Amiga games number of copies sold

[Lando]

I remember reading an article on 'Digitiser' (teletext, written by Violet Berlin) back in '94 or so about the Gallup games chart and the top Amiga title had sold 173 copies iirc (one hundred and seventy three) that week.  Towards the bottom end of the chart titles had barely managed to scrape double figures.  I was quite shocked at the time, but by '94 the Amiga was already a corpse.

[Franko]

Although this nothing to do with Amiga games, it's an old radio transcript from a broadcast around 1983 talking about the latest releases for computer games at that time for the likes of the VIC 20 & C64, near the bottom of the transcript they talk in figures of 30,000 to 60,000 games being sold per title in order to get into the top ten sales charts of that time,

http://www.west.co.tt/matt/speccy/commercial-breaks-transcript

There was a BBC TV documentary around that time describing the rise and fall of Eugene Evans (he's the guy who got rich of writing the first VIC20 games and bought the bus company his dad worked for so his dad could retire) and his companies Bug-Byte & Imagine...

Unfortunately it looks like the footage is no longer available, which is a shame as it really showed how back at the start of it all armed with just a VIC 20 or C64 or ZX Spectrum and a few days coding in your bedroom that you could soon be rolling in the money and also if you didn't know how to spend that money wisely you would soon go bankrupt ...

Ahh... life was much simpler back then...

[Digiman]

Only interested in figures for games like Shadow of the Beast etc not after 16bit Sega/Nintendo took over.

[LaserBack]

I heard Capital Punishment beat'em'up game sold ~16000 copies [if true] during 1997.
In comparsion: UberRacer [3D driving game for iPhone] is sold ~ million copies DoodleJump game [I heard it was made by some guy from Croatia] is one of best selling titles, and I heard last year he got over 2 million copies. Lots of money, if you ask me

I think the iphone game's numbers are inflated figures
it can't be
sincerely I don't know any person that purchased one miserably game for the iphone
millions of copies for a simple cars game and an ugly platform game?
I wonder what kind of ppl can purchase a game for a telephone to play with the fingers

btw,

according to wiki the amiga version of lemmings sold the first day 55000 copies
but personally I can't believe that

[Digiman]

Although this nothing to do with Amiga games, it's an old radio transcript from a broadcast around 1983 talking about the latest releases for computer games at that time for the likes of the VIC 20 & C64, near the bottom of the transcript they talk in figures of 30,000 to 60,000 games being sold per title in order to get into the top ten sales charts of that time,

http://www.west.co.tt/matt/speccy/commercial-breaks-transcript

There was a BBC TV documentary around that time describing the rise and fall of Eugene Evans (he's the guy who got rich of writing the first VIC20 games and bought the bus company his dad worked for so his dad could retire) and his companies Bug-Byte & Imagine...

Unfortunately it looks like the footage is no longer available, which is a shame as it really showed how back at the start of it all armed with just a VIC 20 or C64 or ZX Spectrum and a few days coding in your bedroom that you could soon be rolling in the money and also if you didn't know how to spend that money wisely you would soon go bankrupt ...

Ahh... life was much simpler back then...

Are you talking about "Commercial Breaks" which showed Imagine going bankrupt?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1012096952890708986#

[ajlwalker]

btw,

according to wiki the amiga version of lemmings sold the first day 55000 copies
but personally I can't believe that

I don't think it's all that unbelievable.  The Amiga market was huge despite the piracy.

The Amiga magazines sold a combined 500,000+ copies per month at their peak in the UK alone.  Amiga Format used to sell 170,000+ a month.  That is real active users.

Lemmings was hyped up and what's more, deserved this hype.  It's not surprising sales were massive.

[Franko]

@ Digiman

That's the very one...

Cheers for that...

Now that I know the name I'll need to scour the net and see if I can find a better quality version to burn to DVD & upload to you tube...

I always remember around that time that there were many news stories on all the latest goings on in the "New" fad of home computing need to see if I can find some of that old footage too, things like that I find fascinating plus they take me back to when I was just a teenager and totally immersed in the new world of home computing...

[Franko]

Hmm... someone has already uploaded it to YouTube but WMG (Warner Music Group) has banned the audio from being played on it (I really hate WMG and they're really beginning to bug me) it's pretty pointless having a documentary without audio... :furious:

Still I know how to deal with WMG so I'll just tidy up the google version as best I can and upload it to YouTube (before google shuts down their video service) and send the usual legal challenge to WMG that they know they can't beat and preserve this little piece of Computer history for all to see...

Here the version on YouTube without audio thanks to WMG (but not for long)...
[youtube]ARsmIPDg3mU[/youtube]

[tasmanian guy]

It used to make me laugh that back in the old days of Amiga, at the OBM Arcade, above Angus and Robertson in Hobart, Tasmania.  The guys there used to let people pirate their software that they were selling for their friends!
 
I had not quite 1,000 disks of pirated software.  Having said that I had over 100 games and serious applications and supported the Amiga as much as I could at the time I was a student.  
 
I think any game that sold 100,000 on the Amiga was doing well.  Wasn't there compilations though called "they sold a million", which would make you think some games did sell a million copies?
 
Perhaps that was on a C64 perhaps?

[Khephren]

Maybe they sold a million...over mutiple formats?

Judging by the Amiga mag circulation that was mentioned, I can easily imagine a big Amiga hit selling a few hundred thousand.

[Digiman]

@ Digiman

That's the very one...

Cheers for that...

Now that I know the name I'll need to scour the net and see if I can find a better quality version to burn to DVD & upload to you tube...

I always remember around that time that there were many news stories on all the latest goings on in the "New" fad of home computing need to see if I can find some of that old footage too, things like that I find fascinating plus they take me back to when I was just a teenager and totally immersed in the new world of home computing...

The sad thing is I missed out on the torrent of 4 Computer Buffs and nobody will re-seed it!

I have a standard divx rip of that but the source is a VHS tape from a so-so recording, not fantastic and youtube version won't look muchbetter after conversion......I uploaded a 300mb uncompressed avi to have it get destroyed lol

[B00tDisk]

I seem to recall Spectrum Holobyte claiming that 8000 copies of Flight of the Intruder had sold.

That's a shame, it's a really amazingly in-depth sim, the likes of which really hasn't been seen since.