03 July 2023, 12:17 | #81 |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Marseille / France
Posts: 1,523
|
There is probably a sociological reason also.
I tend to notice that US developpers/publishers were more kind of supporting expanded Amiga (and aimed toward a more mature audience). Almost every US made Amiga games are HD friendly and benefits from fast ram and accelerated cards. I guess that upgrading your Amiga was more common there than it was in Europe. Last edited by sokolovic; 03 July 2023 at 12:28. |
03 July 2023, 15:00 | #82 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
|
03 July 2023, 15:52 | #83 |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Marseille / France
Posts: 1,523
|
Ahaha.
It reminds me a fantactic interview of the Mr Pleasance. When asked when the CD1200 will be released he answered something like "I'm not sure but why would you want to add a CD drive to an A1200 ? Just buy a CD32." Clearly the easy expanding abilities of the A1200 wasn't very commercially important for Commodore UK. There were selling toys, not computers. |
03 July 2023, 16:19 | #84 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
A few issues earlier in an interview with Mr. Pleasance he was asked why Commodore lowered the price of the A1200 even if they were selling well at that point. The answer was that they could be selling more at a smaller margin. That was at a time when Commodore was already in financial trouble. Reading now that he also didn't want to earn money for Commodore selling hard drives... well let's just say I don't agree with his business decisions
|
03 July 2023, 17:53 | #85 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2022
Location: Eastbourne
Posts: 1,098
|
Quote:
I've never quite known what to made of David Pleasance, but these quotes and decisions really make him look incredibly misguided, although I'm sure even if UK A1200 and CD32 sales had doubled it wouldn't've allowed Commodore US to survive long enough to keep A1200s in production for Christmas 1994, or get a new model out. |
|
03 July 2023, 17:55 | #86 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2023
Location: Norwich
Posts: 446
|
Quote:
|
|
03 July 2023, 18:31 | #87 | |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
Quote:
|
|
03 July 2023, 22:50 | #88 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2023
Location: Norwich
Posts: 446
|
Quote:
It might have been a different story if Commodore had been able to ship cheap Amiga's with hard drives in '87, but they didn't really seem interested in finding ways to drive the costs down then, when they could have made a difference. |
|
04 July 2023, 00:00 | #89 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2022
Location: Eastbourne
Posts: 1,098
|
Quote:
With the benefit of hindsight, its a shame that more of us didn't buy upgrades - to stay cutting edge for PC games from 1987 to 1995 would cost you, conservatively, £3000 in new machines and upgrades - you could get an A500, A501, second drive, A1200 and hard drive / accelerator / fastRAM progressively over that time for that for half as much. Last edited by Megalomaniac; 04 July 2023 at 00:10. |
|
04 July 2023, 08:42 | #90 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
|
04 July 2023, 09:07 | #91 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,771
|
Quote:
The only real advantage of the CD1200 was compatibility with the CD32. Downside was you couldn't use it with an accelerator card. That meant you would be throwing it away later if you wanted to keep your A1200 up to date. Quote:
For 3 years I tried to convince customers the Amiga was a better choice, but I was deluded. IBM was the industry standard and I was trying to sell them a machine that was incompatible. It wouldn't have mattered what the A1200 had in it, except perhaps an Intel CPU and ISA bus slots. The only way to sell the A1200 was to appeal to gamers and hobbyists who were happy playing with something different. |
||
04 July 2023, 09:16 | #92 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
|
04 July 2023, 09:21 | #93 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Marseille / France
Posts: 1,523
|
Quote:
Are you sure for the CD1200 about not being able to use it with an accelerator card ? IIRC it was supposed to be plugged on the PCMCIA port like the overdrive CD. |
|
04 July 2023, 10:07 | #94 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,771
|
Quote:
But it wasn't IBM compatible so it had to be cheap. By the time you added a monitor and hard drive the price was getting up there. And there were other non-IBM systems to consider too, like the Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes. £50 off could be just the incentive you needed to make the 'right' choice. That could make the difference between being a top seller and hardly moving any at all. The other factor to consider is that the more 'popular' a product is the easier it is to sell. The A1200 was new so they had to get as many out there as possible to reach critical mass, even if it meant making less profit initially. The A1200 had AGA, so developers should have been champing at the bit to produce stuff for it. But they would be hesitant to do so if sales were low. Then fewer AGA titles would mean less incentive to buy one, a vicious circle. |
|
04 July 2023, 10:41 | #95 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
This. By 1993 the amount of full page game advertisements in Amiga Format had dropped significantly indicating that major publishers weren't as interested in the platform as a whole (not only AGA machines) anymore. Maybe focussing on bringing more games and software to the market that uses the new hardware would have been a better idea.
|
04 July 2023, 10:51 | #96 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Dublin, then Glasgow
Posts: 6,381
|
Quote:
Nowadays there are more compact accelerators, but back then even the most basic RAM cards took up the entire space available in the trapdoor area, so even if the CD1200 has a passthrough connector (e.g., like the Mediator), it wouldn't have been useable. |
|
04 July 2023, 11:47 | #97 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,771
|
Quote:
Quote:
Apparently a 68030 CPU socket was planned for the production version. It probably would have been clocked at around 25MHz (same as the A4000-030), so too bad if you wanted to go faster. When (if ever) this would have come out is anybody's guess. In 1994 AlfaData had their own 'CD1200' PCMCIA interface for Mitsumi CDROM drives. The interface + double-speed drive cost £239.90. In 1995 Amiga Technologies brought out the Q-Drive 1241 with 4x IDE CDROM drive, which also plugged into the PCMCIA port. SCSI was another option. Hisoft made the Squirrel PCMCIA SCSI adapter, and many accelerator cards had a SCSI option. Panasonic made a lovely portable SCSI CDROM drive that was quite cheap (you can still buy these on eBay). It had a PCMCIA SCSI interface too - I wonder if an Amiga driver could be been written for it? The CD32 was originally priced at £299. The Amiga CD1200, if it ever got released, would probably have been about the same price. By that time many A1200 owners would already have RAM boards or accelerator cards which they wouldn't want to give up, so a PCMCIA CDROM drive would be more attractive. |
||
04 July 2023, 11:48 | #98 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
|
04 July 2023, 12:07 | #99 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,771
|
Quote:
The statement 'does not provide for further technological development' does seem to be a warning, though the reason given turned out to be unimportant (FMV). It's hard to believe they were going to get these out before Christmas when the prototype was so crude. |
|
04 July 2023, 12:14 | #100 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,083
|
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive | Frogs | Amiga scene | 543 | 07 April 2024 18:20 |
Things the Amiga didn't get right from Day 1 | drHirudo | Nostalgia & memories | 826 | 10 March 2022 15:02 |
Is it true the Amiga nearly DIDN'T use RGB for colour? | Foebane | Amiga scene | 14 | 28 June 2018 02:12 |
Best Amiga pinball game that Digital Illusions *didn't* make | PixelsAtDawn | Nostalgia & memories | 30 | 05 December 2017 02:43 |
Why game companies didn't make better games for Amiga | ancalimon | Retrogaming General Discussion | 35 | 17 July 2017 12:27 |
|
|