Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by rare_j

People are saying hard disks weren't expensive, but a reasonably sized amiga hdd really was.
20mb desktop 3.5 inch drives may have been coming down in price at the time, but laptop 2.5 inch drives of any size did not.
And ram was expensive as well. Even 2mb simms were very pricey.

Funny thing about RAM prices. I remember thinking how cheap RAM has gotten when I bought an 8MB SIMM EDO RAM for my 1230 in 1994 (I think). I payed about 3000 SEK which adjusted for inflation is about €400. (so about €50 per MB)

Just the other day I bought 64GB for my PC and payed something like €330 (thats €0,005/MB). So punching a few numbers into the calculator, the RAM pricenow 10,000 times cheaper (cost per Megabyte) than it was 25 years ago. Thats pretty insane if you think about it.
Buying 64GB in 1994 would cost ~€3.3 million :-)

[daxb]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Buying 64GB in 1994 would cost ~€3.3 million :-)

Maybe that is the reason for calling the time the golden age?! :P

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Peoples memories aren’t what they used to be! Even the 20MB A600HD pack that came out in 1992 was £499 a £100 more than the base pack at launch, a £499 A1200 would have sold even less than a £399 one! Budget computer buyers didn’t want to pay for a HDD if they didn’t need them, and unlike PC owners, they didn’t!

I agree that people's memory isn't what it used to be. People didn't just forget the HD prices but also the PC ones. It's true that an A1200 with HDD would've set you back £100 or more extra. However, compared to PC's at the time that was still a bargain.

Case in point: in 1992, a 386SX25 PC cost around £1000 and would've most likely performed worse than the A1200 at many tasks. Such "cheap PC's" tended to have terrible -read slow- on board VGA and the 386SX itself was actually very slow - about 40% slower than the 386DX. Not to mention that most of these PC's came without sound hardware and a sound card was another £100. On paper, such a 386SX sounds like it would murder the A1200. In reality, they weren't much faster than a 286. To get a good gaming PC, you really needed a 386DX or a 486. Those were a good deal better than the 386SX. However, they were also a lot more expensive. You got what you paid for.

You do have point though, many people who bought an A1200 did so because of cost and a lot decided to forgo the HDD. Had Commodore made the case big enough for a 3.5inch model (and it very nearly is), the story might have been different.

On the topic of A1200 sales, it's difficult to actually find reliable numbers for the machine (or any Amiga for that matter). I don't dispute it sold less well than the A500/A600, but I do dispute the reason. By late 1992/early 1993, all non-PC/non-console computers were struggling, even those with clearly better specs than the A1200. This strongly suggests to me the low A1200 sales had a lot more to do with overall market sentiment than machine capabilities or price. Serious users had mostly selected the PC, gamers had selected the 16 bit consoles as their weapon of choice. The PC's were expensive but really capable for business (and within a year or so, games as well). The consoles might not have been better at all types of games than the A1200 (though they really excelled at certain types of action games), but they were a lot cheaper to buy.

The home computers thus had no more niche and so they failed.

Could a better A1200 have helped? Say one with the AAA chipset, some fast memory and a 68030? Personally, I sincerely doubt it. Like I said, other non-PC computers with better specs than the A1200 also failed. The home computer era was ending, people just wanted a PC - no more incompatibilities with the office for writing a note, no more faffing about with converting between different floppy disk formats. Commodore clearly knew this, which is why they put in effort to make the Amiga's more 'compatible' with the PC's by adding such things as Cross DOS. Even now-mighty Apple nearly went under and their machines did have the hardware to compete with the PC one-on-one (though you obviously did pay a price for this).

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by roondar

----8><-----
Could a better A1200 have helped? Say one with the AAA chipset, some fast memory and a 68030? Personally, I sincerely doubt it. Like I said, other non-PC computers with better specs than the A1200 also failed. The home computer era was ending, people just wanted a PC - no more incompatibilities with the office for writing a note, no more faffing about with converting between different floppy disk formats. Commodore clearly knew this, which is why they put in effort to make the Amiga's more 'compatible' with the PC's by adding such things as Cross DOS. Even now-mighty Apple nearly went under and their machines did have the hardware to compete with the PC one-on-one (though you obviously did pay a price for this).

