The reason the Amiga failed.

[Seob]

I am wondering what if: The amiga had been branded as a games console.

 

It was, the Amiga cd32. Came to late to the market, had some patent issues in the us, and to many straight ports from the a500 and a1200, with to little exclusives.

It picked up strong in the UK, but then Commodore went bankrupt.

 

And like others said, in Europe, at least in the Netherlands and the U.K. it was the number one selling homecomputer for a few years, until the pc-market took over.

[dudeslife]

whats this dude talking about? the amiga is still a success at my house. Hybris is still the most played video game..

[bkrownd]

Yeah, I remember other PC owners did not care for colors/sound until the buzzword 'Multimedia PC' was invented. Then it was suddenly cool to have graphics and sound

 

I remember the "multimedia PC" thing. It was just an underwhelming marketing gimmick until the "web" offered unlimited on-demand graphical content to the masses to drive real demand for it.

[Keatah]

I never understood exactly what multi-media really was, other than that a "kit" consisted of a soundcard, speakers, CD-ROM drive, and some fmv rail shooters.

 

Technically multimedia would mean different forms of sensory experience, but computers already had sight and sound output. This multimedia thing was just an industry buzzword.

[FastRobPlus]

Here you go, multimedia and the Amiga in a nutshell:

 

"The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody — including Commodore's marketing department — could fully articulate what it was all about. Today, it's obvious the Amiga was the first multimedia computer, but in those days it was derided as a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video."

 

-Byte Magazine

[skosh]

I never understood exactly what multi-media really was, other than that a "kit" consisted of a soundcard, speakers, CD-ROM drive, and some fmv rail shooters.

 

Technically multimedia would mean different forms of sensory experience, but computers already had sight and sound output. This multimedia thing was just an industry buzzword.

 

I would agree with you to a certain degree about the term in a very general sense however I think that when Win 95 came out and the multimedia craze picked up it was more due to the fact the PC(cheap and huge marketshare) could now produce broadcast quality solutions that existed on the Amiga for years. It was used in industry for films, business kiosks(Scala), and for 3d and live video(Video Toaster(early 90s) / Flyer). For years media software on the Mac, ST, and Amiga far surpassed what was available for a PC and once cheap PCs prevailed all of the sudden the pioneers in the media space either folded, moved to the PC or bought out.

[atarian63]

You sir are a knob of monumental size and scope. At what point did the Amiga fail? It was king of the hill from 1987 till the mid 90's. Really I despair of rubbish like this.

tosser.

no it was not, it really did not catch up to ST until late 88 coming on par or early 89.

[atarian63]

 

I would agree with you to a certain degree about the term in a very general sense however I think that when Win 95 came out and the multimedia craze picked up it was more due to the fact the PC(cheap and huge marketshare) could now produce broadcast quality solutions that existed on the Amiga for years. It was used in industry for films, business kiosks(Scala), and for 3d and live video(Video Toaster(early 90s) / Flyer). For years media software on the Mac, ST, and Amiga far surpassed what was available for a PC and once cheap PCs prevailed all of the sudden the pioneers in the media space either folded, moved to the PC or bought out.

I owned a retail store all through these day and that is pretty accurate. Almost overnight,games like 7th guest and the rise of vga and sound like ad lib

[Osgeld]

which were all years before 95, I would almost argue the "multimedia" phase had almost gone out of style by the time 95 came out, it wasnt novel it was expected standard equipment by then and it had well surpassed amiga

 

for example we were editing out cuss words in cd quality stereo for the local community college ... on a 486 in windows 3.11 with a computer bought at the same place they sold fridges

Edited November 22, 2014 by Osgeld

[kiwilove]

Every hardware has it's 'day' when it rose at it's zenith, and thereafter went into it's decline.

 

For me the Amiga never quite delivered on it's videogaming hardware. That it did not compete well say against the SNES hardware.

Even when a game turned up which did a pretty decent job - say Battle Squadron - it was not critically received.

 

Yes - when the PC's started getting better with it's hardware - the Amiga did not keep up.

 

Harvey

[Nebulon]

no it was not, it really did not catch up to ST until late 88 coming on par or early 89.

 

Can you perhaps expand on this a bit. When you say it didn't catch up to the ST until late 1988, what do you mean?

