Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on October 16, 2010, 08:11:51 PM
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So lets say Commodore had built an 060 based amiga, before jumping ship to other hardware (or dying).
You were put in charge of the design plans:
Here's the requirements:
It must run an 060 processor.
There must be two models: The A5000 (big box, more expensive system) and the A1600 (Cost reduced A1200 style case)
It must be ready by 1996
The rest is largely up to you.
What features do you hope to pack in ?
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I'd make it brown. That's for sure.
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I'd make it brown. That's for sure.
So it wont change colour 15 years later ? :)
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SCSI
IDE
Hybrid PCI/Zorro Busboard
AAA Chipset
Ability for 32MB FAST RAM
1.76 MB Floppy
Built in Scandoubler
PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard compatibility
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So lets say Commodore had built an 060 based amiga, before jumping ship to other hardware (or dying).
You were put in charge of the design plans:
Here's the requirements:
It must run an 060 processor.
There must be two models: The A5000 (big box, more expensive system) and the A1600 (Cost reduced A1200 style case)
It must be ready by 1996
The rest is largely up to you.
What features do you hope to pack in ?
I would have licenced the Draco and be done with it ....
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The A5000 would basically be a Macrosystem DraCo 060 with the Alpha coprocessor slot modified for an x86 board.
The A1600 would be An A1200 motherboard with an EC 060 and 16MB fastmem built-in (if you want more, use a trapdoor expansion), it should also have a RTC and a 1MB flash kickstart with an atapi cdrom boot option. The IDE interface should be fully buffered and 40 pins, not 44. The case is modified in a way that it could hold a cdrom with some kind of metal cradle as an optional.
Built in 23 RGB to 15 pin VGA adapter and graffity card functionality (chunky modes).
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Ability for 32MB chip RAM
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I'd do all of the above and cut a deal with newtek to report the VT4 BACK to the Amiga... WITH PAL OPTIONS!!!!! :elvis:
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OK, I'll just design the low end model then..
For starters, no 060. That was too expensive in the day...
I think a decent 040 would be good, possibly even a faster 030. In fact, I think it would be a 40Mhz or so 030.
I would make the CPU a card that plugs in tho, so it can be upgraded.
I'd recommend that the high end model be the same upgradable CPU socket, but marketing might want a more clear line between the two models..
But no 1 slot for all upgrades.
The default CPU card would have sockets (SIMMs?) for RAM, probably max out at 8M, comes with 2M. Need to give them a reason to upgrade.
IDE DMA on-board. 1 IDE drive (40M? initial). No option without a HD.
CDROM would be questionable. They were still a bit spendy at that time, and this is the low end model. I'll probably say no CDRom in this model.
Floppy would be HD 1.7M.
The 1200 had a PCMCIA that was used a bit, so I'd upgrade that to a cardbus slot.
If needed, peripherals can be added through there.
Now, the tricky part is video. By now, I get a feeling in the market that video might be an issue if I want this model to sell for more than a year. So, video, like CPU is slot/socket based. Basically similar to AGA. Trying to keep costs down. I'd see about adding a mode with more on screen colors through the deal I've made with BlackBelt (The HAM-E people). I would add C2P, as Doom is out by now and we need that. It would be a bit rushed and not as fast as it should be, but improved on Akiko. ;-)
The video "card" (internal card) would come with 2M CHIP. Plans for a 4M Chip with FF upgrade to start selling about 8 months after the release would be worked on.
Sound would be the same. (I know, cost cutting....)
I would get rid of the trapdoor slot. The CPU slot/socket, combined with a video upgrade and cardbus should be plenty.
It would look virtually identical to the A1200.
So, it would be a 40Mhz 030 with 2M CHIP and 2M Fast and a 40M HD priced at $500.
Also, a prepackaged version with 4M fast and a 120M HD would be available at launch for $650.
The video upgrade (4M Chip and FF) would retail for $150, but not be available for about 8 months.
Delays in the design of the new RTG graphics on the higher end model would mean my lower end model would be out to market about 6 months before the 060 high end. ;-) :-)
Reviews are generally favorable, with Amigaworld dedicating a an issue to the new "PC Killer." ID wouldn't port DOOM, but Team 17's Alien Breed 3D optimized for this model would start to be bundled after a few months (slow sales) along with Lemmings.
The new "A 1600 Home pack" as it would be called, is released after about 6 months and comes with a CD32 style game pad (only slightly modified to keep costs down) and sells for $475.
;-)
desiv
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For starters, no 060. That was too expensive in the day...
Agreed. I would have told them for the 060 model, to save their money and push the AAA on to a PCI, have WB 3.1 ported to x86 and used the C= PCs (with PCI slots) that had a slightly slower 486 that were not selling well plus create a Window's driver for the AAA so money can be made selling it to the Windows world. That just might have saved C= from going under.
Yes, old games and apps would not run, but if a few decent games were then ported to x86 Amiga, I doubt there would have been too much of an uproar. When the Amiga lost new game production, it was over.
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I would have licenced the Draco and be done with it ....
/Thread
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well to start with am no designer cant even draw a circle hehe
bring out a amiga 1200 + or call it amiga 1400 .
it have inbuilt cdrom us standred pc ports for mouse have the udated AAA chipset
use a 3/12 hard drive with buffered ide interface
as it was think biggest mistake was just having cdrom inbuilt for the cd 32
because alot software makers didnt want go the cdrom route for the games it seems
and who wants spend yet more money have hassle mess of yet another power brick
and addon oh buffered serial port too
and sold with ram card as standred
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I would have licenced the Draco and be done with it ....
Draco was great for its purpose (video), but it's not a full-blown Amiga.
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The production version of the Nyx prototype.
