The reason the Amiga failed.

[bojay1997]

amiga 500 came out in 89 and st s were being diverted to Europe. Sales prior to that were not a region but national 2-1 st sales vs amiga

Incorrect. The 500 came out in late 1987 in the US. Unless you have specific stats you can provide from a reputable source, I'm gonna call BS on the 2-1. I'm sure both Commodore and Atari used whatever PR techniques they could to convince their dealer body to stay with them and I wouldn't put it past either company to lie to their dealers about how their own lines were selling in relation to the competition.

[Chilly Willy]

The 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486 (and I would argue the Pentium 1 series) are not RISC chips.

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13071221/is-x86-risc-or-cisc

 

I sold, spec'd, and thoroughly researched those machines during their heyday. To this day, I still have stacks of magazine articles, spec sheets, and other documentaiton on them.

 

Everything changed with the Pentium Pro architecture (I have a suspicion of where that technology came from, but that's a different topic) and the introduction of the Pentium 4. So it's important to make a distinction between x86 as it relates to the original Pentium and earlier and x86 as it relates to Pentium Pro and after.

Yes, this is true. I should have been more specific. We were talking about the newer x86 where Motorola finally gave up trying to keep up, and I was pointing out that Motorola switched the 680x0 family into the RISC based ColdFire family, which allowed them to up the speed while maintaining backwards compatibility with a library for unsupported opcodes, and how Intel basically did the same thing - converting the x86 from a full CISC processor into one with a RISC core for better speed, and a translation layer to keep the same ISA.

 

 

Incorrect. The 500 came out in late 1987 in the US. Unless you have specific stats you can provide from a reputable source, I'm gonna call BS on the 2-1. I'm sure both Commodore and Atari used whatever PR techniques they could to convince their dealer body to stay with them and I wouldn't put it past either company to lie to their dealers about how their own lines were selling in relation to the competition.

Came out in Oct 87. I got one in Jan or Feb 88 to replace my Atari 400. You know, I came THIS CLOSE to working for GVP in 1990. I was in talks with them to fly out for an interview, then the war in Kuwait/Iraq started and I never heard back from them.

[108 Stars]

Only uk the rest of Europe was mainly Atari ST especially Germany

No, Germany was Amiga-country.

[Seob]

Only uk the rest of Europe was mainly Atari ST especially Germany

No the Amiga was number 1 in the Netherlands, the ST a distend second.

[high voltage]

No, Germany was Amiga-country.

Well, according to ASM and Happy Computer ST ruled first (yes, it came before A500 anyway), and held its position until 90ish. I read in the earlier ASM a game came first for ST, then converted to A500, but it did change pretty soon, A500 games came first, and then converted to ST, and then not at all. Then it was Amiga and IBM compatibles.

The same situation happened in UK, but the ST was saved by people like Madonna, Fatboy Slim and many more musicians.

Edited December 11, 2014 by high voltage

[Tickled_Pink]

Well, according to ASM and Happy Computer ST ruled first (yes, it came before A500 anyway), and held its position until 90ish. I read in the earlier ASM a game came first for ST, then converted to A500, but it did change pretty soon, A500 games came first, and then converted to ST, and then not at all. Then it was Amiga and IBM compatibles.

The same situation happened in UK, but the ST was saved by people like Madonna, Fatboy Slim and many more musicians.

 

It was a similar situation in the UK. The ST ruled for the first 4, maybe 5, years before the Amiga took over. I suspect that this was due to aggressive bundling by Atari and the fact that it arrived on the scene slightly earlier. When I bought my first ST in 1988 it was £400. The Amiga was the same price but, for me, the ST had two things going for it ... a bundle of 20+ games and MIDI. All my friends went the same way. I didn't know anyone with an Amiga until around '91/'92.

 

This thread has been educational. I was always under the impression that the ST failed in the US because the Amiga dominated the market. It also shows how wrong the original statement was. You can't describe a product as having failed if it's a success elsewhere. It's a bit like saying the Xbox One has been a dismal failure because it's barely registered in Japan.

[atarian1]

One market the ST stayed ahead of the Amiga in Europe was in the business/productivity field. Its high resolution display which had a higher resolution and faster refresh rate made it attractive for business people because it was easy on the eyes which allowed more/better productivity than the Amiga's color screen (worse in interlaced mode). Lots of high powered productivity programs (some rivaling expensive PC/Mac programs) came from Germany and were often seen in offices around Europe. At one point most of the German government was ST based.

