A8 worlds third best selling 8-bitter

[Bill Loguidice]

 

Hi Bill,

 

I used that extensively as a control. I loved his idea about getting numbers from quarterly earnings reports. Unfortunately, I have had very little luck in finding any.

My primary source is similar to what started this topic - sales figures from magazines.

Creative Computing actually dedicated an entire monthly page to this for a while.

 

That's a good approach. It really was a travesty that numbers were so poorly tracked during the first few decades of personal computing, and even home videogames, to a degree. What's funny is that when Boisy Pitre and I were writing the CoCo book, even the people we interviewed who were on the front lines back in the day refused to divulge specifics, meaning the final numbers in the Color Computer series' case is still a mystery (it could be less than a million, it could exceed two million, etc.). Sadly, that's too often the case--there always seems to be something stopping getting definitive numbers.

[JamesD]

Those numbers, unfortunately, can't be entirely accurate. The Apple II series definitely sold a bit more, and we don't have concrete numbers on other 8-bits like the CoCo series or the TRS-80 series, and other computers, like the VIC-20, are conspicuously absent even though they're known to have also sold more than a million. The other issue, of course, is we don't know how these numbers are being counted. All of those platforms mentioned had multiple computers in the series. If you're going to count all Atari 8-bits (as the chart indicates), are you also counting all Apple IIs including the IIgs? Are you counting the C-128 and C-64G in the C-64s numbers? What about clones? What about MSX-specification computers, which in aggregate sold more than any other 8-bit other than the C-64 but weren't a single manufacturer platform? Etc.

Tandy figured out that they should only report profits rather than # of units sold in their stock reports.

Once they did that sales numbers pretty much disappeared for them.

I don't think they ever published numbers for the CoCo.

 

 

[jhd]

My primary source is similar to what started this topic - sales figures from magazines.

Creative Computing actually dedicated an entire monthly page to this for a while.

 

You migth also want to look at the business press, not just computer magazines. Titles like Fortune and Business Week would sometimes profile specific companies. Hard data on sales is unfortunately lacking, but there are estimates of market share by industry analysts, who presumably had access to the best data available at the time.

[Level42]

I dont give a shit about sales numbers. I give about quality of the machine. The Atari was the best.

[Bill Loguidice]

I dont give a shit about sales numbers. I give about quality of the machine. The Atari was the best.

 

Well, that settles that then.

[Rybags]

I think even 17 million for C64 sales is probably a bit conservative. Even the C128 supposedly sold 2-3 million which in itself is almost more than A8 sales.

 

I've never seen anything resembling an accurate account of A8 sales. What can muddy the waters even more is counting 5200 sales or not counting XEGS sales. Some charts I've seen see the sales practically dry up once the ST arrived which definately wasn't the case.

 

But I'd believe it's probably in the 2.25 - 4.0 million range. Maybe more but most likely around 3

[Bill Loguidice]

I think even 17 million for C64 sales is probably a bit conservative. Even the C128 supposedly sold 2-3 million which in itself is almost more than A8 sales.

 

I've never seen anything resembling an accurate account of A8 sales. What can muddy the waters even more is counting 5200 sales or not counting XEGS sales. Some charts I've seen see the sales practically dry up once the ST arrived which definately wasn't the case.

 

But I'd believe it's probably in the 2.25 - 4.0 million range. Maybe more but most likely around 3

 

5200 sales definitely shouldn't be counted since it wasn't directly compatible, but certainly XEGS should be. Considering how long the Atari 8-bit series was on the market and in the number of markets it was available, for practical (business) reasons it would almost certainly have to have exceeded 3 million units. If it didn't, it wouldn't have made financial sense for Atari to continue to sell the things (and continually release new models) for as long as they did.

 

As for the C-64, I've never been satisfied with the figures presented and say as much at the start of the C-64 chapter in "Vintage Game Consoles." There is reasonable evidence for sales from anywhere between 12 and 30 million, and that doesn't even count C-128 sales, which as you say, added at least another couple of million to the number of systems that could run C-64 software. As I state in the book, even taking the lowest reliable figure of 12 million, it was still the single best selling computer by far, and that's without having to combine models (all C-64, despite revisions and cosmetic differences were the same basic specs) like you have to for every other computer platform.