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I guess all you can really do is fix the bottlenecks. A minor chipset revision to be able to access more chipram and fixes/tweaks for exisiting problems. Not to be negative, but by this time amiga was too out of date to bother fixing in its then current guise, even '060's by this point in time shouldve been bare minimum. Instead of tinkering around that time it'd have been time to start things again as amiga had too many hardware problems/shortcomings to fix. Doesnt mean I didnt/dont love the classics, its just that by the time aga was out they where so far behind that trying to fix them was a lost cause and they shouldve instead made new machines rather than tweaking technology from the early 80's.
p.s. the above is written assuming this thread is talking about a successor to a1200/a400/etc. and is based on realistic ideas. If we're going a little more into the realms of the hypothetical then some sort of 3d acceleration seems a good idea (even '060 + reasonable (even for the time) 3d acceleration could give amiga gaming a kick in the pants), 16 bit audio, useful sprite hardware (even "fixed" aga level sprites would be nice (ie. 8 useable 64pixel wide sprites)), at least 16 bit screenmodes (2x8bit playfields would be nice), the ability to mix and match playfields depending on bit depth (ie. 2x4 bit playfields + 1 8 bit for triple playfields, etc.). It's a shame Amiga hardware never went that one extra generation. With some small alterations to end up with the type of ideas I suggested (which are still very dated) my creative retro impulses wouldnt need to be so compromised.
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- AAA Chipset, other chips designed into 1 large chip, socketed
- Make it able to address 128MB Chip ram, fit it with 32MB and future expansion for up to 1GB in the A5000 and fit 8MB in the A1600 also have expansion port for more
- Make it able to address 2GB Fast ram, fit 128MB in the 5000 and 32MB in the A1600
- 060 socketed and hybrid bridge to x86 processor, can also be used to run Amiga OS
- Both models IDE controllers, integrated sound, network
- PCI bridge to add PCI video card in the A1600, PCI and ISA slots for the A5000
- 1.76MB 3,5" floppy drive
- Integrated CD-ROM drive in the A1600, normal 5,25" unit in the A5000
- Only 2 Zorro III slots in the A5000
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Draco was great for its purpose (video), but it's not a full-blown Amiga.
It may have lacked a commodore chipset, but the fact is, AAA was so far from being finished that by the time it would have been ready it would have been hopelessly out of date. Draco, using off the shelf components for graphics and sound really was the only realistic way of doing things if Amiga was to stay in any way relevant past 1995.
It was more of an Amiga than anything I've seen since C='s fall with the exception of the Minimig.
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A 68030, 50mhz processor, with 2 meg chip and 8 megabytes ram (2 x 4 megabytes sim, leaving 2x72pin sim sockets free)
Workbench 3.1 would fly along with RTG graphics and TV output and VGA output as standard supporting bitplane and chunky modes. 16 bit stereo sound as standard. Housed in a standard AT case, using standard ps2 mouse / keyboard with a 100 megabyte hard drive. 15 pin pc joystick adaptors x 2. Price $1,000 without monitor, including Deluxe Paint VI, Word for Workbench, and Amiga Lotus 1-2-3 SE.
Games that this box would run without any issues:
Doom
X-Wing
Wolfenstein 3D
Duke Nukem 3D
Half Life
Flight Simulator Amiga 95
The rest they say is history!
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For the consumer version I would have gone with a 68030 (probably a 68EC030 for cost reasons). However I would have aimed to release an A1400 in late 1994 (for the holiday season), probably with a 28MHz 68030, 4MB RAM and a 1.76MB floppy drive, but otherwise keeping the same components as the A1200 to keep development costs down. Ship it with Sim CIty 2000 and a Doom clone.
In 2006 (for the holiday season), the A1600 would have had a 40MHz 68030 (a sad side effect of the high prices the 68060 commanded, and the high power requirements of the 68040). Remembering the cost of RAM back then, I don't know if 8MB would have been viable for the base configuration, but 6MB (4 chip, 2 fast) could have been viable. The chipset could have been updated for this revision, to include a 256 colour native chunky mode, and a full 32-bit blitter. And maybe 16-bit audio. And a VGA connector as the chipset could support higher resolutions. As a simple machine, the motherboard would have been reduced in size despite the updates, which would have reduced prices. Use of a SIMM slot for the fast RAM would have allowed an 8MB shipping product at a higher price.
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Well forgetting the top end model, which they could kludge together with all sorts of nice Zorro II/III cards, the base model would have to do what your average PC did.
I think my first PC was 1992, and that was 999 bucks for a 486 25mhz clone. I think by 1996 most people were on machines capable of VideoCD software playback thanks to MMX.
So you would need....
A CPU as capable as the minimum average spec of the time PC people were getting after giving up on their beloved Commodore to ever come back. Not just for games, but for doing raw filled 3D and texture mapping cheats like in Doom and Quake. So that would be a minimum of 060 50mhz (which is about Pentium 100-120mhz performance I believe as the 060 is a clock doubled CPU IIRC)
Graphics, whatever you do if you don't have a native byte per pixel mode you might as well carry on going bankrupt, super fast VRAM chunky mode for 320x256 AND 640x512. A 32bit blitter as powerful as those in the VRAM PCI cards in PCs. Rest doesn't mean a whole lot. And AAA was MORE EXPENSIVE than buying things off the shelf from people like Diamond.
Sound, 8 channel 16bit sound with variable panning, NOT 4 channels wired left/right.
A space to slot in an optional cost price CD-ROM unit like laptops of the time had.
For serious stuff, fix the bloody TCP/IP, finance a decent browser....ie slap Netscape around until they write one for you for a fee, and make sure your serial port can handle 56k modems
That's about it really, without coaxing someone like RJ Mical to do you something similar to the 3DO chipset forget anything else really, and accept that 3DO, PSX and Saturn WILL piss all over you and you have lost the advantage you had in the 80s with A500 vs Sega Megadrive/Genesis. Still an 060 and fast chunky native graphics mode would be enough to do an identical version of shitty game of the decade Resident Evil and actually a pretty nice version of Tomb Raider.
End of line.
