Was the Atari ST to blame for badly ported games?

[TCD]

It's not about more or less powerful hardware, it's about the common hardware. Both machines had a 68000 CPU, so you'd code for that. Same for the graphics: Both machines could at least display 16 colours, so you design the graphics that way.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Who can honestly say, if they were running a games publisher in the UK or France up to about 1990, that they would have wanted developers to lead with the Amiga version, rather than the ST one? The 520ST launched 2 years before the A500, as of mid-1988 there were 3 times as many STs as Amigas in the UK (according to issue 1 of ST/Amiga Format) so even if your average ST owner bought less games, you still sold twice as many on the ST.

Incorrect. The ST sold much the 3 first years, then got outsold by the Amiga.
The problem was that softwares sold more on Amiga than ST. The ST was not beneficial at all for the Publishers, that's why they had to port the games on the Amiga. With the ST alone, they would have gone bankrupt. So thanks to the piracy on the ST, it opened the way for the Amiga

The ST was cheaper and/or came with more games than the A500 throughout its life....

False. The Amiga until quite a few years had the biggest software library of all the machines that existed on the soil of the earth.

Commercial + PD + Aminet = 9x.000 softwares.

The ST had way less commercial games than the Amiga (around 4.000), just look on HOL how many we got on Amiga (6.390).

....likewise the STe for most of its life (despite hardware that was much more equal with the A500)

The STe is subpar to the A500. the only advantage it has is the blitter covering the full range of ram (4mb).

.... so it took time for the Amiga to become the more enticing buy for most people.

It happened quickly. The ST got passed through mid 1988 by the Amiga.

The Amiga strength was that Amiga users bought more originals than ST users. It's as simple as that. That's also why publishers listened when the users complained and boycotted the ST shovelwares.

ST Format outsold Amiga Format initially, despite more competition, anecdotally it seems like Christmas 1989 is when the Amiga market became bigger than the ST one in the UK (and maybe even later in France? Does anybody know more?).

The Amiga outsold the ST mid june 1988. For France, the ST was the king there in number of machines sold (550.000), but lost to the Amiga in terms of software market share. There were 250.000 amiga in France, but we bought more software than the ST users who had a bigger user base.

In the US Amigas and their games massively outsold the ST, but how big a cut did UK publishers get when a game was marketed in the US? The flipside is probably why US companies stopped doing Amiga (and ST) games while they still sold well in Europe - why bother when (eg) US Gold got a bigger cut than LucasArts?

Lucasarts simply focused on PC. Next, the ST has not enough colors, was not enough present in US (it failed there).

Amiga originals didn't massively outsell ST ports (again, I'm especially thinking in the UK) until quite late. As an example, Menace was one of the first UK games to lead with the Amiga, the ST version was famously lazy and inferior-looking, yet did it sell significantly more on the Amiga than contemporary ST ports in the same genre such as Silkworm or R-Type, and did it significantly lose sales on the ST for being inferior to ST R-Type or Silkworm?

The Amiga has some huge software sales. For instance, Batman the movie sold 386.000 copies (amiga pack + retail release). Lemmings sold 500.000 copies on Amiga alone. Beast sold 80.000 copies.

Such "high volumes" did not really exist on ST (out of Dungeon Master for ex).

On ST, your average game sold 20.000-40.000 copies. On Amiga, it sold much more. In 1991, Amiga software market share was 19%, and the ST 12%.

Guess why the Amiga turned lead.

Or Pacmania, which unusually was full-screen on the Amiga but windowed on the ST, did it do better than the ST-port arcade conversion of the time on the Amiga as a result?

Users had a tendancy to ignore games that were inferior on their machine.

Most of us probably prefer Battle Squadron to Xenon 2, but I bet Xenon 2 sold more on the Amiga alone, even before you count the ST version.

Xenon 2 is a real piece of garbage. Pretty graphics, but the engine, omgd !

Battle Squadron was an Amiga exclusivity, the other problem is to be seen on the distribution side : if you manufacture 50.000 copies, don't expect to sell 80.000. Then you have to split all of them between all the countries where the game is supposed to be sold.

Look the opposite today. Publishers can push in the shops millions of copies. Back in the Amiga/ST era they could not (too expensive, distributors reluctants, and they had not enough money to do that, video games had only small places to be shelved).

Amiga-only games simply had less market leverage, less fame, less promotional pull, even that late.

They were mostly made in small batches/quantities.

The two ST versions that stick out for me as vastly inferior to the Amiga originals are Robocod and Cannon Fodder, both of which are reliant on multidirectional scrolling, something the ST could not easily do.