Graphics tech moved fast in the early 90s. Doesnt seem possible price wise, but if we did get AAA, 030, fast ram and that tech were released in both an A1200 and a cd32 in 1992 then it might have made a difference. Amiga users wouldnt be so inclined to jump ship at the rate that they did, because then we could have had Doom ports etc.. maybe keeping the software sales at somewhat sustainable levels.
Still - if "we" survived that, I get the feeling the Playstation and PCs with 3d accelerators would have killed and burried us by the late 90s anyway.. So that is as far as I can see the AMiga surviving as a platform relying on custom hardware and OS.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Still - if "we" survived that, I get the feeling the Playstation and PCs with 3d accelerators would have killed and burried us by the late 90s anyway.. So that is as far as I can see the AMiga surviving as a platform relying on custom hardware and OS.

I concur. I got my first PC about half a year after Commodore went bust, in February 1995, and spent most of my gaming time on Doom and then Quake in 1996, and then upgrading my PC significantly (in fact, getting a new one) so that I could run Quake 2 with a 3D card in 1997. I only recently discovered that, as long as it seemed to last, this entire period of time only spanned about THREE YEARS, so yes, the Amiga's days were numbered, no matter what Commodore did, such was the breakneck pace of graphics technology development.

[rare_j]

These are the prices paid for a decently specified A1200 at the time. I remember nearly 25 years later the figures.

Amiga 1200 - 1993 or 94 after the price drop: £299
1230IV 50mhz 68030 with mmu with fpu in 1995: £200
8mb simm in 1995: £200
210mb hard drive for amiga in 1995: £160 probably over £200
microvitec 1438 with speakers in 1995: over £200, probably closer to £300

So over 1k there in 1995 for a very decent Amiga set up. I was very pleased indeed with it at the time, and it got me through a long stretch of sixth form and uni.

My point is that by the time you had it up to near-windows PC specs (yet I had no network card, no cd-rom, and 256 colour os was unusable) it was not, not cheap computing.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Graphics tech moved fast in the early 90s. Doesnt seem possible price wise, but if we did get AAA, 030, fast ram and that tech were released in both an A1200 and a cd32 in 1992 then it might have made a difference. Amiga users wouldnt be so inclined to jump ship at the rate that they did, because then we could have had Doom ports etc.. maybe keeping the software sales at somewhat sustainable levels.
Still - if "we" survived that, I get the feeling the Playstation and PCs with 3d accelerators would have killed and burried us by the late 90s anyway.. So that is as far as I can see the AMiga surviving as a platform relying on custom hardware and OS.

I dunno. I used to be really salty that AAA never materialised as I was so sure the Amiga would've been 'saved' with it. But looking back on it, it seems to me the writing was already on the wall. The Amiga market had pretty much collapsed about half a year before the release of the AGA machines (which is incidentally why Commodore rushed them out in such a short time). As far as I'm concerned, by 1992 the damage was already done. IMHO, the replacement Amiga's were roughly a year and half late to have a serious impact. And even then, I'd still agree with you.

The release of the Playstation was a massive game changer that made pretty much all games before it (including Doom) look instantly dated and old fashioned. And that was 1995...

Doesn't change that I still think the A1200 was an awesome machine for the time/price combo. But it also was too little, too late.

So in answer to the thread title: no, I wasn't, it was a pretty significant upgrade for me and on release it did bring the Amiga back to rough parity with the competition after a year or two of clearly falling behind. But I can see why others were. Especially those who, unlike me, got their first Amiga when they were still the hot new thing.

Originally Posted by rare_j

My point is that by the time you had it up to near-windows PC specs (yet I had no network card, no cd-rom, and 256 colour os was unusable) it was not, not cheap computing.

Well sure, but didn't that go for all computers? If you bought a cheap PC, you'd have had the same problems.
The essence of my point isn't that an upgraded A1200 was cheap, it was that a baseline A1200 was cheap. And it was. It was also perfectly usable without those upgrades. Sure, it wasn't up to 1995 specs but it also only cost a fraction of an up to date 1995 PC.

