Some thoughts on why the Amiga didn't thrive

[Signman]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

GSM

In the mid 90's a friend of mine started a mobile electronics repair business, for which he got a Motorola 'brick' cellphone, the first I had seen. I don't remember the exact date but I do remember selling an A1200 to him, so I am guessing it was around 1994-95 (since we ran out of stock soon after Commodore folded). Cell phones were quite popular in business then, but a bit too bulky and expensive for personal use.

We called them car phones.
Btw, I remember all the dismissals of Amiga features as wasteful or gimmicks. That was until the others incorporated said gimmicks into their own and called them advanced features.

[Drittz78]

One of the easiest questions. IBM Clones and consoles became a thing and overtook the Amiga in power and price. I suspect most developers and publishers moved onto the PC and consoles and didn't turn back. If the Amiga did survive I suspect it would of become another manufacture of PC's as that is where the money was. Blame Doom.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by Mr.Flibble

I think it can be summed up as "It failed because Commodore".

As somebody already mentioned in one of these threads: the notion that the "Amiga didn't thrive" is very US centric. The Amiga did pretty well in Europe, thank you very much.

Not going to defend Commodore, but the most important positive decision ever made during the Amiga's lifetime - targeting the consumer market by creating the A500 - was a Commodore decision.

A lot of the Amiga's initial problems discussed here and elsewhere where not Commodore's fault: the lack of flicker free high-resolution modes, the high price, the unstable operating system (the reason for the Kickstart disk workaround), the bad DOS - all of that was mostly in place when Commodore took over. If the original Amiga engineers would have had their way, the follow up to the A1000 would have been a more expensive model with expansion slots and VRAM. They actually fought the A500 project.

The homecomputer market died in the early nineties - nothing the Amiga could do about that, no matter what Commodore decided. Yeah, it could have done somewhat better if AGA had appeared earlier and the A500+/A600 never happened - but by 1993, the PC and the Playstation would have taken over anyway.

By 1985, nobody would use anything but PCs for standard office work - open standard (involuntarily, but still...), lots of vendors to choose from, professional support, hardware platform evolving faster than anybody else... Other platforms had to find their own, smaller niche: the Mac got Desktop Publishing, the ST (in Europe) was used for MIDI, the Amiga had Desktop Video and pixel art going for it.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Korodny

If the original Amiga engineers would have had their way, the follow up to the A1000 would have been a more expensive model with expansion slots and VRAM. They actually fought the A500 project.

They could have release an A2000 with Ranger inside instead of OCS. So the high end of the line would have catch up with PC capacities in 1987.

And the move would have motivate US engineers team. Top of the range for the American team, low end for German team. I'm sure Commodore lost big from an human employees perspective and so perhaps the US market at this very moment.

Originally Posted by Korodny

Other platforms had to find their own, smaller niche: the Mac got Desktop Publishing, the ST (in Europe) was used for MIDI, the Amiga had Desktop Video and pixel art going for it.

And so the vital need to offer the best video and power capacities.

It look like there was a lack of vision of how computers will revolutionize the way people were working. That the management goal was just to redo the C64 success. Everything else is just an extra.