What killed off the Amiga?

[CU_AMiGA]

So, what was it that sadly killed off the Amiga? Personally i think it was largely to do with piracy, but also a mix of Commodore's poor management and the way they produced machine's that haven't been updated? What does anyone else think?!

[bloodline]

commodore

[Aegis]

Leaking batteries (well, mine anyway...)  :-o

[Linchpin]

cbm and ms :-)

[carls]

Well, the Amiga isn't dead yet :-)

I've recently looked at some old computer ads from 1994-1996 and ultimately I think it was Commodores bankruptcy combined with lower PC prices and higher Amiga prices.

All of a sudden the kids could use daddy's PC to play games on (for example Doom, which I also think has a part in the "death" of the Amiga) so there was no need to buy a special "game computer" anymore. That, combined with the fact that you could get a very fast PC for less money than an A1200 with a hard drive, a decent monitor and some extra RAM.

[CU_AMiGA]

Well okay, not dead, but the position it became in the late 90's and now.

[vortexau]

Amiga users(?) storing their amigas up in the atic and replacing them with PCs!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(posted from an A2000HD in use since 1990)

[carls]

Well okay, not dead, but the position it became in the late 90's and now.

I'm just pulling your leg

[downix]

What killed off the Amiga, in the end, was the lack of professional office software.  For the managment of Commodore to get their work done, they needed to run IBM PC's.  As a result, they grew less and less aware of what made the Amiga a powerful and useful tool.  As a result, their marketing began faltering, as how do you market something you do not know?  Their sales force was then pushed into the same situation, again due to the lack of professional-grade office software.

Do you honestly think that Gould was playing with the Video Toaster?  Or Ali playing with DPaint?  Hell no, they're writing up memos, looking at spreadsheets, checking up on the corporate database, all on PC's.

So you want someone to blame for the Amiga's fall, blame the coders that failed to realize how critical this segment of the marketplace *IS*.  That failed to grasp that without Commodore's management onboard, the product would continue to languish.  Failed to realize how the fate of their platform rested on the necessity of a single, solitary, piece of software, a professional office suite.

[Kronos]

What killed the Amiga?

AGA I would say  :nervous:

To late,too little ......

The A1000/500/2000 really were ahead of the PCs  in the late 80s, but
the A1200/4000 could just say "me too" (and often not even that).

[lempkee]

what killed it? simply commodore dying helped it alot , though its not dead yet but you all know what i mean.

anyway people belived (majority) that amiga's didnt have soundcards , so musicians left.

people didnt see why they should upgrade , so they left and bought a pc (weird eh?)

people wanted 3d games , and amiga was pretty fast saying it was impossible , though if u look at other consoles that was living after commodore died...well its very ironical.

anyway publishers and developers noticed the non stabiity in commodore so they escaped before it would hurt them , sierra,lucas,dma (though they returned a whie later to do lemmings 3) , and most of all , pc outsold amiga games and such in the end, yes its another puzzle but it has alot to do with pcdrom and beeing before the burner times.

now (even with the huge pc market , pc have more problems keeping it stable than commodore had back in lets say 90-92)


and as a last thing , amiga was the bedroom coders dream , but from 93 and up developers and game companies etc hunted everyone down and put them in a job, and as every greedy person, amiga wasnt up for it at that time or later for that matter so they moved to consoles/pc.


but as a good thing, people are returning now ..
people thinks of amiga as part of their life and thats good, i know of a lot of pc people who never felt such a way for their pc..

anyway the bigest problem for amiga users in the past was, people didnt upgrade ..  publishers didnt belive in developing for lets say 2mbchip + 2mb fast (which would make the mast twice as fast ) , unlike on pc where games and progs force you to upgrade...amiga did it the otherway around.

and lets face it, we use 12 year old machines (most of us) and try dooing that with a pc (which back then costed 4 times as much compared to an a1200).

too powerfull and developers not wanting to make gamers/users to expand/upgrade their hw killed the amiga , or the userbase anyway.


cheers

[BADHead]

bad management by various companys.
the change from 68k to ppc max processor 060 -software.
arguments about the kernal.
no OS upgrades for a long time.
lack of support by 3rd party software drivers e.t.c.
and if the mediator pci bus board had arrived earlier i would have bought one myself and towerd it up with all the bells & whistles.
   
anybody think of anything else   :-D

[CU_AMiGA]

Agreed. What gets me is that Amiga was in a good position about 1990 when the Amiga 3000 came out and was nicely set up for the next kick ass Amiga. All what we got was the A4000, which was a considerably rushed version of the A3000+ and the A1200, although the A1200 sold well. Even just after the bankrupcy of Commodore, the Amiga was still doing okay. I do remember some guy warning back in 1995, that Amiga would soon die of piracy, the guy being the author of Virtual Karting on the Amiga, forgot his name. Whats happened to him now anyway, he left cos hackers hacked hacked into Virtual Karting 2. Poor guy.

[Paul_Gadd]

think it was largely to do with piracy

Piracy is not to blame at all imo and it is a well used excuse when a mickey mouse company is failing badly to give the people what they want and have to bang the "pirate" drums.

You just have to take a look at the current Amiga company to see stupidity in action.

[amigamad]

Commodore was to blame they continued to sell the amiga and never done any real updates, look at the sound chip the same one from 1985 upto 1993 and the 68000 cpu had reached it end as far as speed was concerned,  As time went by graphics had moved on and 3d was now available for the pc and doom was so good that a lot of people could now see the pc as a viable alternative to the amiga. :-)