[TMR]

It was a similar situation in the UK. The ST ruled for the first 4, maybe 5, years before the Amiga took over. I suspect that this was due to aggressive bundling by Atari and the fact that it arrived on the scene slightly earlier. When I bought my first ST in 1988 it was £400. The Amiga was the same price but, for me, the ST had two things going for it ... a bundle of 20+ games and MIDI. All my friends went the same way. I didn't know anyone with an Amiga until around '91/'92.

It's more regional than that in the UK, i was selling computers during that period and less than a year after the A500 launched we were shifting fifteen or probably more like twenty Amigas for one ST. We were more "hands on" than most places, so people could try games before they buy on either machine and we'd often leave the same game running on both. The number of A500s shifted by Shadow Of The Beast is probably quite scary...

[108 Stars]

Well, according to ASM and Happy Computer ST ruled first (yes, it came before A500 anyway), and held its position until 90ish. I read in the earlier ASM a game came first for ST, then converted to A500, but it did change pretty soon, A500 games came first, and then converted to ST, and then not at all. Then it was Amiga and IBM compatibles.

The same situation happened in UK, but the ST was saved by people like Madonna, Fatboy Slim and many more musicians.

That is very much possible for a time, as the Amiga started out too expensive for General audiences. But it was more a matter of having a head start than it was being more popular. As you said, the Amiga took over eventually. In the end, it was always the games that sold Systems to the masses, and the moment the Amiga 500 became affordable everyone saw better Versions thanks to the Amiga's custom chipset there. From 1987 on the Amiga began growing thanks to the 500, and the ST's decline began. Ultimately, afaik the margin between ST sales and Amiga sales became quite large here.

 

It is also something you can see in the General reception. The Amiga seems to enjoy much wider appreciation here now, with quite a big number of more or less active fans.

[Lost Dragon]

Found that Psygnosis feature EDGE ran and yep, Shadow Of The Beast was started as an Amiga specific title at a time when the ST (hardware) was out selling the Amiga 5-to-1 in the UK.

 

In other interviews, UK press featured over the years, there's a few cases of people thinking the Amiga would only be the dominant force for 5 years, no more, as that was the norm.for any platform, as by the end of those 5 years a new 'foirce' as it were would enter the market and the balance would shift once again.

[high voltage]

Found that Psygnosis feature EDGE ran and yep, Shadow Of The Beast was started as an Amiga specific title at a time when the ST (hardware) was out selling the Amiga 5-to-1 in the UK.

 

In other interviews, UK press featured over the years, there's a few cases of people thinking the Amiga would only be the dominant force for 5 years, no more, as that was the norm.for any platform, as by the end of those 5 years a new 'foirce' as it were would enter the market and the balance would shift once again.

Do you still own all EDGE magazines? I used to buy it regularly until 2004, when I moved away from UK. Managed to sell the early issues on eBay a few years back. I noticed Tony Mott is editor again (he's not very good), so they can't find any decent editor nowadays?

[Lost Dragon]

@High Voltage:Currently still subscribe to EDGe, have all the back issues, few misc 'specials' as well, but think i'll cancel sub at start of 2015, as it's just not delivering 'The Goods'.

 

Cancelled sub to Retro Gamer magazine in 2014 as the quality, in terms of what passed for 'research', simply was'nt there, Gamestm i ended in 2013...going through my 'collections' of bhoth these and giving away/throwing out issues every week.What's often reported as fact, in the Retro content is often so poorly looked into, niether offer any real historical value.

 

Whilst the likes of Marty G's articles are always carefully researched and enjoyable to read, sadly there's some much needed 'proof reading' needed in so many other areas.

 

I'm not willing to pay for page filling or keep advertisers happy type content.

 

With so much content readily avaiable online, for free, i simply cannot 'justify' subscribing to UK magazines anymore, where as once i had 7 or 8 subs on the go.

[Lost Dragon]

I do miss TMR's Homebrew stuff from RG though, plus Marty's look at the USA side of things/Not sure what i'd miss from EDGE though as the once superb Making Of's...seem few and far between these days.Guess focus is on other areas.

 

In the past, Edge has done superb looks at rise and fall of both the Atari and Commodore 'Empires' to be fair to them.

[TMR]

I do miss TMR's Homebrew stuff from RG though

Awww [blush =-]

[+wood_jl]

It's more regional than that in the UK, i was selling computers during that period and less than a year after the A500 launched we were shifting fifteen or probably more like twenty Amigas for one ST. We were more "hands on" than most places, so people could try games before they buy on either machine and we'd often leave the same game running on both. The number of A500s shifted by Shadow Of The Beast is probably quite scary...

 

If the A500 had been the launch Amiga (and at the much-lower A500 price), then the Amiga would have squeezed the Atari ST badly. It wasn't the launch machine. The Atari 520ST launched in June 1985, while the Amiga 500 launched in October 1987. That's 2 years, 4 months - an eternity in the tech world.

