@BigD

Quote:

You know what? Fine, you yanks were perfectly rational in consigning the greatest 'home computer' ever designed to the trash can because it didn't run Microsoft Word or the accounting program you used at work!! Can you see how moronic that was!

I rather think it was Commodore's ineptness at running a business that doomed Amiga, not the buying habits of American consumers. Americans are pretty much used to being blamed for everything, but this is a new one.

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@bison

Sorry, but I'm just sick of the history of the world being told from an American perspective all the time. It wasn't inevitable that PC compatibles took the 'home computer' market. This is easy for an American to say as for them the game console had alreadyu made the 'home computer' fairly irrelevant for the average child / teenager. This was not the case for the whole world!

For the record:

1) The early 80s video games crash primarily affected America only. The European companies were shielded from the worst of the outcomes due to our use of home computers favoured over games consoles. Our software houses continued as normal albeit the crash affecting sales to America.

2) Nintendo was not really a force in Europe in the 1980s due to a ridiculously late to market NES compared to the rest of the world. The 8-bit market was securely held by SEGA by the time it was released and again the 16-bit 'home computers soon took over from the 8-bit 'home computer' machines leaving virtually no space for Nintendo in the UK market. The Game Boy however, fared better as did the SNES.

3) IBM Compatibles were not as entrenched in UK businesses by the time of the Amiga's arrival as they were in the US and given different marketing the Amiga could have done better in the business sector. Commodore did very well with its PC clones in Germany and the Amiga was relevant as a home computer, games platform and as a DTP and video editing machine throughout Europe.

In conclusion, the Amiga was not held in as high regard with American consumers as it was in Europe as the US was keen on games consoles, did have an early dependancy on PC compatible software in business and the majority obviously did not see the value in multimedia multitasking computers until Microsoft TOLD them that they should be interested in it around the time of the Windows 95 release!

Europe and the U.S. were very different markets and in many ways Commodore UK should have led from the front with their sales strategies and hardware design requests in all territories IMHO. Every other part of the C= empire was unprofitable by 1994!

Last edited by BigD on 12-Jul-2018 at 03:04 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 12-Jul-2018 at 03:03 PM.

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@BigD

Meanwhile in Japan...

@Lou

Until Nintendo they had the MSX!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

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Just for understand numbers in the beginning of 1994 i sold my PC that was an 486dx 66mhz with a soudblaster and i a cirrus 1mb an or was 512mb ( i dont remeber exactly) color monitor vga , keyboard,mouse, hd and cdrom for buy a second hand A1200 with mtech 030 28mhz with fpu with a tandem ide for a external cdrom ...

if you count perfromances was much more better on the pc than the 1200 .
but A1200 was more cool

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@simplex

This is the European view of the 1980s home computer landscape best explained in the link below. Please notice there was no mention of IBM compatibles in peoples' homes, no video game crash, no dominance for the NES and SEGA and the micro computers/ home computers ruling the day. It that environment the Amiga achieved limited dominace but could have achieved a lot more given less blinkered decision making at CBM headquarters and more open minded US consumers addicted to PC compatibles and NES game consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF5aYeV_SSc

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@BigD

There's really too much to unpack, so I'll limit myself.

Your basic contention is that Americans who had already invested hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a PC or Mac and software they wanted and needed, all before the Amiga was available, should dump everything and switch to a system with no software they want or need.

Meanwhile, Americans who were looking to invest hundreds or even thousands of dollars to move up from an 8-bit system, or who were buying a machine for the first time, should absolutely not have considered whether their machine would be compatible with what their work or school or university used, allowing them to work from home instead of sitting in a stuffy office or computer lab.

Likewise, budding or established developers who wanted to make money by selling software to corporations should develop for a new system that few corporations owned or were investing in, if any, and should demand that the corporations dump their multimillion-dollar investments to buy this new, largely untested system, instead of producing software that they could sell for a few hundred dollars a pop to a company that was happy to try something on its existing machines.

This is the essence of your argument, as I understand it. If not, please do correct me.

But if it is, I think it pretty clear who's being unreasonable.

PS Let's make something clear. I am one of those people moving up from an 8-bit system who chose an Amiga instead of what my university had (PC compatibles). It was kind of rough: I needed different software; the data wasn't compatible, so I couldn't exactly transfer documents from the Amiga to the PC; and even the networking was sometimes a challenge.

The idea that people who decided to buy the same thing that the university had in the computer lab are evil or idiotic or drones is... well, "uncharitable" would be a polite way of putting it. I stick with my contention that they were perfectly rational doing what they did, and I agree with bison: Commodore's ineptness had a lot more to do with Amiga's failure than whatever "irrationality" took hold of American consumers.

Last edited by simplex on 12-Jul-2018 at 06:50 PM.

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@simplex

How great it must have been to own a PC compatible with access to such a range of inspiring software I got by just fine writing my dissertation on AmigaWriter 2 with .rtf support. There was always a way even if it was PCTask or a BridgeBoard. I can't say I really missed out not having Encarta, the MS Office Suite or Wing Commander at home! They might have acted rationally in order to allow them to use compatible file types at home but in 99% of cases CrossDos and a native Amiga program could have done the same job in the 1980s and 1990s. What they really got sold was a boring, expensive sub standard beige box with minimal multimedia support in 1980s and a buggy bloated, slow to boot monstrosity in the 1990s. That's the point; the death of the Amiga put the home / multimedia computer industry back a decade and the American consumers didn't even notice or care!

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@thread

Just thought I would add this since David Pleasance at Pixel Heaven in Poland indicated there was still some controversy over the exact number of C64 sales worldwide.

As evidence of the facts, he stated that he is sure of his figure, since in accordance with his buyout attempt he indeed had access to said sales figures.

27 Million.

#6

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@AmigaHope

Quote:

I found this article from Compute! in December 1986 interesting, it sort of captures the era: https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue79/The_MS-DOS_Invasion.php Anyone else have any insight on this?

Have you seen this? https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/

It does not quite answer all you questions - but it is interesting nonetheless.

@Nonefornow

Thanks for the link; that's very interesting.

It's kind of depressing what the current market share graph looks like.

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: Look in the same place you found the 1987 stats

It's not that simple. I have to get stats on multiple things, and not every source has info on every year. Stats needed:

1) Number of IBM compatibles IBM sold in 1988 (haven't found this yet -- have only been able to find aggregate figures for *ALL* manufacturers, not IBM by itself)
2) Number of 8-bit systems Commodore sold in 1988 (findable)
3) Number of Amigas Commodore sold in 1988 (findable)
4) Number of IBM compatibles Commodore sold in 1988 (I have not been able to find *ANY* info for this on *ANY* year, let alone 1988!)

@AmigaHope

Quote:

4) Number of IBM compatibles Commodore sold in 1988 (I have not been able to find *ANY* info for this on *ANY* year, let alone 1988!)

Commodore's dirty little secret

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