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Lots of great ideas already. Especially increasing the Chip Ram and having all major chips be socketed. Oh and they should have done away with this 15khz nonsense after the A3000. Built in accelerated graphics too ala CyberGrafx/Picasso or maybe a compatible AAA design. 16-bit sound as standard and call her Super Paula. :)
I'd also make the case larger and a bit less cramped. Should have more personality to it than the A4000 box. Something alone the lines of the A3000, but maybe with standardized 3-1/2" HD floppy drives and a slim line CD-ROM, like what the laptops had.
Speaking of laptops, I would have done away with the form factor of the A1200 altogether and gone with something more along the lines of the A600. This machine could be 100% surface mounted, unlike its big box cousin. And I'd design it so that the customer would have the option to turn his new Amiga into a portable by adding a battery and a screen that you'd simply thumb-screw into place on the back of the machine. If the battery technology still sucked and you couldn't add something internally, then a real thin, but large footprint designed battery that mounted underneath (raising the machine a bit too for typing) would have been implemented.
So yeah, I'd have a mid to hi-end "workstation" type big box and a semi-portable, which was what the A500/A600/A1200 kind of where or could have been. If someone wanted a nicer keyboard for their new portable - there'd be a port so you could hook a regular/large big box styled keyboard to it.
Both machines would feature the 060 (cost would be driven down thanks to aggressive negotiations), a true accelerated graphics chipset, 16-bit sound and HD floppies. Finally, I'd market the hell out of the machines in professional circles as what they were 'and could be' instead of narrowly focusing on a particular market like they did so often with graphic artists or other "creative" types.
Cut deals with schools on the hardware and make up for it in licensing and software. 'Power Up' programs for consumers would be mailed out to each and every Commodore owner and speaking of lists/serial numbers - I'd have maintained a much better relationship with previous Commie owners all this time. Newsletters with constructive input forms for sure instead of paying some company to tell us who are customers are. lol
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So that would be a minimum of 060 50mhz (which is about Pentium 100-120mhz performance I believe as the 060 is a clock doubled CPU IIRC)
Just a small point since the rest of your post isn't that bad, at 66Mhz the 68060 would kick out ~88Mips peak. An original Pentium clocked at 60Mhz did 100Mips.
Also consider that the maths performance was better on that original pentium even before the introduction of MMX.
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Offer either an '030 or '060 via an expansion slot that can also accept PPC or PPC/060 combo processor card.
Forgo complete graphics compatibility and go RTG ( unles RTG slot can be made to coexist with an older graphics system).
Limit Zorro slots and use PCI slots for primary expansion.
Consider another X86 cooprocessor card that is better integrated into AOS.
Offer a tower and a unified desktop model (like the 1200). The later may not be able to have all the features listed.
Drop AOS in fovar of MorphOS.
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Big box:
Dump Zorro, PCI only. 5 slots minimum. If it's very low additional cost include 1 or 2 Zorro slots.
SCSI was somewhat expensive, make it optional. EIDE (MW-DMA!) as standard.
Separate CPU & RAM card, no RAM on mainboard. Memory map allows up to 1 GB of RAM on the CPU board.
Move graphics chipset to PCI/Zorro card to make it optional later on.
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Just a small point since the rest of your post isn't that bad, at 66Mhz the 68060 would kick out ~88Mips peak. An original Pentium clocked at 60Mhz did 100Mips.
Also consider that the maths performance was better on that original pentium even before the introduction of MMX.
I think I remember the 060 being clock doubled internally, but couldn't remember the exact performance between 060 <> Pentium. Still 060 is best we had before going PPC so not much choice really.
My point was gaming was going 3D with PC and PSX/3DO/Saturn and we needed something similarly powerful even in a base model and an 030 or 040 wouldn't cut it as custom 3D chipset was impossible from Commodore in 96. Even if base bargain PC in 96 was P75. Either that or licence PowerVR or something like that but I think 96 is too early for that kinda hardware really.
edit: Possibly a DSP too, not too sure how well the one from the Atari Falcon would work with an 060 doing 3D games acceleration, maybe good for matrix manipulation for polygon game engines.
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Big box:
Dump Zorro, PCI only. 5 slots minimum. If it's very low additional cost include 1 or 2 Zorro slots.
SCSI was somewhat expensive, make it optional. EIDE (MW-DMA!) as standard.
Separate CPU & RAM card, no RAM on mainboard. Memory map allows up to 1 GB of RAM on the CPU board.
Move graphics chipset to PCI/Zorro card to make it optional later on.
Having Zorro slots would mean you can cut a deal with Sunrize for 16bit sound saving development costs, ditto for 24bit graphics card with much higher resolutions for photo manipulation like in Photoshop or high resolutions for DTP and 20" monitors etc etc. Add a PPC and Blizzard3D and you are rocking for peanuts dev costs. This would mean very little updates to WB needed as the drivers are there already rather than the PCI cards.
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What you could also have done was to fit 28mhz 020 and 1mb fast 32bit RAM in the A1200 to replace the A600 type entry level system in 1995/6 too. This would be good enough for basic Doom/Wing Commander type games if programmed properly.
Again make a standard slot for A1200+ and 'A1600' to take a CD-ROM module sold at cost price to encourage competition with PC-CD market too.
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My point was gaming was going 3D with PC and PSX/3DO/Saturn and we needed something similarly powerful even in a base model and an 030 or 040 wouldn't cut it as custom 3D chipset was impossible from Commodore in 96. Even if base bargain PC in 96 was P75. Either that or licence PowerVR or something like that but I think 96 is too early for that kinda hardware really.
Your choices for 95/96 were S3 Virge, Matrox Mystique, ATI Rage or later in 1996 the Rendition Vérité V1000 or the 3dFX Voodoo pci.
PowerVR were around in 96 and they supplied Matrox with their m3d parts.
However for an all in one solution your best bet was probably the V1000.
edit: Possibly a DSP too, not too sure how well the one from the Atari Falcon would work with an 060 doing 3D games acceleration, maybe good for matrix manipulation for polygon game engines.
Why not simply have it deal with the sound?
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So lets say Commodore had built an 060 based amiga, before jumping ship to other hardware (or dying).