 

How fast was tech moving, then? Well, consider that the Commodore 64 was launched in January 1982. The original Amiga (obviously an entire generation ahead) launched in July 1985.

 

So, it took only 3.5 years to move an entire generation (C64 to Amiga 1000), and it still took nearly 2.5 years for Amiga to redesign (copying the Atari 1040ST form factor, quite obviously) and release a *same-generation* Amiga 500 that was finally price-competitive with the Atari ST. Interesting timeline.

 

I'm not dumping on the A500 - I really like it and enjoy it thoroughly, and its affordability and practicality is unquestionable, as it was - by quite some margin - the best-selling Amiga. It's one of my favorite machines of the era. But let's keep things in perspective; it was almost 2.5 years after the Atari 520ST.

[high voltage]

I almost owned an A1000 for free, it was going to be dumped, and I didn't pick up on it, so yes, a few days later when I finally decided to asked for it they trashed it.

[Lost Dragon]

Shadow Of The Beast 'often' pos up fron coders of commercial games back in the day as the reason they started using the Amiga's custom hardware, where as before they were content (if that is the correct word) to simply port ST code over.It seems THE game that caused the most widespread 'swing' or shift in terms of balance of power, that wrestled the dominance of the UK 16 Bit home micro scene away from Atari with the ST and seemed to prove that UK gamers wanted more than just cheaper option hardware.

And yep TMR, i do miss your regular RG Homebrew section, along with a good few other freelancers works..Marty's for it's USA based (and factual nature), good few others for content and style of writing, but sadly RG cannot seem to deliver the goods in terms of quality through out the mag, month in, month out anymore, to the point i can justify subscribing.

Never see it on sale down here, so sub would be only option.It simply needs decent proof reading on articles that look back at key periods in my gaming life.

[TMR]

If the A500 had been the launch Amiga (and at the much-lower A500 price), then the Amiga would have squeezed the Atari ST badly. It wasn't the launch machine. The Atari 520ST launched in June 1985, while the Amiga 500 launched in October 1987. That's 2 years, 4 months - an eternity in the tech world.

It doesn't feel so vast a gulf when you consider that there was still a huge amount of investment (in multiple senses of the word) in the 8-bit systems during that period.

 

So, it took only 3.5 years to move an entire generation (C64 to Amiga 1000), and it still took nearly 2.5 years for Amiga to redesign (copying the Atari 1040ST form factor, quite obviously)

The C128 pre-dates the ST and the A500 is more like it even down to the shape of the power supply...

[+save2600]

Gulf in tech terms and marketing indeed!

 

'85 Atari 520ST with its single sided EXTERNAL drive and no readily available and easily accessible trapdoor expansion RAM.

 

Fantasy mode on, *if* Commodore would have released the Amiga 500 first in '85, you think Atari would have been able to compete at all? ONLY reason the ST perceptibly, for the shortest stint of times, "had" it over the Amiga, was because of the A1000's price point in '85-'86. A500 was released in '87 and the ST experienced sad times ever since.

 

Oh and the C128 only predates the ST by a few months.

[atarian63]

Gulf in tech terms and marketing indeed!

 

'85 Atari 520ST with its single sided EXTERNAL drive and no readily available and easily accessible trapdoor expansion RAM.

 

Fantasy mode on, *if* Commodore would have released the Amiga 500 first in '85, you think Atari would have been able to compete at all? ONLY reason the ST perceptibly, for the shortest stint of times, "had" it over the Amiga, was because of the A1000's price point in '85-'86. A500 was released in '87 and the ST experienced sad times ever since.

 

Oh and the C128 only predates the ST by a few months.

I still think Atari would have mopped the floor with them like they did till late 88 and part of that due to the supply diversion that Atari did. We used to install solder on upgrade on 520 models for quite some time, wasnt too hard to do or that expensive. However a plugin would have been much better, remember A1000 amiga (amoeba as we called them) only had 256mb for a little while and was months behind the ST for release. Yes save2600 you are correct, the price point was bad, awful in fact. We had an Amiga store up the street from mine, we used to send sales guys in there to poach customers and get them over to my place to buy an ST. It was really easy to do. This was before we also sold commodore.

My fantasy mode on is that Atari had gotten the project done with Jay/Amiga and released a killer game console as was intended for that chipset.