I don't even think the upgrade cost you list was all that extreme. I know of PC users who spend a great deal more than that to upgrade their ageing PC's back in the day (though admittedly, those with 1992 PC's generally just got a new one). Edit: obviously it's not cheap, so please don't take my post to mean that. I merely meant that I've seen people spend more than that on PC's.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by roondar

Could a better A1200 have helped? Say one with the AAA chipset, some fast memory and a 68030? Personally, I sincerely doubt it. Like I said, other non-PC computers with better specs than the A1200 also failed. The home computer era was ending, people just wanted a PC - no more incompatibilities with the office for writing a note, no more faffing about with converting between different floppy disk formats. Commodore clearly knew this, which is why they put in effort to make the Amiga's more 'compatible' with the PC's by adding such things as Cross DOS. Even now-mighty Apple nearly went under and their machines did have the hardware to compete with the PC one-on-one (though you obviously did pay a price for this).

There’s no reason why a better specced Amiga could not have succeeded whatever the market conditions, as others have said it flopped because the AA custom chipset was not amazing like OCS was, people were waiting to see what this new Amiga could do, when it arrived, yes it was still decent for the price, but it wasn’t the new wonder Amiga that people wanted or expected, and i firmly believe the failure had nothing todo with the console or PC market, which the latter was still very expensive and the former was purely for games.

And i don’t think the statement ‘people just wanted a PC’ was true at all! In the end most got a PC because it was the standard for most and got the most support unless you had rich pockets to get a Mac, believe me i wouldn't have touched a PC with a bargepole if there were alternatives at the time!

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

And i don’t think the statement ‘people wanted a PC’ was true at all! In the end most got a PC because it was the standard for most and got the most support unless you had rich pockets to get a Mac, believe me i wouldn't have touched a PC with a bargepole if there were alternatives at the time!

I got a PC because I wanted to play Doom, nothing else. Yes, MS-DOS sucked balls and still does, and it was a hindrance to my gaming, but eventually, things got better, and I was glad to be "established" for the Golden Age of PC FPS games.

The Apples have never been for gamers, and I wouldn't touch ANY Apple with a bargepole.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Foebane

I got a PC because I wanted to play Doom, nothing else. Yes, MS-DOS sucked balls and still does, and it was a hindrance to my gaming, but eventually, things got better, and I was glad to be "established" for the Golden Age of PC FPS games.

The Apples have never been for gamers, and I wouldn't touch ANY Apple with a bargepole.

I got a PSX to play Doom, steered clear of the PC until my dad forced one upon us at xmas 1997! And Quake was more a tech demo of the day, Doom was a much better game to play.
Bar Doom and the first Halo i find FPS games pretty dull on the whole tbh, they have reached the level of dullness that console platform games reached in 1995 with Bubsy and the like came out!

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

There’s no reason why a better specced Amiga could not have succeeded whatever the market conditions, as others have said it flopped because the AA custom chipset was not amazing like OCS was, people were waiting to see what this new Amiga could do, when it arrived, yes it was still decent for the price, but it wasn’t the new wonder Amiga that people wanted or expected, and i firmly believe the failure had nothing todo with the console or PC market, which the latter was still very expensive and the former was purely for games.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I don't think that a better specced Amiga would've saved the platform.

As I said before: there were other, non PC systems on the market that were more powerful than the AGA systems. These all failed. Not one succeeded. Even the Mac needed a radical rethink to stay competitive and it had a much larger market than the Amiga ever had (as much as this pains me to admit). I just don't feel that specs were really the issue. Now, don't take me wrong here - I'd have loved to see an AAA Amiga. Heck, I'd still like to see one today. But in retrospect, I think Dave Haynie was right when he said that AAA was not going to cut it even if it had been released as early as Commodore possibly could've managed.

And i don’t think the statement ‘people wanted a PC’ was true at all! In the end most got a PC because it was the standard for most and got the most support unless you had rich pockets to get a Mac, believe me i wouldn't have touched a PC with a bargepole if there were alternatives at the time!

Don't take this the wrong way... But that is just saying 'people wanted a PC' in slightly different words. I never said all people wanted a PC. I didn't want one. You didn't want one. But most people did and the reasons I mentioned, plus the one you just added is the reason why they wanted them.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

I got a PSX to play Doom, steered clear of the PC until my dad forced one upon us at xmas 1997! And Quake was more a tech demo of the day, Doom was a much better game to play.
Bar Doom and the first Halo i find FPS games pretty dull on the whole tbh, they have reached the level of dullness that console platform games reached in 1995 with Bubsy and the like came out!