You were put in charge of the design plans:
You couldn't dump the chip set for lower end machines because of compatibility and the top end machines needed it for video.
I'd release the AAA/DSP combo they were already working on. Wouldn't matter if it didn't have the best graphics, but the DSP alone would have blown everything else away.
That would keep things going until the next chip set could be developed, with 3D of course. You could put a chipset like that on a card and sell it as a PC graphics card - like SGI should have done but never did.
As for the OS it would have to be ported to something better, I would have looked at Alpha but it probably wouldn't have been financially possible (they were very big, expensive chips). Amiga would have almost certainly have gone PowerPC.
It would also be apparent the OS needed upgrading, for that I'd buy Be inc.
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I'd have put Dave Haynie in charge and gone to have a cocktail.
I suspect if Dave had been given more control over the direction of Amiga hardware, he'd have started to adopt industry standard components/standards. Perhaps, with backwards compatibility in a few models.
One of my favorite comic books series was What if......
E.g. What if.... Wolverine had killed the Hulk.
So, I propose... What if.... Dave Haynie had full control.
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take an a3000t add a zorro 3 rtg svga card, a 16bit sound card and a "a3640-2" with cache ram, fast ram slots and 060 compatibility.
then get to work making the a5000 with all of those built in to one neat small mobo.
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It [Draco] may have lacked a commodore chipset, but the fact is, AAA was so far from being finished that by the time it would have been ready it would have been hopelessly out of date. Draco, using off the shelf components for graphics and sound really was the only realistic way of doing things if Amiga was to stay in any way relevant past 1995.
It was more of an Amiga than anything I've seen since C='s fall with the exception of the Minimig.
Draco was very nice, but what could it do that my *older* A3000/040/VlabMotion/Toccata/Firecracker system couldn't do? Are you saying that Commodore should have released a souped-up A3000 in 1996, as KThunder states above?
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So lets say Commodore had built an 060 based amiga, before jumping ship to other hardware (or dying).
I would have included a Pentium-based bridge board or SBC for running Windows 95 side-by-side with Workbench. Wait, isn't that what Steve/clusteruk did, albeit in reverse? Yup. By 1997, an Amiga without a Video Toaster wasn't of much use to anyone but a hobbyist. (That's still the case, but we love them nonetheless.) EDIT: Even NewTek had moved LightWave to other platforms....
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A5000:
8Mb Chip ram + 32Mb Fast ram (upgradable to 256mb with pc style simms)
Fast buffered IDE built in + SCSI II
Onboard LAN network card
Onboard RTG graphics (with scandoubled & flickerfixed VGA out)
1.76Mb Floppy drive
PS/2 Keyboard & Mouse ports
PCI Slots
A1600:
8Mb Chip ram + slots on-board for pc style simms up to 256Mb
Fast buffered IDE onboard
Onboard LAN network card
RTG graphics card slot
Onboard scandoubler/Flickerfixer
Case design for cd-rom
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Draco was very nice, but what could it do that my *older* A3000/040/VlabMotion/Toccata/Firecracker system couldn't do?
If you're playing that game, why bother with the A4000? Hell why bother with the A3000 when the A2000 was capable of everything that your system was.
Are you saying that Commodore should have released a souped-up A3000 in 1996, as KThunder states above?
No I'm saying C= should have dumped developing their own chipsets and gone over fully to RTG using Draco as the starting point.
Keeping Amiga tied to slow, expensive, underperforming chipsets (as they were by the time of AGA) was only ever going to end badly.
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Why not simply have it deal with the sound?
Ah yes you could certainly use it for sound but was just wondering if using a DSP like the Motorola Falcon one, possibly as an optional plug in, could speed up geometry setup in 3D games to give you a unique advantage over 1996 PC gaming that's all.
Bit like SNES + SuperFX for Nintendo in early 90s. Then again most Falcon games look crap so........
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If you're playing that game, why bother with the A4000? Hell why bother with the A3000 when the A2000 was capable of everything that your system was.
No I'm saying C= should have dumped developing their own chipsets and gone over fully to RTG using Draco as the starting point.
Keeping Amiga tied to slow, expensive, underperforming chipsets (as they were by the time of AGA) was only ever going to end badly.
Thats basically what I was saying but in a way that Commodore could have done it back then. An 060 amiga with an rtg svga card at a good price point (something they couldn't do with the 4000) could have kept them alive to make the a5000. An "3640-2" could have been produced, if they hadn't put so much into the 4000, 4000t and AAA chipsets.
They didn't see that custom chips days for a single or even a couple computer lines were over.
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Ah yes you could certainly use it for sound but was just wondering if using a DSP like the Motorola Falcon one, possibly as an optional plug in, could speed up geometry setup in 3D games to give you a unique advantage over 1996 PC gaming that's all.
Bit like SNES + SuperFX for Nintendo in early 90s. Then again most Falcon games look crap so........
With the exception of the S3 Virge in the list above, tbh as far as games go having the DSP there wouldn't really be a whole lot of benefit in it being there - any speed bump you might have been able to get out of it would almost certainly have been at the cost of development time. See the Sega Saturn verses the original Playstation for how that goes.
But for sound, now there you could do wonders with a half decent DSP.
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Keeping Amiga tied to slow, expensive, underperforming chipsets (as they were by the time of AGA) was only ever going to end badly.
Had they used Ranger chipset, completed by Jay in 88, instead of AGA and continued development it would have been OK, VRAM was getting cheaper fast in the 90s. VRAM was key to Diamond Viper/Stealth PC SVGA card's speed.
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They didn't see that custom chips days for a single or even a couple computer lines were over.
QFMFT
I just picked the Draco since it was a working example of this line of thinking in action.
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Had they used Ranger chipset, completed by Jay in 88, instead of AGA and continued development it would have been OK, VRAM was getting cheaper fast in the 90s. VRAM was key to Diamond Viper/Stealth PC SVGA card's speed.
