Atari ST Computer Sales and Marketshare: A Comparison

[Locutus]

Didn't the falcon have a production run of 20k machines by Atari?

[frank_b]

The Falcon outlasted the 1200. After Atari dropped it to work on the Jaguar, Clab (makers of Notator) sold two models under their own branding. It was being sold after Escom went bust if I remember correctly.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by frank_b

The Falcon outlasted the 1200. After Atari dropped it to work on the Jaguar, Clab (makers of Notator) sold two models under their own branding. It was being sold after Escom went bust if I remember correctly.

Not according to this site http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=125 which says the C-lab Falcon was discontinued in 1995, whilst Escom went under along with the A1200 in 1996, not counting the fact the A1200 was only off the market 6 months after Commodore went under (C UK were still selling it until end of 94), the Falcon was only ON the market 2 years (1 from Atari, 1 from C-Lab) to i wouldn't say it outlasted it at all!

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Not according to this site http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=125 which says the C-lab Falcon was discontinued in 1995, whilst Escom went under along with the A1200 in 1996, not counting the fact the A1200 was only off the market 6 months after Commodore went under (C UK were still selling it until end of 94), the Falcon was only ON the market 2 years (1 from Atari, 1 from C-Lab) to i wouldn't say it outlasted it at all!

I'm sure it was around longer than that. There were two models. In any case they're worth a lot more than a 1200 these days!

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by frank_b

I'm sure it was around longer than that. There were two models. In any case they're worth a lot more than a 1200 these days!

True, not surprising if only 5000 were made! The price of Sam Coupe's is ridiculous!

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

True, not surprising if only 5000 were made! The price of Sam Coupe's is ridiculous!

Heh. Say what you like about Escom but they got the 1200 back into production again! Shame Amiga kit don't have any left now

[kovacm]

-----
not again dlfrsilver, you only spread untrue all over internet!
- from: claim that AmberMoon 3D part of game run at 50FPS on stock Amiga 500
- to: 3.5MB/s for harddrive on stock Amiga 500 and "software technique" for displaying image at that pace...
and all this lies just to not admit that Atari could be on pair (or in advance) over Amiga in some aspect.
-----

Regarding Falcon:
in 1992. Atari already decided to pull out from computer market* and on verge to not produce already finished Falcon. Eventually they decide to run batch of Falcons. According to Bob Gleadow, until 1993/10 between 13000 - 14000 Falcon were sold in Europe, and 4164 left in warehouse in Dutch waiting to be sold**. At same time, Atari Corp. produced another batch of Atari TT because of high demand. High demand for TT is also reason why at same time TT clones starts to appear on market such as: Medusa, Hades, Milan, C-Lab MK-X (with PCI, ISA slots and 040/060 CPU).

You can repeat as many times as you like that Atari ST (TOS) was "commercially dead after 1992." but fact is that software keep coming regally as NEW hardware was _developed_ and sold since there was _commercially_ DEMAND for both.
Yes, Atari Corp. focus exclusively on Jaguar by end of 1992.


*https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/d...-95-000003.txt

     The percentage breakdown of the Company's sales for the last three fiscal
years is as follows:
                                  Video
                                  Games        Computers
               1994                84%            16%
               1993                33%            67%
               1992                34%            66%

** http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1993/10/i...ri-bob-gleadow

[Tigerskunk]

It's really weird to see these numbers.
I think I lived in some kind of bubble in the late eighties, since I thought everybody just switched over from the C64 to the Amiga back then. All of my friends and almost everybody I knew for sure did.. That was in Germany, though. Guess that was one of the markets where Commodore had their strongest fanbase.

(I wonder why so few people who had a C64 switched over to the Amiga. Are there any reports on that?)

One of the first nails in the Amigas coffin (at least for me) was seeing Wing Commander on a PC back then, and no good Amiga version in sight (well, at least I havent heard about one back then, I know it came later). All of this cool Simulation stuff (like Gunship 200) and RPG games (Ultima VI) were looking a lot better on the PCs back then, with their hard drives and and VGA cards.