Modern FPS games are that way of "dullness" that you describe now, but I'd say in the 1990s they were pioneering, and I played them not so much for the gameplay, but for the technical programming that went into the 3D engines that they used. I was always fascinated by that kind of thing, even if Quake had lofty ambitions but ended up being a Doom-style shooter.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by roondar

Well, you're entitled to your opinion. But I don't think that a better specced Amiga would've saved the platform.

As I said before: there were other, non PC systems on the market that were more powerful than the AGA systems. These all failed. Not one succeeded. Even the Mac needed a radical rethink to stay competitive and it had a much larger market than the Amiga ever had (as much as this pains me to admit). I just don't feel that specs were really the issue. Now, don't take me wrong here - I'd have loved to see an AAA Amiga. Heck, I'd still like to see one today. But in retrospect, I think Dave Haynie was right when he said that AAA was not going to cut it even if it had been released as early as Commodore possibly could've managed.
Don't take this the wrong way... But that is just saying 'people wanted a PC' in slightly different words. I never said all people wanted a PC. I didn't want one. You didn't want one. But most people did and the reasons I mentioned, plus the one you just added is the reason why they wanted them.

Well it is all ‘our’ opinions at the end of the day, doesn’t me make right, doesn’t make you right, just a discussion, no one will ever know if a better specced Amiga would succeeded or even if the A1200 would have had longer support if Commodore didn't get belly up.

Yes the Archimedes and Falcon were both more powerful but they failed because the software support was terrible, the former survived through the schools programme and not through consumer sales and died off when other machines started being used, and the latter just died off because well Atari were just Atari and didn’t have a clue. The Amiga had a much larger gaming fraternity than either of those, there’s no reason the Amiga couldn’t have survived post Doom and PS1 days had things been different.

Plus you mention the Mac, but Macs were mainly only used for DTP, that market was shrinking when PCs started to encroach and became good enough in that sector, it was never because of Doom or gaming in general, people buy didn’t Macs to play games.

Fair enough about my PC comment, kinda did say that in around about way! But i will say doesn’t mean it was the best option out there, yes the PC became the standard, but the problem was of upgrading and Microsoft has always been there!

[Dunny]

I bought a 2.5" 260MB IDE drive for my 1200 BITD. Cost £360. They screwed up and sent me a 360MB instead. But I had to save all my pennies - HDDs were certainly not cheap.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Plus you mention the Mac, but Macs were mainly only used for DTP, that market was shrinking when PCs started to encroach and became good enough in that sector, it was never because of Doom or gaming in general, people buy Macs to play games.

What?? Isn't that a typo?

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

There’s no reason why a better specced Amiga could not have succeeded whatever the market conditions, as others have said it flopped because the AA custom chipset was not amazing like OCS was, people were waiting to see what this new Amiga could do, when it arrived, yes it was still decent for the price, but it wasn’t the new wonder Amiga that people wanted or expected, and i firmly believe the failure had nothing todo with the console or PC market, which the latter was still very expensive and the former was purely for games.

And i don’t think the statement ‘people just wanted a PC’ was true at all! In the end most got a PC because it was the standard for most and got the most support unless you had rich pockets to get a Mac, believe me i wouldn't have touched a PC with a bargepole if there were alternatives at the time!

Sorry but thats simply not true.

The Amiga for all its excellence, was seen by most as a games machine, thats a fact.

The Playstation was the first MUST HAVE console that literally decimated everything before it. To claim that the "consoles" had no effect on the state of the Amiga market is simply asinine.

Developers and publishers were clamouring to work on the Playstation, and for good reason.

It was capable of doing games other consoles (except Saturn) couldn't do and that you would need a proper PC to compete with.

The Playstation was a game changer, and people left the Amiga in their droves to buy it.

Had the AAA chipset been released, as far as i'm aware, Dave Haynie claimed it was at least as powerful as a Playstation, which meant the Amiga would likely have gotten conversions of Playstation titles and it certainly would have prolonged the life of the brand, but the only way Amiga would still be able to compete would be to either go the PC direction with x86 or, to be constantly on the cusp of releasing new technology every 4-5 years so Amiga could have stayed relevant.

But to pretend Playstation had no impact on Amiga A1200 is madness, it affected every machine of the day.