They still would have been screwed come 1995. They had nothing in AAA that would have come close to the Rendition V1000 or hell, even the Matrox Mystique in terms of graphics performance, and sound wise there were some superb consumer grade sound cards coming at this time that were more than a match for the Mary sound chip.
--edit--
Hombre might potentially have held its own if it'd been released in 96 within the games console market, but AAA - Acutiator? It was a dead end.
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If you're playing that game, why bother with the A4000? Hell why bother with the A3000 when the A2000 was capable of everything that your system was.
No I'm saying C= should have dumped developing their own chipsets and gone over fully to RTG using Draco as the starting point.
Keeping Amiga tied to slow, expensive, underperforming chipsets (as they were by the time of AGA) was only ever going to end badly.
(But recall what year the A4000 was released.) Easy enough, even Commodore could have released a Draco-like machine significantly earlier than 1996.
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Easy enough, even Commodore could have released a Draco-like machine significantly earlier than 1996.
That they didn't only goes to show that Haynie wasn't wrong in his assessment of C= management as being a bunch of retards.
Take a gander at what the Mystique, or the V1000 offered in terms of graphics capabilities. That is what AAA would have been up against in 96.
It doesn't make for a remotely pretty comparison.
If it was to survive it had to go modular. It had to dump its games console roots.
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I wanted to respond to this more fully because it really deserved it.
(But recall what year the A4000 was released.)
I do recall the A4000 launch in 1992, I recall also the 1994 A4000T and the fact that even the Amiga magazines called C= out on that one as being too little too late and too expensive.
I recall both Dave Haynies (http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/a3000plus.html) and Jay Miner's (http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/comment-5.html) reactions to it as well. Neither were that impressed.
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I may be able to offer a different perspective here as someone who'd never seen an Amiga in person until 2007. Just call me part of the unwashed masses. I recall 1992-1993 vividly, it was my first year of high school and I started shopping for a machine to replace my Apple IIe, which served me well during the last years of grammar school for printing reports, after my C64s died. Back in '93, Amiga wasn't on the radar of myself or anyone else that I knew in good old NJ, USA, it was a faint memory from the 80s having seen screen shots on C64 game boxes. In '93, I saw Windows 3.1 and Wolfenstein, and those were must haves! I didn't get my Windows 3.1 machine then, but I did get an 8088 as it seemed IBM compatibles were the way to go, and I played with DOS and burned up the phone lines with 300 and 2400 baud modems until I got a 486 at some point in 1994.
So basically, I would've had to have offered the '060 based Amiga with PC compatibility as standard, and pushed that point in advertising.
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lots of cool and interesting ideas from you guys :) Keep it up
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Something better than the AGA chip set.
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1. 060/66Mhz
2. 3DO Chipset on a PCI Card
3. PROFIT!!
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You don't need an 060 just an 030 Amiga with lots of fast ram for the low end at least.
For the high end put in a graphics card a 2MB low end a 4MB high end and a super high end card with Nvidia TNT2 level performance.
Also put in a software based Macintosh and PC emulator.
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It must run an 060 processor.
For low end you'd probably have to go for something lower than an 060. Maybe either an 030EC or 040EC.
Then:
The rumoured aga+ with native chunky pixels.
Add texture mapping to blitter.
Add more sound channels to paula, with proper stereo panning.
Up to 8mb of chip ram.
It would be too late by 1996, you'd need to have gotten that out to developers by 1994.
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People seem to be forgetting the price of RAM and computers back in 1996!
8MB of RAM wasn't cheap, it would not have been an option for a consumer system trying to hit £299. Maybe for a higher-spec variant at £499 however...
The same goes for the 68060 versus the 68030. I think a 40MHz 68030 would have been the upper end of what a £299 computer could have borne, price-wise. I don't even know if a hard drive could have been included at that price either. Again, a higher-spec variant could have included it (leading to the concept that the low end system's CPU would have been on a removable card from the beginning).
A1600 @ £299: 40MHz 68030, 4MB (2 + 2)
A1600 @ £499: 40MHz 68030, 8MB, 120MB (I forget the prices of 2.5" hard drives in 1996!)
A1600 @ £699: 50MHz 68060, 8MB, 250MB
The 68040 would have been too hot for the form factor to be cooled quietly. However maybe a 25MHz variant could have been used.
I believe that Commodore missed an opportunity with not releasing "higher spec" consumer models - something for users to aspire to. Why couldn't the A500 also have a better configuration (£100 more) with a 14MHz 68000 and 1MB at the time it came with 512KB?
However you have to consider that this would have been the last hurrah for the 68k line of Amigas, Motorola weren't in the mood for improving the 68060, nor price reducing it. Commodore would have had to be in the process of transitioning to a new architecture by 1996, knowing these machines would be a final 68k release. PA-RISC might have fallen by the wayside. PowerPC would have been a serious consideration. Most likely the C= management would have thought "let's wait for Itanium", and eventually died from the delays and sub-par performance.
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Make the move to X86....
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They still would have been screwed come 1995. They had nothing in AAA that would have come close to the Rendition V1000 or hell, even the Matrox Mystique in terms of graphics performance, and sound wise there were some superb consumer grade sound cards coming at this time that were more than a match for the Mary sound chip.
--edit--
Hombre might potentially have held its own if it'd been released in 96 within the games console market, but AAA - Acutiator? It was a dead end.
But for Quake style or solid textured 3D games (all the rage in 95/96) you needed a super fast CPU anyway so it didn't matter really, in 96 you would need an 060 machine to compete with 90/75mhz bargain bucket Pentiums. Hombre would never have been cost effective enough for a console rivalling computer anywhere near A1200 costs and Saturn/PSX was sold at a massive loss for years. Had Commodore committed a large enough order to Motorola for 060s it would have reduced the cost massively, R&D costs for Hombre would have dragged on for 1-2 years after release and even then maybe not viable using a cheap 030/040 CPU.
