hear recently it only has a 16bit bus which gimps its capabilities, again no mafa covered that limitation back in the day. |
24 October 2023, 12:05 | #65 |
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What was the reason to cripple it with 16-bits bus?
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24 October 2023, 12:15 | #66 |
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Cost cutting.
They did similar stupid things with the STe, giving it a 4096 colour pallete but then keeping the same three screen modes which really wouldn't showcase those extra colours without TIMER-B reload tricks. Should have at least allowed the STe to have a native 32 colour mode, its like they saw a spec sheet for the Amiga but only read the first word of each spec without looking at the details. Same problem with the improved sound on the STe, Amiga had 4 independent volumes for each channel, STe had one, which is why samples appear cut off on STe but fade out nicely on Amiga. Cost cutting and without considering what those cuts would affect, because each of their machines just seemed to be reacting to what Commodore were doing and not having an actual design ethos of their own. |
24 October 2023, 13:06 | #67 | |
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Was A1200 to blame for Falcon's failure?
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Id really love to hear some engineer that worked on the Falcon, explaining some of those design decisions. ;-) I always thought the 16bit bus was due to its 1040 legacy. Looking at all component choices 16bit data bus feels like a pretty bad cost-saver. The first ”Falcon” prototype was a 1040STE with a ”Sparrow” card featuring the 030, math copro and the DSP. If it was designed from the ground up, its difficult to imagine that the data bus is what they would focus on in the cost cutting. They could have chosen 020 instead of full 030, low density floppy, no external scsi connector etc.. I guess you could use cheaper memory, but you only got 1MB and getting extra was already expensive anyway so that logic ”doesnt fly..” Last edited by eXeler0; 24 October 2023 at 21:45. |
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24 October 2023, 13:46 | #68 |
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Maybe they thought that putting a 16bit bus would'nt have been noticed. People generally checks only the basics specs, especially at that time (see post #64).
Last edited by sokolovic; 24 October 2023 at 15:45. |
24 October 2023, 13:59 | #69 | |
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Was A1200 to blame for Falcon's failure?
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Or maybe the Jaguar engineers ”did the math” for the Falcon team ;-) 32(cpu)+16(data)+24(address)=72 , see the Falcon is 72-bit, thats plenty fellas Last edited by eXeler0; 24 October 2023 at 14:49. |
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24 October 2023, 14:42 | #70 | |
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24 October 2023, 14:49 | #71 |
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Yep. Even on Atari forums it's hard to find info about newer games (most seem to be for Atari STEs that also run on the Falcon). PiStorm might come to the Falcon, so maybe then we'll see what a PiStormed Falcon vs a PiStormed A1200 can do
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25 October 2023, 01:18 | #72 |
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Because the cost of RAM had increased significantly in the early 90s.
Atari had no choice! If you want fast access to RAM with Motorola's 32-bit CPUs like the 68020/30, you're limited on memory configurations, you can't do what you want. With a 32-Bit BUS, it's 2 or 8 MB, and with a 16-Bit BUS, it's 4 or 16 MB. 8MB would have been too expensive, and 2 MB too little for a Falcon. We tend to forget that all the Falcon's video and audio data take up twice as much memory space as on the Amiga (16Bit sound and GFX 16 Hi-Color). So Atari chose a stock memory configuration with 4MB and a 16-bit BUS. I think Atari has found the right compromise, especially as the memory bandwidth with its 16Bits BUS is higher than that of the 1200 with its 32Bits BUS!!!! Not to mention that those who wanted more performance could buy an Amiga-style accelerator card with CPU+FAST-RAM without going through the motherboard and therefore have a 32Bit BUS. I think Atari has done a good job on this machine, especially since the video component accesses RAM in 32Bits and is much faster than AGA! With a 16MHz BUS and a 32MHz video chip, the Falcon stock can offer much higher resolutions than the 1200, (>1600x600 on an RGB) or even SVGA 800x600 in 256 colors!!! |
25 October 2023, 02:00 | #73 | |
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8 channels PCM sound uses a 16-bit codec, not 8-bit like Paula, and the signal-to-noise ratio is better too. You can find comparisons on youtube that show a clear difference in favor of the Falcon. |
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25 October 2023, 02:55 | #74 | |
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25 October 2023, 04:58 | #75 |
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They didn't choose 1 or 4 MB, but 4 and 16MB.
There were no 1 MB config in the stores when they came out, the Falcons were either 4 or 16 MB, despite some advertising to the contrary, Atari didn't want to sell Falcon 1MB. With 2 MB, MultiTOS can't be used, there's virtually no RAM left to do anything else useful. With 1 or 2 MB, in audio alone, you can't do anything if you're processing samples at 49KHz in 16 Bits. Atari also wanted to make it a professional DTP machine in Germany (coz Calamus), and 8 MB wasn't enough. In fact, some people preferred the TT because it allowed configurations beyond 16MB ! A year later, 1 MB config was released by certain retailers to enable customers who wanted 16MB to buy daughterboards from third-party manufacturers (with support for SIMM modules), which enabled them to significantly reduce costs compared with Atari's memory cards! |
25 October 2023, 07:48 | #76 |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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25 October 2023, 08:08 | #77 | |||||
CaptainM68K-SPS France
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Those were retail games with retail games, and Atari gave them with their computers at ridiculous prices. So when the Falcon was launched, they said in substance "We will see if Atari sell thousands of Atari Falcon, but until now, we won't do anything on it". I think they heard or knew about Atari Difficulties to provide Falcon computers (each Atari subsidiary in each euro countries were fighting to get them). [quote]The price for the base Falcon was also another problem, sure the base Falcon was more powerful than a base A1200, the base Falcon was significantly more expensive than an A1200, and getting awfully close to a PC for price.|/quote] This and the fact that Falcons are in fact prototype machines (if you refer to Atari industrial coding for the serial numbers), not finalized computers. Quote:
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Silmarils were in the end the only publisher with Imagitec design to do commercial games on the Falcon 030. |
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25 October 2023, 08:21 | #78 |
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The Jack Attack caused the Falcon to fail. And maybe the out of this world high price.
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25 October 2023, 08:32 | #79 | |
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Quote:
That's the reason, it's not linked per se with the RAM price. The Atari Falcon 030 is a Frankenstein computer (and prototype machines, not finalized). Next almost all A1200 owners had a blizzard IV board with 030 and 8/16/32mb of fast RAM. |
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25 October 2023, 08:54 | #80 |
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I highly doubt your numbers for the A1200. Considering it solds around 100 000 units in Germany alone by the end of Commodore, it would means that it just solds 50 000 for the rest of the world.
AmigaJay post seems much more accurate to me. That said, considering how precize is your number, you maybe have some sort of source for it. EDIT : Here you have a scan of Amiga Format from feb 1994 about sales for Q4 1993. 160 000 A1200 were sold in the UK alone in these three months. https://pasteboard.co/Xnc5VQPKFS2D.jpg Last edited by sokolovic; 25 October 2023 at 09:45. |
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