Robocod was co programmed by Steve Bak. Even him got the real success when he stopped with the ST and doing Amiga first versions. James pond is his best success.

Maybe we missed out on great multiway scrolling games because of the ST? Even then though, if you play ST and Amiga versions of almost all 2D action games back-to-back, the Amiga version will usually be noticeably better, even if its just the music.

The ST feels really slower most of the time. It's not simply the sound, that's the overall feeling toward softwares.

I'm currently building my own library of software on my USB key to use on the gotek i installed on my STF/STE, and i see many things : developers did their best on the ST, on the Amiga it was more scarce. Many many games are so slow, even with the faster CPU, the Amiga is so much faster.... and the lack of colors is terrible.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TCD

It's not about more or less powerful hardware, it's about the common hardware. Both machines had a 68000 CPU, so you'd code for that. Same for the graphics: Both machines could at least display 16 colours, so you design the graphics that way.

It was a recipe for failure. Amiga users paid more for a more powerful machine, and they were offered inferior softwares.

Guess why they boycotted the Shovelwares coming from the ST.....

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The ST had way less commercial games than the Amiga (around 4.000), just look on HOL how many we got on Amiga (6.390).

There are 4,936 released commercial games in HOL: https://amiga.abime.net/games/list/?...s&licence-id=1

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

It's much, much easier to write the game for the lesser system, get it working and then just bring that code over to the more powerful hardware. It doesn't end up with good usage of the Amiga hardware, but it got something out quick that made money.

If you've coded the original around the Amiga chipset, downgrading it to work on lesser ST hardware. So, annoying as it may be, it made business sense to target the ST first. Well at least until the Amiga user base got bigger and games had to start competing against Amiga specific titles for attention. Once Shadow of The Beast was out and making the Amiga look like a powerhouse compared to the ST, it stopped being viable to push ST ports because the punters knew better.

In 1989, year of birth for Crackdown, the ST was outsold (machines and software sold).

A game like Crackdown was much more easier to do on Amiga than on the ST. Yet ARC was always choosing the ST as lead machine.....

In forgotten worlds, they omitted a full level, because the ST could simply not do it. FW was released in 1989.

Edmonson was fed up with the 8 bits softwares released on ST then Amiga. This is why Beast was made. He said himself "Beast is the ST nail in the coffin".

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TCD

There are 4,936 released commercial games in HOL: https://amiga.abime.net/games/list/?...s&licence-id=1

But even then i can tell you (i'm processing dumps to make IPFs for ST games), that the ST has way less softwares than the Amiga.

It's the case also for utility softwares, much more on the Amiga than on the ST.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Yet ARC was always choosing the ST as lead machine.....

ARC was a subsidiary company of Atari, so that's hardly surprising.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TCD

ARC was a subsidiary company of Atari, so that's hardly surprising.

Nope, you're mixing ARC Atari UK, with ARC developments (an independant studio).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Nope, you're mixing ARC Atari UK, with ARC developments (an independant studio).

My bad then

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The ST was cheaper and/or came with more games than the A500 throughout its life, likewise the STe for most of its life (despite hardware that was much more equal with the A500).

For the first three years sure (87-88) afterwards these were the cheapest prices i could quickly source, the STE was never cheaper than the A500 fyi.

1989
520STE - £399
A500 - £359

1990
520STE - £349
A500 - £349

1991
520STE - £299
A500 - £299

1040STE - £359
A500+ - £345

1992
1040STE - £279
A600 - £265

1993
1040STE - £199
A600 - £175

[Megalomaniac]

Interesting stats from TCD - the similarity of the Amiga list to the All-Format list, especially SOTB's high position from Amiga sales only (and, while the 3 games about SOTB in the Amiga charts aren't Amiga originals, they're all very good) - hardly evidence of Amiga owners boycotting ST ports, as claimed by someone here. It all shows that, in Germany, the Amiga was pretty dominant in Germany by Christmas 1989. Elsewhere, I'm not so sure.

The Amiga's software catalogue took longer to overhaul the ST than people think, for sheer volume. HoL has 350 games for 1988 (https://amiga.abime.net/games/list/?...8&released=yes), Atarimania has 360 released in the UK alone for 1988 (http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft...ence=4&step=25) - for 1989 releases its 481 Amiga vs 458 ST. The Amiga then having a bit more in 1990 and 1991, and a lot more after that - British and French companies were still doing most games for both, but elsewhere developers were scaling the ST back.