At least with Ranger we would have had upgrades superior to AGA earlier, ideally instead of the lame ass ECS 'upgrades' and if they had invested in it early enough with a console style 64/32mb VRAM archictecture as a go between Chip and Fast ram it may have been enough to bring in the sales because A500/600 lost a lot of ground to SEGA and Nintendo in 1990/91 due to no decent parallax(2x8 colour playfields was pathetic), only 4 sound channels, no HD floppy drive to reduce disk swapping, only 32 colours as EHB was slow as hell on OCS/ECS, weaker sprites than a C64 in some respects etc etc.
Ranger was done and gathering dust since 88, they probably lost the plans in an office move knowing Commodore!
I think the problem was Commodore, even the C65 prototype managed 320x200x256 colours with a blitter on board in mid 1990...so why did it take them another 2.5 years to get AGA/256 colour mode into an Amiga?
Actually I think the problem in 1992 was the A4000/030. It was just too expensive for a middle range machine, they needed an 020 28mhz 2mb chip & 2mb fast ram machine in 1992 using the A1200 motherboard as is and just shove it in an Atari Mega ST/A1000 style slim case with external keyboard for £499 or £599 with basic slow CD-ROM etc. A 28mhz 020 is pretty much same speed as a 28mhz 030 really and all you pay extra for is case plastics, external keyboard from A4000 and some RAM. I'm sure 499 or 549 was very do-able. But your choices were 1000+ bucks for 4000/030 or crippled A1200 with no edge connector/zorro and cheap $1 keyboard for 399. Hell you could get 33mhz 020s too and probably clock them up to 40mhz with a fan. Bad marketing, they hoped the accidental success of the A500/2000 would repeat itself AFTER PCs had caught up with superior chunky VGA mode and multiple 16bit DACs on board as well as far faster CPUs as standard and PCI bus architecture rivalling the A4000 on every Pentium PC let alone A1200.
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But for Quake style or solid textured 3D games (all the rage in 95/96) you needed a super fast CPU anyway so it didn't matter really, in 96 you would need an 060 machine to compete with 90/75mhz bargain bucket Pentiums.
Right up until the release of the RV1000 hardware 3d version of quake, or a little later the OpenGL release. At which point not only are you being outgunned in terms of raw cpu performance, but now you were being utterly pwnt by the 3d accelerators finally being given something to really chew on.
Hombre would never have been cost effective enough for a console rivalling computer anywhere near A1200 costs and Saturn/PSX was sold at a massive loss for years.
With the exception of the Wii, every single games console since the PS1 (and quite possibly earlier) has been sold at a loss, with the game prices being hiked up to subsidise it. There is no reason why such a tactic could not have been employed for Hombre. Certainly it was significantly less complex on paper than the abortion that was the Saturn.
Actually I think the problem in 1992 was the A4000/030. It was just too expensive for a middle range machine,
The A4000 was too expensive period. It only ever got worse as time went on, from the initial 030 model right up to the AT A4000 with it's 060. Ranger wouldn't have helped all that much. Chipsets of the type offered by the Amiga, even by 1992 were looking like a decidedly bad thing to do. Everything else was going modular. By 1994 PCI was out in force, Pentiums were the new kid on the block. A year later Macs had gone the same way.
The gig was up.
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Maybe either an 030EC or 040EC.
I would avoid the EC models and offer fully functional CPUs that can handle the ZorroIII bus that you also want to have available.
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If it was to survive it had to go modular. It had to dump its games console roots.
And how long to stick with our beloved 68K series CPU?
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Commodity parts, commodity parts, commodity parts. AGA "on board", 16 bit audio (even if it meant going with Reveal, Creative, Turtle Beach or Opti). IDE. One bay to the left, emtpy (for an additional HD or IDE CD-ROM). Comes with 2mb Chip RAM, 4mb system. HD not optional, 80mb is your standard. This model will street at around $1099 or $1099.
The A1800 would be the same basic model, in a larger Mac Centris style case, a PCI riser with two slots, and an additional HD slot under the CD-ROM bay. $2099 is my desired price.
Some folks may be wondering why I'm not suggesting a yottabyte of Chipram and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA+ chipset capable of displaying the colour out of space or something: My aim is to make these the last "custom chipset" Amiga systems ever. Putting that old hardware out to pasture.
With that said, if I have the time, I'm also having the OS re-written in a higher level language to make porting to PowerPC as seamless as possible. The goal is that OS5 (the OS for my two above "dream systems" will be OS4 - more on that in a few) will be entirely portable, so the eventual shift to x86 will also be as seamless as possible. OS5 will include a sandbox layer to run as many old apps as can be (system breaking shit like those boot off a floppy trackloading pal only eurogames...nnnnnnnotsomuch, no. Not so much), but will be a new, unique OS unto itself, featuring MP (yes), VM (YES) and other modern resource management tools.
Anyway, the OS4 for the two systems above includes basic network extensions, maybe some rudimentary multi-user capabilities (let's say we store three profiles in some extra space in Kickstart, along with passwords). I'm also on the horn to the Netscape guys for a quick and dirty port (since, again, I can do what I want). Maybe throw a few dollars at iD for a DOOM or Wolf3d port, too.
These might not be the greatest seeming options, but this is a transitional system. My goal is by 2000 to be entirely chipset independent, OS 1.3/2.04/3.1/4.0 are pleasant memories - and that's all. OS5 and descendants are aggressively upgraded, and pimped out. I'm also pursuing A/UX as a server OS and beefed up or towerized A1800s to run same.
Devcons, devcons, devcons. I'm putting free machines in the hands of universities, I've got rock-n-roll tour style buses on MIT, Cambridge and CalTech campuses touting this thing left right and center. I'm putting out slick flyers with every verbal misstep by Apple and Microsoft in big bold letters - "Bill Gates didn't even mention the internet in The Road Ahead...I guess you took the wrong road, Bill..." "Steve Jobs said '1984 won't be like 1984' - and released a computer that's next to impossible to upgrade as you like. I guess Big Brother thinks it's OK to bully everybody." et cetera ad infinitum.