And a year or two later I saw a SNES, and that killed the arcade part of what Amiga games were capable of as well.

[dlfrsilver]

- to: 3.5MB/s for harddrive on stock Amiga 500 and "software technique" for displaying image at that pace...

That's the speed of the Impact Series II A500-HD+ hard drive series.

Source :

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/impact500mk2

SCSI 2 DMA controller
3.58 MB/s transfer speed
FaaasT ROM SCSI driver (gvpscsi.device) - autobooting requires at least Kickstart 1.3
RDB compatible
place for a 3.5" hard disk inside the case
50 pin internal header
DB25 external connector
supported by Linux
A-Max II driver (gvpscsi.amhd)

This is one of the best professional grade hard drive for A500, this was the hard drive used by delphine software for the development of their games.

A proof and a testimony of the speed of this hardware. And yes believe it or not, it's faster than even the ultrasatan for Atari ST.

So what's the problem ?

and all this lies just to not admit that Atari could be on pair (or in advance) over Amiga in some aspect.

The ST never had any advance over the Amiga, it was the opposite

The Amiga can do everything the ST does and better. That's why it more expensive you remember ?

-----

Regarding Falcon:

My bad. 5000 sold in France, and indeed 13/14000 in Europe.

You can repeat as many times as you like that Atari ST (TOS) was "commercially dead after 1992." but fact is that software keep coming regally as NEW hardware was _developed_ and sold since there was _commercially_ DEMAND for both. Yes, Atari Corp. focus exclusively on Jaguar by end of 1992.

99% of the publishers pulled the plug because the ST was not profitable in 1992.

This has been explained by Erik Simon (Thalion) in a german interview. And it was not Thalion only, it was the case for the big majority of publishers.

The ST market share was 12% in feb 1991 in UK, less than 10% in France, and it was mostly the same elsewhere.

Publishers were loosing money. In order to compare, most ST software solded not more 10.000 copies when even in 1994 a game like Mortal Kombat II for Amiga sold 130.000+ copies (source : Richard Costello, the programmer).

Taken from Dal's document called Computer Phone Tablet Market Share :

Atari sold these worldwide (Atari computer series from ST to Falcon) :

1985 100.000
1986 200.000
1987 400.000
1988 350.000
1989 300.000
1990 300.000
1991 300.000
1992 120.000
1993 30.000

Those numbers were found by checking the Q-10 annual reports and from other sources by Jeremy Reimer.

Total sold : 2.2 millions machines in the whole world

Atari NEVER disclosed back in the day those numbers.

Now the Amiga series sold worldwide :

1985 100.000
1986 200.000
1987 300.000
1988 400.000
1989 600.000
1990 750.000
1991 1.035.000
1992 390.000
1993 155.000
1994 50.000
1995 42.000

Amiga sold in the world : 4 millions of Amiga (real number based on the serial number is 5,3 millions of machines sold, as declared when Commodore went bankrupt).

Just my 2 cts.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The ST never had any advance over the Amiga, it was the opposite

The Amiga can do everything the ST does and better. That's why it more expensive you remember ?

"Better" is kind of an exaggeration. So "better" in terms of theoretical power - yes, but in fact, there's not much left when it comes to real results. This is also the reason why everyone is bragging about the mystical "Atari ST shovelware" done by software houses but in reality it shows that the Amiga is only slightly superior to the Atari ST. The Atari STE even closes this gap...

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

"Better" is kind of an exaggeration. So "better" in terms of theoretical power - yes, but in fact, there's not much left when it comes to real results. This is also the reason why everyone is bragging about the mystical "Atari ST shovelware" done by software houses but in reality it shows that the Amiga is only slightly superior to the Atari ST. The Atari STE even closes this gap...

The STE is indeed a bit nearer to the A500, but the gap is still wide.