[+save2600]

 

Can you perhaps expand on this a bit. When you say it didn't catch up to the ST until late 1988, what do you mean?

 

...on *his* street, but only if you were sporting blinders - which are bleedng so red by now, that rose colored no longer fits the description.

[Tickled_Pink]

The Amiga failed??

 

Sure, like everything else it was eventually killed off by the PC. But failed?

 

Considering that the ST was a failure in the US at least, what else were you lot using if the Amiga was also a failure? They were the only two 16-bit kids in town for a few years (not including the Mac, which WAS a failure).

[Bill Loguidice]

The Amiga failed??

 

Sure, like everything else it was eventually killed off by the PC. But failed?

 

Considering that the ST was a failure in the US at least, what else were you lot using if the Amiga was also a failure? They were the only two 16-bit kids in town for a few years (not including the Mac, which WAS a failure).

 

It's all relative of course. The ST didn't quite catch on here like it did in Europe and was definitely behind the Amiga in terms of mindshare and general software availability in mass market stores as the latter part of the 80s wore on. The Amiga though was still a distant second to PCs running EGA and, eventually, VGA. So, to answer your question, there was that pesky growing population of PC users, despite the Amiga's early (and significant) audio-visual superiority.

[+wood_jl]

Apple was not a PC Clone and did not fail. It probably has to do with productivity software.

Obviously, the Apple *COMPANY* did not fail, and for a variety of reasons (once is because the Apple became a PC Clone itself, so my original point stands).

 

Some notable points on the Apple's slowly-becoming-a-PC-clone:

 

(1) 800K floppy drives became 1.44MB PC-compatible drives

(2) NuBus slots became PCI slots

(3) Appletalk networking was replaced by Ethernet

(4) [the Howitzer] - PowerPC RISC processors were replaced by INTEL PC hardware, and you can create a "Hackintosh" with std. PC hardware

 

So, Apple *was* not a PC clone, but survived by becoming a PC clone, albeit running a different Unix-like OS like my Linux PC does. I'd say that when the Mac became Intel, it emphasizes - rather than disputes - my original contention that "PC CLONES" won the war, or is there some better rationale?

 

edit: (forgot a couple of key points)

 

(5) Microsoft RESCUED Apple (1997 or they'd be gone) with $150 million investment to save them, and Microsoft itself from becoming a monopoly if Apple failed

(6) [a big one] Apple diversified into (1) Consumer electronics and (2) Music. That's a big reason they're here.

[Keatah]

I would agree with you to a certain degree about the term in a very general sense however I think that when Win 95 came out and the multimedia craze picked up it was more due to the fact the PC(cheap and huge marketshare) could now produce broadcast quality solutions that existed on the Amiga for years.

 

Top end PC machines were still required along with extra hardware. The Amiga was a good choice for video production for longer than most think.

 

 

For me the Amiga never quite delivered on it's videogaming hardware. That it did not compete well say against the SNES hardware.

Even when a game turned up which did a pretty decent job - say Battle Squadron - it was not critically received.

 

Yes - when the PC's started getting better with it's hardware - the Amiga did not keep up.

 

Harvey

 

That's right. The Amiga failed to live up to expectations set in the gaming and entertainment market. I'm sure some of us have their favorite titles that were winners on the Amiga. But by and large Amiga didn't improve upon existing game ports, nor did it have re-writes that took full advantage of what the hardware was capable of at the time.

 

Consider Flight Simulator II and Jet from subLOGIC. The graphics on these two titles were very similar to the already 10 year old Apple II. Sure, the resolution and color definition was better. But that's about it. They never did anything with improving the terrain detail, no texturing, no extra buildings, and so on and so forth.

 

Well, yes, it is/was FLIGHT SIMULATOR II and Jet! So why would it be any different you argue..? But on the PC we were at least seeing higher resolutions and some better scenery and framerates, then FS 95, 98, 2000 came out and those saw huge improvements across the board in all features! The Amiga got left behind. And today we have X-Plane, something entirely different, and far superior to anything that came before. And that's a topic for another thread.

 

One other thing, the PC was embracing USB. Though the Amiga failed before USB became practical and bug free, was there any attempt at all to do USB on it?