My promo videos are showing Wing Commander II and Strike Commander (remember, mid 90's = the golden age of flight sims on the desktop) running...then the screen getting dragged down and we see ol' classic Tut in DeluxePaint VII looking at us. All the good guys who released great hardware for the old A= boxen from the get-go are being pumped up with free hardware, invites to devcons, and everything else I can think of to get them excited about the new hardware.
We're burying SGI, Apple is barely muddling through by trying to release clones, Microsoft is caught with its collective shorts around its ankles (all the while still releasing Office on our platform!) trying to get their own working browser (which as soon as we see NS frittering their marketshare away, we politely request a port of). We've ditched our A/UX OS for "Workstations" and servers and have gotten a port of NextStep, and are hungrily eyeing NeXT as a corporate acquisition...
Around Y2k, we're strongly interested in the coming fad of "mp3 players" for the Christmas season. Maybe this Jobs chap we hired when we bought his company can add some cachet to that project :D
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With the benefit of hindsight...
Get on the Internet bandwagon, built in tcp , Web browser, e-mail clients, newsgroup readers.
Fund multiplayer game development and offer free server hosting to start up game developers.
Infiltrate popular culture with school/sport sponsorships, product placement in popular TV shows.
Drop propietary h/w or open it up to clone makers, make the OS my core business.
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Back in 1995/1996 Commodore should have for their low end machines used 3.5" IDE hard drives rather than 2.5". Bigger, Hotter? Yes. But much cheaper. Around that time a 3.5" 1.0GB hard drive was very affordable.
All Amiga's should have had a Buffered IDE as standard.
Even back in 1992 when the A600 and A1200 were released, those 20MB and 40MB hard drives were a joke and badly outdated. By then the standard in a PC was already 120MB.
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Back in 1995/1996 Commodore should have for their low end machines used 3.5" IDE hard drives rather than 2.5". Bigger, Hotter? Yes. But much cheaper. Around that time a 3.5" 1.0GB hard drive was very affordable.
All Amiga's should have had a Buffered IDE as standard.
I think that going for a low-end desktop model with separate keyboard would have been a good idea as well - like the never-released Falcon040 computer from Atari (or an updated A1000, or a slimline case like a PS2). This would have had space for the cheaper 3.5" hard drive (although you could fit certain slimmer models inside the A1200 at a push, I certainly did!) and an internal power supply, but otherwise the innards would be a $600 A1200 rather than a $3700 A4000. It could have sold for $999, and maybe the budget would have squeezed to 4MB RAM and a 28MHz 68030.
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Back in 1995/1996 Commodore should have for their low end machines used 3.5" IDE hard drives rather than 2.5". Bigger, Hotter? Yes. But much cheaper. Around that time a 3.5" 1.0GB hard drive was very affordable.
A 1gb drive in 1996 would have added $302 to the price. In 1995 (it depends on what time of the year - HD prices were and are in freefall), that same 1.0gb HD would set you back $849. Not precisely "very affordable". $5000+ SGI workstations were "only" shipping with an 850mb HD.
All Amiga's should have had a Buffered IDE as standard.
Even back in 1992 when the A600 and A1200 were released, those 20MB and 40MB hard drives were a joke and badly outdated. By then the standard in a PC was already 120MB.
Yes.
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I would avoid the EC models and offer fully functional CPUs that can handle the ZorroIII bus that you also want to have available.
You wouldn't want that on an A1200/CD32 class machine. I'm not sure I'd have used Zorro3 on a high end machine either, pci was out in 1993.
If in 1993 Commodore had launched something equivalent to the PS1 then they would have made serious money. Unfortunately they didn't have the vision or the experience.
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My Siamese System was available around then and showed the way, even running RTG over ethernet which was only 10mbit/sec it could outperform any Amiga graphics card, even having the Winblows OS getting in the way slowing things down.
Commodity plugin hardware support was the future, and that was on PCI only I am afraid. But as PCI I believe was basically Zorro enhanced and refined that is no biggy, ie auto config etc.
Commodore knew what to do, they were told by many engineers, they chose not to do it and perished because of it thinking they could compete with a games machine, fools.
Well dare I say it as I tried to get it done, 060 onto PCI Amiga card, plugged into cheap PC hardware with Siamese software and while AmigaOS was being ported to x86 use winblows as launch tool and driver system and get windows compatibility as well as Amiga and Mac.
Aargh those were the days, but we blew it, sorry. Still I am back for round two.
Steve
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With the exception of the Wii, every single games console since the PS1 (and quite possibly earlier) has been sold at a loss, with the game prices being hiked up to subsidise it.
That may be true for Xbox/Xbox360/PS3, I don't think that is true at all for Nintendo. Sega may have taken a hit on the Saturn, but I doubt they did on the dreamcast. I doubt Sony made a loss on the PS1, it was quite a simple design and they basically owned it all.
Although in the first stages of manufacturing, everything does cost a bit more while you're sorting out yields etc. But that would affect every electronic device ever made. It's less of a problem these days, with so many developers that will need consoles before the actual launch.
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That may be true for Xbox/Xbox360/PS3, I don't think that is true at all for Nintendo.
Nintendo have always been something of the odd man out.
Sega may have taken a hit on the Saturn, but I doubt they did on the dreamcast.
The Dreamcast was sold at a lower initial launch price than the original playstation at the time. I would be highly surprised if it wasn't being sold at a loss - in the UK it was being sold new in 2000 for £99...
I doubt Sony made a loss on the PS1, it was quite a simple design and they basically owned it all.
By todays standards sure, but the original playstation at it's launch was a supremely powerful piece of kit. I've no doubt that later versions like the slimline PS1 at a considerable profit. However even at the release of the Dreamcast, it was still being sold in its original format at a loss (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/321289.stm).
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The Dreamcast was sold at a lower initial launch price than the original playstation at the time. I would be highly surprised if it wasn't being sold at a loss - in the UK it was being sold new in 2000 for £99...
All consoles are sold at a loss, even initially when they are very expensive (e.g., playstation3, Xbox360, Wii). Devs want to be the first with the most, so they tend to pay through the nose for licensing fees.