However, the ST was cheaper, or came with (key words from my previous point) more games, than the Amiga at all times. Simply compare adverts for proof. In the UK, when the A500 launched for £499, the ST was £299. By mid-1988 both were £399, but the ST (now Double-Sided) came with the Summer Pack (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...issue-05_7.jpg) and later the Super Pack (or the £299 Explorer Pack). Christmas 1990, you could get an ST for £299 or an Amiga for £399 (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...issue-56_8.jpg). Obviously the Amiga was a much better buy by then, unless you only wanted to make music, where the ST was still probably ahead. Amigas were outselling STs in the UK by mid-1990, except for one brief month when the A500+ launched (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...ssue-70_10.jpg), but seemingly not consistently beforehand.

When comparing STe to A500, 'much more equal' meant 'not as far behind', not 'equal'. Looks like the STe did cost slightly more than the A500 at retailers though, even if the RRPs were much the same, though the STe did usually (once the Turbo Pack launched for Christmas 1990?) come with more games and especially serious software. By the time the STe launched the

EDIT - Someone's already cleared up ARC vs Arc Developments. Arc Developments had no links to Atari but still did ST ports just into the 1990s (R-Type II from mid-91 looks a lot better on Amiga than ST)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

It all shows that, in Germany, the Amiga was pretty dominant in Germany by Christmas 1989. Elsewhere, I'm not so sure.

That's the impression I get from reading through all issues of two German multi system magazines too. In 1989 the Amiga 'overtook' the 8-bit machines and the ST with only the PC keeping up. It's really interesting to see that by early 1989 a lot of games weren' t planned for the Amiga (a lot of those were ported in 1990) and by the end of the year the 8-bit systems are slowly being phased out for the new releases.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Interesting stats from TCD - the similarity of the Amiga list to the All-Format list, especially SOTB's high position from Amiga sales only (and, while the 3 games about SOTB in the Amiga charts aren't Amiga originals, they're all very good) - hardly evidence of Amiga owners boycotting ST ports, as claimed by someone here. It all shows that, in Germany, the Amiga was pretty dominant in Germany by Christmas 1989. Elsewhere, I'm not so sure.

The Amiga's software catalogue took longer to overhaul the ST than people think, for sheer volume. HoL has 350 games for 1988 (https://amiga.abime.net/games/list/?...8&released=yes), Atarimania has 360 released in the UK alone for 1988 (http://www.atarimania.com/pgelstsoft...ence=4&step=25) - for 1989 releases its 481 Amiga vs 458 ST. The Amiga then having a bit more in 1990 and 1991, and a lot more after that - British and French companies were still doing most games for both, but elsewhere developers were scaling the ST back.

However, the ST was cheaper, or came with (key words from my previous point) more games, than the Amiga at all times. Simply compare adverts for proof. In the UK, when the A500 launched for £499, the ST was £299. By mid-1988 both were £399, but the ST (now Double-Sided) came with the Summer Pack (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...issue-05_7.jpg) and later the Super Pack (or the £299 Explorer Pack). Christmas 1990, you could get an ST for £299 or an Amiga for £399 (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...issue-56_8.jpg). Obviously the Amiga was a much better buy by then, unless you only wanted to make music, where the ST was still probably ahead. Amigas were outselling STs in the UK by mid-1990, except for one brief month when the A500+ launched (http://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_re...ssue-70_10.jpg), but seemingly not consistently beforehand.

When comparing STe to A500, 'much more equal' meant 'not as far behind', not 'equal'. Looks like the STe did cost slightly more than the A500 at retailers though, even if the RRPs were much the same, though the STe did usually (once the Turbo Pack launched for Christmas 1990?) come with more games and especially serious software. By the time the STe launched the

EDIT - Someone's already cleared up ARC vs Arc Developments. Arc Developments had no links to Atari but still did ST ports just into the 1990s (R-Type II from mid-91 looks a lot better on Amiga than ST)

the problem with Atarimania is that you have multiple entries for a single game, actually HOL list commercial games per game, so it's more tidy.

I did the compare between the ST and Amiga software releases for games per year, the ST was lead during the 3 years of its life. After that, the Amiga is getting more softwares.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by TCD

That's the impression I get from reading through all issues of two German multi system magazines too. In 1989 the Amiga 'overtook' the 8-bit machines and the ST with only the PC keeping up. It's really interesting to see that by early 1989 a lot of games weren' t planned for the Amiga (a lot of those were ported in 1990) and by the end of the year the 8-bit systems are slowly being phased out for the new releases.

keep in mind that the Amiga and the ST were never able to overcome the 8 bits machines.