 

 

(4) [the Howitzer] - PowerPC RISC processors were replaced by INTEL PC hardware, and you can create a "Hackintosh" with std. PC hardware

 

So, Apple *was* not a PC clone, but survived by becoming a PC clone, albeit running a different Unix-like OS like my Linux PC does. I'd say that when the Mac became Intel, it emphasizes - rather than disputes - my original contention that "PC CLONES" won the war, or is there some better rationale?

 

edit: (forgot a couple of key points)

 

(5) Microsoft RESCUED Apple (1997 or they'd be gone) with $150 million investment to save them, and Microsoft itself from becoming a monopoly if Apple failed

(6) [a big one] Apple diversified into (1) Consumer electronics and (2) Music. That's a big reason they're here.

 

I for one am glad the PowerPC flew the coup and is no longer relevant. As a matter of opinion, I'm all for culling the number of architectures and instruction sets.

 

1- x86 and x86-64 for general purpose computing

2- ARM for mobile, embedded, hobbyist, and special niche uses

3- Supercomputing - yeh, uhm whatever they use these days.

4- Do we need more?

 

Yes, The MAC slowly evolved into PC-like architecture, clone material. And really honestly the PC is versatile enough as it stands today. Aside from mobile devices, do we really need anything else? Do we need strange and incompatible machines that are hassles to operate and maintain? Do we need a thousand million varieties of tools that do essentially the same things?

 

Apple did music correctly from around 2002 through about 2011 +/- a year on both ends depending how you look at it. I look at it from the iTunes perspective and how well iTunes used to support managing your locally stored library. Everything is cloud oriented nowadays which I don't like.

[high voltage]

UK weekly magazine micro mart:

The magazine is also notable for being the only publication in the UK to still regularly cover the Amiga market, most magazines having abandoned coverage of the format in the years following the collapse of Commodore.

[Goochman]

The one thing I wonder is what would've happened if Atari got the Amiga chipset and Commodore didnt have a 16bit entry after the C64 - without a fragmented hobbyist market (ST vs Amiga) I wonder if Atari could've succeeded more against the Mac? The PC train was coming no matter what but if Atari was in a stronger position could they have hung on?

[atarian63]

Can you perhaps expand on this a bit. When you say it didn't catch up to the ST until late 1988, what do you mean?

 

That Amiga and it's software were behind in sales ubtil a500 was released and the st shortage of availability in 89

[atarian63]

...on *his* street, but only if you were sporting blinders - which are bleedng so red by now, that rose colored no longer fits the description.

As a dealer for both I would know,but state whatever uneducated slop that you wish.your opinion is not based in realty mr rosy.

Edited December 4, 2014 by atarian63

[carlsson]

Commodore was on their way with the CBM 900 project before they acquired the Lorraine from Amiga. However the 900 most likely would have been pitched as a business computer in the same segment as IBM PC, Victor 9000/Sirius-1, Apple ][, probably Mac and similar designs. It is possible that they would have made a cost-reduced version better targetted to home users, depending on what the market wanted. After all in the beginning there was quite a leap in price even with the Atari ST and Sinclair QL compared to what the 8-bit gaming computers cost, so it may have been difficult to gauge which types of computers would win.

 

While we're speculating, what if Commodore and Atari had buried their battle axes and instead co-operated to form a 16-bit gaming/home computer? Think MSX, but with new, cool custom chips and powerful CPU. Both probably could sense that IBM compatibles and Apple had bigger business support, so instead of trying to beat eachother, they could have joined forces. Not merged as companies, just that the Atari ST and Amiga would have been mostly software and media compatible, perhaps up to 90% of all software and the difference in that the ST had built-in MIDI and the Amiga supported a genlock?

[FastRobPlus]

I have not given it a lot of thought, but I sometimes wonder if the path to winning for Atari or Commodore might have been to become immediately more open.

 

For example, we know the ST was mainly built from off-the-shelf parts, but around an MC68000 rather than an Intel 8088. I wonder if somehow retaining rights to the platform but letting all the clone makers produce the systems in the same way it was happening for PC-DOS clones might have somehow been a winning bid.

