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

[switchblade]

If Commodore had finished their experimental AAA chipset, and released it somewhere in between 1989 to 1991, it could have easily been the next great Amiga (it should have been the REAL A1200). The A1200, released the way it was, could never become the next blockbuster hit like the A500 did.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

As i said, the time for 2D games (except for handhelds) was over.

@CDTV

The CTV had 1MB Chipram, enough for all games they released at that time. Unfortunately the most CDTV stuff was "multi-media" crap.

Yeah, right. Why, why, why was it "multi-media" crap and not "7th Guest"? (Tell the difference.) Ambermoon was 3D, pretty good when compared to PC games, and ran even on my A500 (please insert floppy #10).

[gilgamesh]

@switchblade: partly agree; see Haynie's quot that I posted earlier

[TCD]

Originally Posted by switchblade

If Commodore had finished their experimental AAA chipset, and released it somewhere in between 1989 to 1991, it could have easily been the next great Amiga (it should have been the REAL A1200). The A1200, released the way it was, could never become the next blockbuster hit like the A500 did.

Spot on switchblade Too late and not up to date enough to have an impact on the market anymore.

[Retro-Nerd]

Ok, 7th Guest was a good exceptional case. But the most PC CD games were pure crap in 1992/93. They also released a lot of "plain disk to CD "ports for the PC.

The masses were ready for new consoles, but not before the Saturn/PSX.

[switchblade]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Ok, 7th Guest was a good exceptional case. But the most PC CD games were pure crap in 1992/93. They also released a lot of "plain disk to CD "ports for the PC.

The masses were ready for new consoles, but not before the Saturn/PSX.

I believe the term you're looking for for those "plain disk to CD" ports is called shovelware. >_>

Those same shovelware games could easily be found on PC's, Sega CD, CD32, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, and Phillips CD-i.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Ok, 7th Guest was a good exceptional case. But the most PC CD games were pure crap in 1992/93. They also released a lot of "plain disk to CD "ports for the PC.

Yeah, but that time the size of the games had become so big, that deploying them via floppy did not make sense any more. Remember Ultima:Pagan? The extra speech pack on floppy? Many games were released in a better version on CD.

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The masses were ready for new consoles, but not before the Saturn/PSX.

Oh, I don't get the point

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Oh, I don't get the point

This was related to my "3D0, CD32, Sega CD.... were commercial flops" comment. The people expected better hardware/cool game announcements. Sony and Sega had this stuff in late 1994/early 1995.

[Harrison]

The problem they all had in the early 90's, regardless of the platform, was what to use CD for. They suddenly had this huge (for the time) 650MB of storage on a single disc, but until that point most games and software had been fitting on 2-4 floppy disks, with a few games needing a few more. Hardly large enough to justify a 650MB storage size.

Obviously the larger multidisc games like BASS could benefit from this as it could mean no more disk swapping during gameplay. Plus the ability to include CD quality audio tracks during the gameplay. But that still didn't fill the disc up.

It wasn't just Commodore with the CDTV and then the CD32 that struggled with utilising CD as a storage medium. It was the whole industry and every platform that tried to use it. Even the PC market struggled to sell CD drives to begin with. Using the buzz word "multimedia PC" to try and prove a PC with a soundcard, graphics card and CD-drive were the future that you had to own.

It wasn't really until the Playstation that developers really got an idea how to use the storage of a CD properly and usefully, and even later with games like Final Fantasy 7 that we really see what a CD based system can utilise CDs to achieve.

[Predabot]

Personally, I think they would have faced the same situation as the MaC, and become a very, very small and niche market. And probably not quite as successful as those even. :\

That is, if one has to believe that the Amiga must be a home computer first, and a games-console second. On the other hand, this was also a part of the reason why the Amiga worked in the first place... It was both a console and a PC, all in one. So maybe shifting to Console wouldn't have worked...

Originally Posted by mattbarton.exe

Still, the big problem was that AGA, 16-bit sound, and CD-ROM just took too long. If they could have gotten that technology out three or four years earlier, it could have proven decisive. Imagine what might have happened if the 1200 had arrived in 1988, for instance.

One of my favorite scenarios is what might have happened if Commodore had licensed out its Amiga OS and let all component/computer manufacturers compete to provide cheaper and better systems. There was still a gap there between DOS and Windows 95 that could have been filled quite nicely. Of course, not sure how the Motorolas could have competed with the Intels at that point, especially after the Pentium in 93.