Well quite a number of softwares are really superior on the Amiga compared to the ST. We can even say that the softwares who seem to be the same on Amiga and ST have been started on ST. The really good Amiga games show clearly they were made for Amiga first, and use really well the hardware.

One example spring to mind, Space Harrier. The Amiga version shows things that you just can't see on any Atari machine (out of the falcon) : 50 fps, overscan screen.

Ghost'n'Goblins comes next. The Amiga version is a perfect port of the arcade. The ST version clearly looks like the 8 bits version.

All the professional coders i talk with told me that the Amiga was more than slightly superior to the ST. One told me if it was a relief to program directly the Amiga, it was awful for him to make games on ST, because publishers mostly wanted games for which the ST was not able (arcade conversions, any game requiring speed and sprites on screen, or any special effects). Spending time to "bend" the computer in order to get the best you can with a very short deadline is really annoying. The Snow Bros coder, Pierre Adane, told me on the phone when i asked him that the Amiga was way way more powerful than the Atari without any question.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by kovacm

You can repeat as many times as you like that Atari ST (TOS) was "commercially dead after 1992." but fact is that software keep coming regally as NEW hardware was _developed_ and sold since there was _commercially_ DEMAND for both.

If there was real commercial demand for the ST, Atari wouldn't have dropped it in 1993. They really would have needed that money, but there just was no money in making Atari computers at commercial scales anymore.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

"Better" is kind of an exaggeration. So "better" in terms of theoretical power - yes, but in fact, there's not much left when it comes to real results. This is also the reason why everyone is bragging about the mystical "Atari ST shovelware" done by software houses but in reality it shows that the Amiga is only slightly superior to the Atari ST. The Atari STE even closes this gap...

Absolute nonsense.

Im not sure where you get this idea that ST shovelware didnt exist, it did, and to the detriment of the Amiga.

The Amiga was magnitudes superior to the ST in every way that mattered, you only have to see the gulf of difference when games were done first for Amiga and then compromised for the ST.

If the Amiga really was only slightly better than the ST, then perhaps you could explain why Shadow of the Beast was an unmitigated disaster on the ST? Surely, if the Amiga was only "slightly superior", the ST would have gotten close..........oh !

[PortuguesePilot]

Interesting discussion. Allow me to indulge on another one of my TL;DR posts that are only slightly on-topic... (sorry)

I remember that back in the day I lived the rivalry very vividly and stood by the Amiga to the death. But, though I'd never admit it, I respected the Atari ST and even considered it a worthy and honourable adversary, though I was always conscious that I owned the better machine (an Amiga). Back in the very late 80's and very early 90's, the feud between the Amiga and the ST was very intense, not only because of the whole history surrounding both machines but also because of the similarities that the games had on both machines. But, in all honesty, in my friend circle there wasn't a single living soul that owned an ST. I had heard of a guy who knew a guy that owned an ST and said it was better than the Amiga and that it had native MIDI and all that... it made me angry to hear that and it only fuelled the "hatred" even further. But the impossibility of witnessing a real ST playing games left me wondering just how an ST would actually be, leaving a lot of space for imagination.

Meanwhile, 15 years go by. I'm strolling through eBay and a nice-looking, reasonably cheap Atari 520ST FM pops up. I felt a yearning to have it and bought it through auction. Once I got it home, I looked closer at it while I cleaned it up (I always thoroughly clean everything I buy second-hand) and saw some things that I preferred on the Amiga (the colours, the width, the keyboard) and some things that I preferred on the ST (integrated power supply, which meant no ugly and bulky brick lagging behind, the LEDs, the disk drive. The joystick ports were in an odd place, though). But, despite cleaning it and hooking up to a TV set, I couldn't try it out since I had no disks with actual software for it, so I ordered a Gotek drive with HxC firmware and, once here, installed it right away. After I created a USB disk with plenty of ST files, I finally loaded it up and saw - for the very first time - an Atari ST in action.