Edited December 13, 2014 by atarian63

[atarian63]

That is very much possible for a time, as the Amiga started out too expensive for General audiences. But it was more a matter of having a head start than it was being more popular. As you said, the Amiga took over eventually. In the end, it was always the games that sold Systems to the masses, and the moment the Amiga 500 became affordable everyone saw better Versions thanks to the Amiga's custom chipset there. From 1987 on the Amiga began growing thanks to the 500, and the ST's decline began. Ultimately, afaik the margin between ST sales and Amiga sales became quite large here.

 

It is also something you can see in the General reception. The Amiga seems to enjoy much wider appreciation here now, with quite a big number of more or less active fans.

Actually it WAS am matter of being more popular plus the head start, it was just a better machine and at a much lower price. no brainer for most consumers and that mono display could not be matched by amiga. Plus St os in rom was easily the simplest to sell. Amiga on the other had have to use a disk for kickstart,then another to get to work bench, slow process and made it a hard sale.even with a500, it was not an immediate change, took till late 89 or early 90 to start making an impact/ A1000 had done alot of damage from a sales standpoint.

[atarian63]

No the Amiga was number 1 in the Netherlands, the ST a distend second.

Germany, amiga was a distant 3rd or 4th

[atarian63]

Incorrect. The 500 came out in late 1987 in the US. Unless you have specific stats you can provide from a reputable source, I'm gonna call BS on the 2-1. I'm sure both Commodore and Atari used whatever PR techniques they could to convince their dealer body to stay with them and I wouldn't put it past either company to lie to their dealers about how their own lines were selling in relation to the competition.

I would have to call BS on your call, I was a dealer for both and had some access to the goings on for both I will bet that you were not.87 is correct (Late 87 to ship the thing, but not much availability till mid to late 88 and even then it took another year to get going, helped by Atari diverting supplies to europe, I had a very hard time getting St's so we had to sell the machine we did not favor along with pc's.I will say once it got going it was funny to us as it was nearly always sold as a games machine to our customers, as in that was almost all they did with it,which is fine as we specialized in games. Productivity for it did not sell like it did on the ST's .

[atarilovesyou]

Has anybody yet defined the term 'failure' as it relates to game consoles, computers, companies? How about 'failure'?

 

This is the problem.

 

I can understand when Euro folks feel 'left out' as someone earlier put it when those from NA call this system or that computer a 'failure' when it 'was a huge success in Europe'. But does this mean that people from NA should not sound like they know what they're talking about when they say a current system is a 'success' of 'failure'?

 

Let's look at a few systems, systems that we all recognize (and most people who were around 20 years ago would definitely know):

 

Sega Master System: Popular in Europe, other parts of the world, but not a success in NA. Endgame: Sega leaves the console market after the demise of Dreamcast. (of course, not the direct fault of the SMS, but follow the chain of events: Genesis wasn't the success the SNES was in NA, Saturn was a flop and DC was, well, not a marketable success even though we all love it. Big in Japan, but even that couldn't stop Sega's exit from the console market).

 

Amiga: Popular in Europe (even 'huge' by some accounts?), not so much in NA. Endgame: Commodore as a company goes the way of the dodo.

 

XBOX and it's many variants: I don't know if it's popular in Europe, but it's huge in NA, and not even a blip in Japan if I were to believe the experts here. Endgame: Microsoft is still here making systems after well over a decade.

 

So whether you like to acknowledge it or not, success in NA is very important. So important that it bears to reason that when someone declares whether something was or was not a 'success', if they only go by NA standards, they're often times more close to the truth than not. That's no slam on how a system did worldwide or in any way belittle gamers outside of NA, that's just a reflection that needs to be considered.

 

But being a success in Europe, or even in Japan to a large degree, doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to the success of a video game maker or computer company. Being big over here, however, does. And by big I mean big enough to shape the current direction of video gaming and gaming culture globally. I mention Commodore, which as far as I knew was only really big in NA. Everybody knew (and most still remember) the C64 and it's decade of dominance in home video gaming. That's what being a success in NA means. In Japan, there was NEC and the PC Engine/ TG16...hugely popular systems, but they couldn't crack the US market and you all know what happened to them. But both companies eventually went out of the gaming business due to competitors like Nintendo, who have seen their ups and downs over the decades but they are still here to talk about it...and always in a position to come back to the top, proven many times by systems like the NES, SNES and Wii.

 

Take that for what it is. But it is what it is. You can have a great system, you can have great games, great tech, great everything!...but if you don't have great IMPACT in the NA market, you're not going to be around long enough for it to matter in the grand scheme of things.

[Seob]

Sorry but this attitude is what dislike. This being big in the us thing is nonsense. Sega sold the dreamcast pretty good in the US. Going out of business had other reasons.

Commodore failed because of other reasons. The cost of the aga chipset vs ibm pc chipsets.