RE: Amiga users didn't upgrade

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

Amiga died, because they didn't innovate anymore and the games started to look lame compared to 256 color DOS games in magazines.

If there had been a magic upgrade that let me play Ultima 7, Lands of Lore and Comanche on my A500, I would have bought it.

Buying stuff just to get a better Workbench didn't interest me.

Amiga died because Commodore died, i don’t believe all this PC and console killed it nonsense.

The fact PC VGA 256 colour games had been plastered in magazines for a few years didn’t stop Amiga sales increasing up until 1992, i wasn’t blinkered to them, yes they looked great but like most others we turned the page to something we owned and loved playing at the time that wasn’t priced skyhigh.

And the piracy argument always gives a good laugh, Commodore never made any money on software, piracy to them was a good thing to drive hardware sales by word of mouth.

[Gzegzolka]

You forget that not only Commodore were earning money on Amiga, there were games developers too. No matter how much You love Amiga if the piracy is high then chances to earn money are low for developers. It is just a business.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

You forget that not only Commodore were earning money on Amiga, there were games developers too. No matter how much You love Amiga if the piracy is high then chances to earn money are low for developers. It is just a business.

It was mainly the publishers that wanted to earn money, but it's a good point. The question is why couldn't they earn money on the Amiga. Was because there was so much piracy or not enough people that could effort the games. When I recently heard that a 50 pound RAM expansion was too expensive I think that a 25 pound game wasn't an oprion either. Like sokolovic pointed out there were other systems with massive piracy problems, but none of them died because of it.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

You forget that not only Commodore were earning money on Amiga, there were games developers too. No matter how much You love Amiga if the piracy is high then chances to earn money are low for developers. It is just a business.

Of course, but piracy was always part of the Amiga since the early days and every year we got new publishers making games, and every year we heard piracy was killing the Amiga. Sure some like Activision then Lucasarts left around 1991, but its more likely because of their business model needing higher number returns even more than if there was no piracy on the Amiga, the Amiga was still niche to them versus worldwide PC sales, no better excuse than ‘oh piracy is too bad!’ Not too bad for 10 great years of game releases!

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Sure some like Activision then Lucasarts left around 1991, but its more likely because of their business model needing higher number returns even more than if there was no piracy on the Amiga, the Amiga was still niche to them versus worldwide PC sales, no better excuse than ‘oh piracy is too bad!’ Not too bad for 10 great years of game releases!

Here in Germany Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade lead the sales charts for a few years. I think that's at least part of the reason why they still made an Amiga version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I might try to ask one of the old LucasArts devs on Mastodon if there might be a way to get to know some sales numbers.

[Etze]

Edit: ups, much too late for a reply...

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I would be cautious before saying that piracy did kill the Amiga.
Piracy was also the reason why people bought Amiga. It was the exact same story for the PlayStation and the brand seems still strong to me nowadays.

I think that's a lame excuse of many people back then: "I already helped the Amiga because I bought one!". No, you didn't. Most (if not all) people I knew didn't buy games or software. They just copied everything. Including me. I "only" had bought 4 or 5 games until I went to another school and lost my contacts. So I "had" to buy games (and I bought a lot). But all the other guys just scrapped their A500/1MB and bought a PC within the blink of an eye just to copy more games. So they had bought an A500 (and kinda helped Commodore) but didn't help the game publishers at all.


Playstation was a different beast: Until the normal user was able to copy games, they had a massive userbase.

[Megalomaniac]

Piracy is part of the story, it was a bigger issue on Amigas and other 'home computers' than on consoles or PCs. By 1992 the American companies were starting to abandon the Amiga, Dune 2 was about the last big US-developed title, and a glance at LemonAmiga's list tells us that Americans made a lot of the most adored Amiga games. But, was that because of piracy, the small American Amiga market (remember that (for example) US Gold probably made more from each UK sale of Monkey Island 2 than LucasArts did), or because their games were designed around PCs that were more powerful than most Amigas, and were too big an effort to port down? If we're honest, most of us were trying to playing these games on 68000s from floppies, and then moaned when they were slower than on a £2000 PC. AGA reduced the time in porting the graphics down, but most PC games had utterly outgrown floppy disks (and probably 14Mhz processors) by 1992 - you couldn't make something that would compete with even £750 PCs at a 3400 price point. Sadly, PCs were coming towards the home, whether we in Europe really accepted it or not, and the Amiga was always going to be the last great 'home computer'.

Releasing games for consoles cost money because of licensing costs and minimum cartridge manufacturing runs, and making PC games took longer and needed a bigger team, but if they sold more, can people be blamed for moving on? Amiga games sold well in Europe, but Japan and the USA were bigger markets globally.

However, it's worth noting that (largely obscured at the time) EA largely abandoned floppy disks at the end of 1993, not 'Amiga games' per se - they carried on making PC games because they had CD-ROMs which were pirate-proof, and did carry on with the CD32 at that point (though, like so many, Commodore's demise and the lack of new owners for Christmas 1994 ultimately scared them off). If CD drives had been a standard Amiga attachment by then, who knows what we might have seen, for the A1200 at least? Commodore were misguided on this - how ridiculous did it feel when the A570 was launched just as the only Amigas it could be used with were discontinued, in favour of the A600 which couldn't take a CD drive at that time?