[Hewitson]

Being equivalent would mean, at the very least, having RTG, an accelerator, and a hard drive, which would push the price of the A1200 far beyond the price of the "equivalent" PC. You can't call a stock A1200 equivalent to a 386DX with SVGA and HDD.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

The Amiga for all its excellence, was seen by most as a games machine, thats a fact.

In Europe yes, but that was true of most 'home' computers (machines bought for private use rather than business applications). By this time PCs were also beginning to be bought as 'games' machines. In fact it was gaming that drove much of the PC market - and still does today. The problem with the Amiga was that it was seen as 'just' a games machine, largely due to not being IBM compatible (and therefore not a 'serious' computer).

The Playstation was the first MUST HAVE console that literally decimated everything before it. ... people left the Amiga in their droves to buy it.

Then the Amiga as a computer was doomed because a console will always be cheaper, and any machine that can't run Windows isn't a real computer.

Had the AAA chipset been released, as far as i'm aware, Dave Haynie claimed it was at least as powerful as a Playstation, which meant the Amiga would likely have gotten conversions of Playstation titles and it certainly would have prolonged the life of the brand,

Only if they removed everything from it that wasn't needed in a console - which is what they tried to do with with the CD32. The CD32 was released in July 1993. The Sony PlayStation was released in Europe in September 1995, over two years later. If by some miracle Commodore had managed to squeeze a 'PlayStation equivalent' AAA chipset into the CD32 without making it prohibitively expensive, then it would have been the PlayStation that was getting conversions from the CD32, not the other way around.

I'm skeptical though. The AAA chipset incorporated many previous Amiga chipset features, but no 3D functions. That means a lot of silicon was dedicated to stuff that wasn't necessary in a next generation console, while it was lacking in the most important area. To make up for that they would have needed to put in a much more powerful CPU, and the price would have been uncompetitive.

So Commodore did read the market right (competing against the PC is a losing battle and consoles are the way to go) but didn't have the ability make it happen. If they had made it happen though, how many Amiga users would have been satisfied? I know I wouldn't. I bought a PlayStation to play one game (Tomb Raider) which it did reasonably well, but every other game I tried on it was meh. And since it was no good for anything else... Eventually the PlayStation wore out and got trashed, but I still have my A1200! (and use it every day).

to pretend Playstation had no impact on Amiga A1200 is madness, it affected every machine of the day.

Sure it did, but let's not forget that this 'day' was 3 years after the A1200 was introduced and a year after Commodore had already gone bankrupt.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Being equivalent would mean, at the very least, having RTG, an accelerator, and a hard drive, which would push the price of the A1200 far beyond the price of the "equivalent" PC. You can't call a stock A1200 equivalent to a 386DX with SVGA and HDD.

The trick is in the word 'equivalent'. To be truly 'equivalent' in every way, it would have to be a PC. That was more true back then than it is today, because interoperability between different platforms was a lot worse. People didn't buy PCs to get a hard drive or VGA graphics, they bought them to run PC software. To be truly equivalent, the Amiga would also have to run PC software - IOW it would have to be a PC.

But if by 'equivalent' you mean able to get the same functionality and enjoyment of it, then the Amiga wasn't that far off. It just depends on what you can accept as equivalent.

I didn't need an SVGA monitor for my A1200 because it worked on my TV (and would have worked fine on my 1084 monitor too if someone hadn't stolen it). That saved me a lot of money. I didn't need a big hard drive because the OS is in ROM and most games run direct off floppy disk. I also didn't need an expensive graphics card, 'bleeding edge' CPU or huge amounts of RAM because Amiga OS is more efficient and the AGA chipset takes much of the load off the CPU.

When Windows 95 first came out I tried it on my 386DX-40 with 4MB RAM. Finally a Windows desktop to rival Workbench! But it was dog slow. In fact nothing less than a 486 with 8MB was any good. In that respect an unexpanded A1200 was equivalent to a much more expensive PC. And shall I mention that the PC wouldn't run any of my Amiga software? After all, if 'equivalence' is the criteria then the PC should at least be able to run the same software, right?

So when you talk about being equivalent, what you really mean is was it exactly the same as a PC? If that is the criteria the Amiga will always come up short, but it's an unfair comparison.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Foebane

What?? Isn't that a typo?

Yep just noticed, defo a typo!