The Motorola's would not have competed very well against the power of the Pentium I'm afraid. The genius of Vinod Dham and the Intel dev-teams simply can't be denied.

I agree that a release of A1200 earlier could have made LOTS of stuff happen tho. Lots of interesting possibilities. Most have been referred to earlier in this thread tho, methinks.

You mention the idea of the Amiga going more PC, opening up it's hardware a bit more, like what IBM did with PC, but then wouldn't Amiga have become like the PC? Would it still have been the Amiga we know and love then...?

Food for thought.

[switchblade]

Honestly, the two things that set the Amiga apart from the competition was its' OS and customized hardware. Yea sure, other computers at that time used the same 68000 CPU like the Amiga did, but the Mac and the ST never had the Amiga's amazing graphical and sound capabilities.

In a certain kind of twisted way, I'm glad that the Amiga never went the modern day route of Apple. Even if Commodore was somehow able to stay afloat after 1994, they would eventually fuck up somewhere, and destroy the Amiga as a whole; or they would release a much more superior and cheaper version of their own MP3 Player, and give it the same fate as the Amiga did.

Bad business is still bad business, no matter how good their products may be.

[gilgamesh]

Atari died in a similar way as Commodore died. What may that mean in this context? Maybe it wasn't all Commodore's management's fault, after all?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

Atari died in a similar way as Commodore died.

No, it did not.

[mattbarton.exe]

As I see it, the Amiga 1000 was their only real breakthrough. Everything after that was a refinement. What they really needed to survive was another breakthrough on the level that the 1000 represented, and that just didn't happen with the 1200/4000. If it had, though, you'd have had a new Amiga out in 1992 that was just as good as a 2000-era PC. There's no way the developers or the public could have ignored that.

[switchblade]

Atari made shit products that never sold, except for the 2600, the ST, and their 8-bit home computers. Aside from that, they also had stupid management, bad marketing techniques, and certain home consoles that they released under inconvenient times.

5600: Was not backwards compatible with the 2600, had horrible joysticks, and a library of re released games that you could have easily gotten on the 2600, so why bother?

7800: Arrived at the wrong time, and was ill-equipped to take on the NES.

Jaguar: Ill conceived effort to try and take on the SNES, Playstation, and the Sega Saturn. It had badly designed and faulty hardware, horrible controllers, and a small game library. This system literally destroyed Atari as a hardware company.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by switchblade

Jaguar: Ill conceived effort to try and take on the SNES, Playstation, and the Sega Saturn. It had badly designed and faulty hardware, horrible controllers, and a small game library. This system literally destroyed Atari as a hardware company.

Not quite accurate, I think Atari were already well on the way down the toilet when they released the Jaguar. In a similar way to the CD32, it was a last ditch effort to make some money.

Although the Jag had a crippling HW bug and a terriable SDK is was quite a nice bit of HW and a lot of our fav games looked far better on it than on our Miggys.

[Retro-Nerd]

The Atari Lynx was a great handheld, but of course they lost against the Game Boy. Reasons are known.

[switchblade]

True...

The point I should have made was that Atari literally turned into a bad company for a good number of reasons, one of which, was that most of their products sucked except for a few.

Commodore had two great products on their hands, but they failed to take advantage of one of them, and it didn't help that their management was more than neglectful of their competition.

[TCD]

Another major difference is that Atari also produced their own games, which is why Atari didn't die the same way. This has of course nothing to do with the question if Commodore would be still around and would still produce a kind of Amiga today if the had '$$millions' in 1992. Like Matt said only something really overwhelmingly different could have changed their fate in 1992 (or better before). Also the product would have to be advertised way better.

[chiark]

Originally Posted by mattbarton.exe

As I see it, the Amiga 1000 was their only real breakthrough. Everything after that was a refinement. What they really needed to survive was another breakthrough on the level that the 1000 represented, and that just didn't happen with the 1200/4000. If it had, though, you'd have had a new Amiga out in 1992 that was just as good as a 2000-era PC. There's no way the developers or the public could have ignored that.

Where's the "Mod this comment up" button when you need it?

They had a breakthrough, but then didn't know where they were going or what to do with it, or which direction to take it to keep the breakthroughs coming: business? gaming? home computing? "Ahh, we'll do 'em all in a half assed sort of way"...