[TCD]

In Amiga Format 127 (September 1999) we now get the news that the new Amiga system will be using Linux instead of QNX. I'm sure that's the last change before we finally can see the new machine it all its glory:


Edit: In the next issue we finally get the hardware specs of the new Amiga which surely will show up soon.


phase 5 and QNX team up. Does that mean we get two competing 'Amiga' systems that aren't compatible? Only time will tell.


Edit 2: From the same issue we get this gem.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Etze

Edit: ups, much too late for a reply...



I "only" had bought 4 or 5 games until I went to another school and lost my contacts.

Not sure console user had much than 4 or 5 games either. Most of them in the schoolyard marketplace were exchanging them.

[Megalomaniac]

"High performance next generation CPU", "communications options (in development)" and "additional features to be announced when ATI release next generation information" aren't really a specification though, more a wishlist. You can tell there was a desperation setting in by this time, as even a fully expanded 060 system with a graphics card was no longer competitive with PCs or Macs of the day.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Not sure console user had much than 4 or 5 games either.

I did Granted not more than 15-20 per system, but more than 5 for sure.

[TCD]

Amiga Format issue 129 (November 1999) brings us shocking news! Bill gets sacked and Jim Collas (CEO of Amiga Inc) quits. I'm sure this will not impact the upcoming launch of the AmigaMCC at all.


Edit: Next issue.


I'm just surprised that AF is still 'excited' for 'a new classic Amiga'. You think they need medical attention at this point?

Edit: AF issue 132 (January 2000) brings us these exciting news.



Microsoft is defeated! The way for the Amiga to reclaim its rightful place is free!

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Piracy is part of the story, it was a bigger issue on Amigas and other 'home computers' than on consoles or PCs.

I honestly don't know how easy it was to use pirated game on PC. It seems s to me that since they were almost all HD installable it wasn't very complicated but I had my first "Doswintel" PC around 2007, long after the floppy era.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I honestly don't know how easy it was to use pirated game on PC. It Dreams to me that since they were almost all HD installable it wasn't very complicated but I had my first "Doswintel" PC around 2007, long after the floppy era.

I had various... backup copies from friends that never had any cracktro or anything like that (some were made directly from original disks too). When CD-Roms became a thing that changed though. Sometimes you would just miss the CD music (Quake), but the game would still work, but other games would refuse to work without the CD in the drive. When CD recorders started to become affordable copyprotected CDs became a thing with a number of 'side effects' that weren't fun at all. Not being able to play CDs on your PC was one of the reasons why people that I knew started to download MP3s.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by TCD

I'm just surprised that AF is still 'excited' for 'a new classic Amiga'. You think they need medical attention at this point?

They were biased due to having skin in the game, having a next gen Amiga just around the corner for years provided stories for their audience and the future of the magazine was based on the subscriber base so they needed another Amiga.

Personally at this point in time i had a PS1 and was happy with that as my gaming machine, i had no interest in "the next Amiga" because all the best games were on consoles and PCs so even if it did happen it wouldn't have been any better technology wise than the latest PC hardware and it wouldn't have anywhere near the amount of games available on PC.

A next gen Amiga wouldn't have had anything to do with the original other than maybe Amiga emulation installed by default and for us hardcore Amiga fans we were using UAE from '97 onwards(it was usable from then onwards realise it was first released in '95).

The magic of the Amiga brand was long gone by this stage other than our nostalgia for the Commodore computers.

I enjoyed my Amiga for productivity but at that stage in life i had a full time job and using a PC for productivity i had little interest in more productivity at home.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

They were biased due to having skin in the game, having a next gen Amiga just around the corner for years provided stories for their audience and the future of the magazine was based on the subscriber base so they needed another Amiga.

I get that, but why throw the word 'classic' in there? If anything was certain it was that the next Amiga wouldn't have much in common with the 'classic' Amigas. I guess at that point they were just trying to convince themselves and their audience that it would have anything in common with what people remembered and/or still used.

[TCD]

In AF issue 134 (March 2000) Amiga is sold again. Our man Bill McEwen buys it from Gateway and will finally 'deliver products, services, and the rest of the world will know what you have already known'.


Two pages later this is rather interesting (and a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy):


With only two more issues after this one this reader's letter is also interesting:


Edit: Next issue phase 5 is out of order.

[TCD]

Last issue (May 2000):

[TEG]

@TCD how long images on imgbb will be available? Wouldn't it be better to upload them directly in the forum?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TEG

@TCD how long images on imgbb will be available? Wouldn't it be better to upload them directly in the forum?

It would be, but I have only a bit under 13 MB of attachment storage left and each picture is around a MB big.

I'll gather the images and put them on the file server, so if ibb stops hosting them they aren't lost.

Edit: The images can be found in my user folder on the file server as 'Amiga users didn't upgrade_Images.zip'. I've numbered them and all images from Amiga Format have the issue number in the file name.