 

 

Amiga on the other hand was so specialized that I don't see how it could ever have survived. Remember, Apple and the Macintosh flat-lined in the mid-late 1990s. Only an emergency cash infusion from Microsoft and the subsequent turnaround headed by Steve Jobs saved them. And the only reason so much energy was expended in saving Apple was the antitrust lawsuit against MS. To avoid being labeled as a monopoly they desperately needed a second viable rival. If that's what it took to save Apple, what hope did Commodore/Amiga ever have?

 

Still, I wonder what might have happened if in 1985/86, Commodore did the unthinkable (for that era) and released an ISA card with the Amiga's custom Deinse/Paula/Agnes chipset and marketed it as a cheap and easy all-in one PC gaming and multimedia card.

 

Recall that back then, Hercules Mono, CGA, EGA, and VGA were all viable in the market and this was forcing most games and applications to support all 4 graphics formats. AdLib and SoundBlaster were doing the same for audio. SoundBlaster eventually won out for audio, and VGA for video but only because the price of VGA monitors began to fall. Imagine the disruption that may have occurred if a largish company like Commodore had offered an all-in-one card with beautiful graphics and sound that could output to existing televisions and monitors and use common 9-pin joysticks.

 

I have no idea how such a ploy would have turned out, but it would be cool to go back in a time machine, take over Commodore, and give it a try!

[Lost Dragon]

Why Commodore failed is how i'd view the subject, but it was 'painful' to view the Amiga scene in the mid 1990's...as it seemed software publishers thought putting out sub-standard clones of games on console and PC were going to keep the Amiga market healthy.A number of Doom clones, a Super Mario Kart Clone (Extreme Racing) etc etc.

Curiousily Rafaelle Cecco (Exolon, Cybernoid 1, 2, Stormlord 1, 2 etc) kinda foresaw the future when being interviewed by Your Sinclair magazine way back in the April 1990 edition of the mag:

'..The PC is what appeals most i gues,, because i'm sure they'll still be here in 5 years time, where as the ST and Amiga, espically the ST, may not'.

Also, i don't think squandering resources on projects like:The C64GS, CDTV, A600 etc did CBM any favours.

[Bill Loguidice]

Still, I wonder what might have happened if in 1985/86, Commodore did the unthinkable (for that era) and released an ISA card with the Amiga's custom Deinse/Paula/Agnes chipset and marketed it as a cheap and easy all-in one PC gaming and multimedia card.

 

Recall that back then, Hercules Mono, CGA, EGA, and VGA were all viable in the market and this was forcing most games and applications to support all 4 graphics formats. AdLib and SoundBlaster were doing the same for audio. SoundBlaster eventually won out for audio, and VGA for video but only because the price of VGA monitors began to fall. Imagine the disruption that may have occurred if a largish company like Commodore had offered an all-in-one card with beautiful graphics and sound that could output to existing televisions and monitors and use common 9-pin joysticks.

 

I have no idea how such a ploy would have turned out, but it would be cool to go back in a time machine, take over Commodore, and give it a try!

 

I think that was one option, certainly, as we know that Tandy was able to successfully establish their own audio/video standard that lasted until VGA/Sound Blaster took over, but you still wouldn't have had the features/performance that made the Amiga so special for the time.

 

I still think in hindsight a better approach would have been if Commodore was more aggressive pushing the Amiga as a PC compatible, which it was able to do without much issue, as well as a Mac compatible. They could have sold an Amiga for roughly the same price as most decent PC compatibles with a PC card pre-installed and offered three models: a base Amiga that just ran Amiga software (mostly for the home), a mid-tier that ran Amiga and PC software (for businesses), and a high-end tier that ran Amiga, PC, and Mac software (for specialty shops). While this still wouldn't have changed the Amiga's fate as a non-PC, it might have given Commodore the ability to transition better to a premiere PC clone maker once the market shifted once and for all, keeping the company afloat.

 

And yes, I know both Commodore and Atari created their own, separate, PC clones, but they were barely marketed/sold. The approach I'm suggesting would have been rather different.

[Nebulon]

That Amiga and it's software were behind in sales ubtil a500 was released and the st shortage of availability in 89

Okay, I see what you mean. That's what I recall as well. There was that retail gap until the lower-cost Amiga 500 arrived. I remember the Amiga 1000 being a bit too expensive to really establish a big enough user-base to get the number of software developers on-board whereas the ST had people like FTL writing for them from the start.