In france, the Amstrad CPC had 60% of the software market while the Amiga had 11% and the ST 10% (1990)

In UK, year 1991, the C64 & Spectrum total 40% of the software market, with 19% for the Amiga, 12% for the ST and 10% for the Amstrad CPC.

The Publishers made more money with the 8 bits.........

[TCD]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

keep in mind that the Amiga and the ST were never able to overcome the 8 bits machines.

Yet the new releases for C64 go down each year past 1989:

1989 - 393
1990 - 351
1991 - 268
1992 - 189
1993 - 111 (Lemon64)

If publishers made more money with the 8-bits why did they stop supporting the platforms?

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

the problem with Atarimania is that you have multiple entries for a single game, actually HOL list commercial games per game, so it's more tidy.

I did the compare between the ST and Amiga software releases for games per year, the ST was lead during the 3 years of its life. After that, the Amiga is getting more softwares.

That's true about Atarimania, but narrowing it down to a single country and doign it for a year before budget re-releases had started does pretty much eliminate that issue.

As for the 8-bits, I assume that's unit number rather than total spend, and probably further skewed by £4 budget titles outselling £10-15 full-pricers on 8-bits, but £8 budgets not outselling £25-35 full pricers on 16-bits. Production / marketing / distribution costs for a full pricer weren't 3 times as high as a budget game, so there was less money in them.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

That's true about Atarimania, but narrowing it down to a single country and doign it for a year before budget re-releases had started does pretty much eliminate that issue.

As for the 8-bits, I assume that's unit number rather than total spend, and probably further skewed by £4 budget titles outselling £10-15 full-pricers on 8-bits, but £8 budgets not outselling £25-35 full pricers on 16-bits. Production / marketing / distribution costs for a full pricer weren't 3 times as high as a budget game, so there was less money in them.

What i meant is that the 16 bits never got the success the 8 bits had.

what the publishers awaited was people passing on 16 bits and letting the 8 bits away in the move.

It did not happened, the users kept tight their 8 bits.

In terms of software sales in France, The Amiga and ST never outsold the CPC softwares, that's unfortunate.

Imagine what 60% weights for the CPC compared to the mere 11% of the Amiga and the 10% of the atari ST.

What is bigger, selling 30.000 softs for amiga or Atari ST at 25 pounds each (750.000 pounds) or selling 80.000 copies or more for 15-18 pounds each (1.440.000 pounds) on CPC ?

[Megalomaniac]

Distorted figures there. £25 is a minimum for full-price Amiga or ST games after about 1989, whereas even disk games on the 8-bits only cost about £15 (I'm assuming it was similar with exchange rates in France and Germany?) - cassette full pricers (the majority of full price sales in the UK at least) were £11 tops, and the budget ones which made up the majority of sales were £4 tops. Profit margins will have been higher on 16-bit games too, simply because box / manual production, distribution, advertising etc didn't cost 3 times as much even though the RRPs were 3 times as much. 16-bit games probably took twice as long to develop though. The 8-bits did stay competitive and worth supporting long after the 16-bits were available though, that much is certainly true. 189 games in a year for a 10-year-old system is quite something, and the Spectrum had a similar amount in 1991 once you discount compilations and covertapes (https://www.mobygames.com/platform/z...r:1991/page:4/)

[TCD]

Sorry, but by 1990 the 8-bits didn't rake in the money anymore. The reason why publishers ported older games to the Amiga in the early 90s was that they could make money that way. Not sure if Germany alone was a big enough market to warrant that (I imagine the Batman pack also made the UK quite an attractive market). Maybe in France the 16-bits never outsold the 8-bits, but I'm pretty sure overall they did.

[spannernick]

The Atari ST is clone of the C64, the ST has a few C64 features, like its screen is like the C64 screen, it has the same border and its TOS is a copy of GEOS and looks like is been built on the C64, its hardware came from the Commodore 900(it tool Jack a years to make the ST, he left CBM in 1984, ok then, it takes longer then a year to make a new PC, well it was one then) so it a commodore in sheep's clothing, a inferior one, I swapped my A500 for a Atari ST520 and I was gutted I did it, the worst thing I have done in my life, if you play the game St Dragon you see the difference in the ST and the Amiga, the Amiga version is brilliant, the ST version has a smaller screen(C64 screen) and the scrolling lags and music is not great, I had a demo disk of it that played on both machines.

It took me 5 years to get another Amiga... A600 in 1995, it was £35 then, I still have that ST, I have 2 of them, and the A600 too, I collect computers now, I would get rid of them and then get them back so decided to keep them now, that way you can always go back and use them again... .