My opinion on it? I was slightly disappointed. Honestly, from the years of bitter feud, I overestimated the ST. I thought it was more capable than it turned out to be. Especially on the sound department. I always thought that the YM2149F was a much more significant leap forward from the AY-3-8912 than it actually is. The ST sounds little better than the Spectrum 128k being only slightly better than the original PC-Speaker and - in my opinion, at least - slightly worse than the Ad Lib board. It lags way behind the Amiga's, Macintosh's, X68000's and Archimedes' sound capabilities. Also, and despite the fact that both the Amiga and the ST have the same CPU, the M68000 on the latter is a full Hz cycle faster, the Amiga had better speed and fluidity overall due to much better dedicated chips. It's still a nice machine that I like owning and even playing on, but it's not as good as I once thought it was. The Amiga is far superior, even the simple 500 (as compared to the ST or even STe).

I have a feeling that the Atari ST and the Amiga began neck-in-neck until about early 1991, with the PC lagging behind both (in gameplay terms). By 1992 the Amiga was in full bloom (with games that the ST simply couldn't fork out) and the PC had surpassed the ST for second place (I'm excluding consoles here, and the Macintosh and Archimedes were marginal players here in Portugal and I never, EVER saw a X68000 in the flesh). The Amiga had the lead until the i80486 processors, the Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 sound boards and the 32bit SVGA (VESA) graphic boards became affordable (circa late 93/early 94, I'd say), that would lead the PC to the irrefutable victory of the computer wars.

Seen like this, one can say that the Atari ST never had the lead, while the Amiga enjoyed a few years in the sun as the undisputed champion of computer gaming (roughly from mid 1989 to early 1993), which says a bit. Even so, the ST is a respectable 16bit machine and I'm actually happy with it. Odd, innit? A fierce amigan saying that the ST is a neat machine... I guess time really heals everything.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

A proof and a testimony of the speed of this hardware. And yes believe it or not, it's faster than even the ultrasatan for Atari ST.

So what's the problem ?

Problem is this: on youtube video, where Mr.Petari demonstrate video playback ( [ Show youtube player ]) on ST (with "overscan", 50FPS, 4096 colors...), you start talking about Amiga 500 harddisk speed. And keep telling that it is possible to get 3.5MB/s on Amiga... ok. nice.
but COMPLETELY ignoring fact that Amiga still would not be able to playback video at 50FPS, in hicolor (like ST does) even if it can transfer 3.5MB/s (quite doubtful with Quantum LP-52 50MB harddisk as you claim at atari-forum) and you fail to understand that image data need to be in chip ram in order be displayed on monitor.

[ Show youtube player ]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

My bad. 5000 sold in France, and indeed 13/14000 in Europe.

"my bad"...? just like "Amiga 500 can do 50FPS in Ambermoon 3D texture in exterior and interior", like that "my bad" ?!?

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Those numbers were found by checking the Q-10 annual reports and from other sources by Jeremy Reimer.

no, he did not take numbers from 10-Q or 10-K.

doh... It is very difficult to talk with you - you made up things from thin air all the time.

Here you can read about Jeremy sources about figures: http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/notes-on-sources.txt - he did not mention from where he pull number of Atari sales!
Here is Atari Corp. K-10 Form for 1989. (note that Atari Corp was not obligate to fill K-10 before 1989.!): https://archive.org/details/AtariCor...nualReport1989
as you can read THERE is NO sales figure in units, only in $.

Further, in K-10 for 1989. Atari Corp. state:
"Sales of ST and PC products INCREASED by 36%, from $218.1 million in 1987 to $296.5 million in 1988."

and according to Jeremy Reimer Atari ST sales:
1987 - 400.000
1988 - 350.000
Jeremy fail to note increase of 36% from 10-K but instead he DECREASE ST sales for 15% !!!

This bring shadow over Jeremys numbers regarding ST sales!!!

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Atari sold these worldwide (Atari computer series from ST to Falcon) :

Again: NO !
Jeremy clearly stated that numbers are for Atari ST sales: http://jeremyreimer.com/m-item.lsp?i=137

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by idrougge

If there was real commercial demand for the ST, Atari wouldn't have dropped it in 1993. They really would have needed that money, but there just was no money in making Atari computers at commercial scales anymore.

I would try again to formulate what happened:

Atari drop support for all TOS computers in 1993., not because there was no demand in 1993., but because it was clear that in long run it is no longer viable business! In 1993. Atari had only 150 employee (from 500+) and focus all resources on Jaguar. They did run batch of TT computers in 1993. because they used them as developer machines for Jaguar (and there was demand for them by Atari Europe as Bob G. stated in link above).

Gap for demand of TOS computers was filled by numerous Atari clones like Medusa, Hades, Eagle, Milan, MK-X... New software (not games) keep coming for TOS well beyond 1993.! It was commercial software (sold for money) as hardware was also commercial - sold for money and was not given away!
so I would call it "commercial" but you can call this state of affairs, in and after 1993., whatever you like

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by kovacm

Problem is this: on youtube video, where Mr.Petari demonstrate video playback [ Show youtube player ]) on ST (with "overscan", 50FPS, 4096 colors...), you start talking about Amiga 500 harddisk speed. And keep telling that it is possible to get 3.5MB/s on Amiga... ok. nice.

Yes that's the manufacturer indication on the technical abilities of this hard drive.

Next a original unmodified STE is unable to perform what PPera made.

You a soupped up STE with a mod, a compact flash so that it never slow down.

So basically if anyone in the amiga communauty would develop something akind for the A500, will be able to compete 2 hands tied in the back

but COMPLETELY ignoring fact that Amiga still would not be able to playback video at 50FPS, in hicolor (like ST does) even if it can transfer 3.5MB/s (quite doubtful with Quantum LP-52 50MB harddisk.....

The Amiga would be able to perform the same or even better.

It's more competent for this kind of job since the start

Owning the 2 machines, i have done comparing of what was one of the best if not the best external HD for A500 in term of speed, and my ultrasatan on my STE. The GVP hard drive is clearly the faster one. I talk about a 1990 made hardware, not even a more sophisticated hardware like the the ultrasatan.

For instance if i'd remove the original hard drive and add an adaptator with CF card mounted, it would be even faster.

....and you fail to understand that image data need to be in chip ram in order be displayed on monitor.

Yes and what is the problem ? We had already games we can play in HAM mode. Since the Amiga is the king on the video side, it would be no problem.

[quote]Here you can read about Jeremy sources about figures: http://jeremyreimer.com/uploads/notes-on-sources.txt - he did not mention from where he pull number of Atari sales!

Further, in K-10 for 1989. Atari Corp. state:
"Sales of ST and PC products INCREASED by 36%, from $218.1 million in 1987 to $296.5 million in 1988."

That's indeed possible.

and according to Jeremy Reimer Atari ST sales:
1987 - 400.000
1988 - 350.000
Jeremy fail to note increase of 36% from 10-K but instead he DECREASE ST sales for 15% !!!

This bring shadow over Jeremys numbers regarding ST sales!!!

I will contact him in order to know more about this matter.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Im not sure where you get this idea that ST shovelware didnt exist, it did, and to the detriment of the Amiga.

No, I did not say it does not exist, I said that everyone is bragging about the poor conversion of games where an Atari ST version exists by simply calling everything "ST shovelware".

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The Amiga was magnitudes superior to the ST in every way that mattered, you only have to see the gulf of difference when games were done first for Amiga and then compromised for the ST.

This "magnitude of superiority" is still not visible in games available on both systems even 30 years later.

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

If the Amiga really was only slightly better than the ST, then perhaps you could explain why Shadow of the Beast was an unmitigated disaster on the ST? Surely, if the Amiga was only "slightly superior", the ST would have gotten close..........oh !

You are referring to that graphics demo with joystick support? Some say it is really a game. Well, almost anything build around the features of the dedicated chips always resulted in awkward games.

Anyway, what about this question: if the Amiga really was magnitudes superior than the ST, then perhaps you could explain why Final Fight was an unmitigated disaster on the Amiga?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

3.5mb/sec Amiga drives would mean 50Hz full screen HAM video ; 50FPS ambermoon

Much as I like the Amiga - both of these are just clearly not true.

Ambermoon doesn't even run @ 50Hz on an ECS machine with a 68030, let alone a basic A500. And that harddrive did not do 3.5MB/sec in the real world (it was closer to 1.1MB/sec). The controller did, but the harddrive did not.

But it's worse than that. Even if it did manage a 3.5MB/sec transfer rate, that alone still would not be enough to do full screen 50Hz HAM video anyway.

If only because a full screen HAM screen only leaves ~56% of chipmemory bandwith available under OCS/ECS, which would mean the harddrive could only manage ~2MB/sec to chipmemory. And all this assumes it actually manages to do 3.5MB/sec to chipmemory in the first place (assuming no DMA contention) and that the figure is not based on transfers directly to the cards internal fastmemory.

And that is not enough as you'd need about ~3MB/sec to chipmemory to do full screen 50Hz video.

Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore

Anyway, what about this question: if the Amiga really was magnitudes superior than the ST, then perhaps you could explain why Final Fight was an unmitigated disaster on the Amiga?

And since you believe the Amiga is only slightly better, perhaps you could explain why Turrican I & II run at (literally) 2x the framerate on the Amiga? Or why Pacmania has enormous borders and choppy movement on the ST and is full screen and full frame rate on the Amiga?

Or how even STE enchanced games, like Stardust, are still clearly worse than the Amiga versions of the same?

Not that I feel comparing a single game or two is a valid way of dealing with the question here*, but since you feel it is I'm more than happy to provide a few counterexamples.


*) it has already been answered a million times and the answer is the same every time - Yes, the Atari ST range is great and yes, the Amiga's where far more powerful for 2D graphics purposes.

And no, the STE didn't remove that difference - it got closer but was still worse off in many ways.

The Falcon on the other hand is just better than the base A1200 in many ways. But then it was also much more expensive and really rare.

Now.. Don't take this answer to mean I don't like the Atari ST - it was the first 16 bit computer I used and I really liked it at the time. It's just that the Amiga was, well, better. And really, that's OK. F.ex. The Sharp X68000 is better than the Amiga. Doesn't mean the Amiga (or ST) are bad machines in any way.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Yes that's the manufacturer indication on the technical abilities of this hard drive.

No it is NOT "technical abilities of this hard drive" but it is speed of controller, not harddrive.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

So basically if anyone in the amiga communauty would develop something akind for the A500, will be able to compete 2 hands tied in the back

but you still have urge need to mention some Amiga 500 controller that is not relevant at all for displaying video;
urge to defend glory of Amiga with arguments that have nothing to do with video playback abilities.

as we can see in yours next few sentences ("Amiga is better, Amiga is better..."):

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The Amiga would be able to perform the same or even better.

It's more competent for this kind of job since the start

MrPetari* made this as demonstration what is possible to do with old ST and new CF-Card: play full motion video in somehow like VHS quality (but digital )!
His experiment push ST to limit. It is synergy of Douglas Little and Cyg/BlaBla picture optimization, and Mr.Petari (ppera) software optimization for videos streaming including CF card reading and writing to ST ram at fastest possible way.

Why you than come and talk about some harddisc controller speed on Amiga?
Just to "prove" that Amiga have same declared speed and thus "it must be possible to do same on Amiga" (in your head)?

For now, ST is able to playback video in this quality (and it is probably best one can achieve):

[ Show youtube player ]

*http://atari.8bitchip.info/movpst.php

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Yes and what is the problem ?

Problem is that you fail to understand that data need to be in chip ram to be displayed on monitor. That is problem. Speed of harddrive<>controller buffer (or fastram) is not only speed that is relevant for video playback on Amiga.