By the time the consoles in question have hit the sub-$100 mark and the five-guy barely-a-homebrew studio companies are making games for it, the "big three" will have more than made it up in volume.
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Yes, old games and apps would not run,
You mean current applications and games wouldn't run? And all you'd have would be Workbench programs?
They would have needed to convert all the 68K into C or write a 68k emulator that would have sucked back then. More so since it would have to run in the OS, which would have been a lot of work.
And for what? To run on a CPU that had an average speed of 66Mhz? That would have turned the Amiga into it's enemy? I don't think so! The taboo wouldn't have been worth it,
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I would avoid the EC models and offer fully functional CPUs that can handle the ZorroIII bus that you also want to have available.
What have the EC variants got to do with Zorro III?
A 68EC020 lacks the 32 bit address bus, but '030+ shouldn't have any problems.
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All consoles are sold at a loss, even initially when they are very expensive (e.g., playstation3, Xbox360, Wii). Devs want to be the first with the most, so they tend to pay through the nose for licensing fees.
Wait, how are you doing your accounting? Sold at a loss after including all marketing expenses? or sold at a loss even before marketing $$ are taken into account? You are not talking about the bare bones cost of manufacturing, right?
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Wait, how are you doing your accounting? Sold at a loss after including all marketing expenses? or sold at a loss even before marketing $$ are taken into account? You are not talking about the bare bones cost of manufacturing, right?
Yup, post _manufacture_ and before marketing. Nintendo are the only exception having always sold their hardware at a profit. Even though the GameCube sold less than the Xbox and PS2 they still made more money from it than either competitor.
This is very well known stuff with consoles I'm surprised it still surprises people! They sell the hardware at a loss as they make all of the money from peripherals and gated development.
We cannot buy hardware direct from Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo without being able to demonstrate that we're at least in talks with a publisher, have previously released games OR have developers onboard who have previously released games. It can be a real pain for a startup just getting dev' kits.
Then you pay tens of thousands of dollar to submit your game to them for TCR/TRC testing, which will usually fail the first time so you'll re-submit until it passes. You do this for each territory that you release in, eg: EU/US/Asia and for each console. Once you've passed all of this you send your gold master to them to duplicate and they send you the discs which you pay for of course :) then when you sell it, they get slice of the profit.
If you think that's profit-tastico you should see how much they make on the peripherals!
Andy
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My Siamese System was available around then and showed the way, even running RTG over ethernet which was only 10mbit/sec it could outperform any Amiga graphics card, even having the Winblows OS getting in the way slowing things down.
Commodity plugin hardware support was the future, and that was on PCI only I am afraid. But as PCI I believe was basically Zorro enhanced and refined that is no biggy, ie auto config etc.
Commodore knew what to do, they were told by many engineers, they chose not to do it and perished because of it thinking they could compete with a games machine, fools.
Well dare I say it as I tried to get it done, 060 onto PCI Amiga card, plugged into cheap PC hardware with Siamese software and while AmigaOS was being ported to x86 use winblows as launch tool and driver system and get windows compatibility as well as Amiga and Mac.
Aargh those were the days, but we blew it, sorry. Still I am back for round two.
Steve
I always wanted one of those Siamese systems back when I'd see them advertised :)
Andy
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Yup, post _manufacture_ and before marketing. Nintendo are the only exception having always sold their hardware at a profit. Even though the GameCube sold less than the Xbox and PS2 they still made more money from it than either competitor.
This is very well known stuff with consoles I'm surprised it still surprises people! They sell the hardware at a loss as they make all of the money from peripherals and gated development.
We cannot buy hardware direct from Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo without being able to demonstrate that we're at least in talks with a publisher, have previously released games OR have developers onboard who have previously released games. It can be a real pain for a startup just getting dev' kits.
Then you pay tens of thousands of dollar to submit your game to them for TCR/TRC testing, which will usually fail the first time so you'll re-submit until it passes. You do this for each territory that you release in, eg: EU/US/Asia and for each console. Once you've passed all of this you send your gold master to them to duplicate and they send you the discs which you pay for of course :) then when you sell it, they get slice of the profit.
If you think that's profit-tastico you should see how much they make on the peripherals!
Andy
All of this and more. A sold console might (gross!) a company $10. A spare controller, or "skin" for same? $12. Console production cost? $100. Accessory production cost? $2.
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I think that going for a low-end desktop model with separate keyboard would have been a good idea as well - like the never-released Falcon040 computer from Atari (or an updated A1000, or a slimline case like a PS2). This would have had space for the cheaper 3.5" hard drive (although you could fit certain slimmer models inside the A1200 at a push, I certainly did!) and an internal power supply, but otherwise the innards would be a $600 A1200 rather than a $3700 A4000. It could have sold for $999, and maybe the budget would have squeezed to 4MB RAM and a 28MHz 68030.
Another company, Checkmate Digital, their response was stick an "A1500" badge on the A2000 and threaten legal action. Both actions being those of a clueless company when what they should have done is taken their idea further.
For those who don't know, Checkmate Digital produced a replacement case for the A500 motherboard for a reasonable fee, this included everything needed to use the A500 keyboard in an external case, and put it in an Amiga 1000ish 3 box design. Was actually smarter looking than the Amiga 2000 tank-a-thon rubbish design too.
Wasn't perfect, but perfectly illustrates what was needed direct from Commodore to bridge the gap with A4000....A1200...A600 in 1992. Oh well. And if you had the AD-IDE and an internal 030 CPU board it is pretty much going to do what you want, and for a lot less than an A2000 actually.
(http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_may22/a_scuzz_jun06_01.jpg)
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Another company, Checkmate Digital, their response was stick an "A1500" badge on the A2000 and threaten legal action. Both actions being those of a clueless company when what they should have done is taken their idea further.
For those who don't know, Checkmate Digital produced a replacement case for the A500 motherboard for a reasonable fee, this included everything needed to use the A500 keyboard in an external case, and put it in an Amiga 1000ish 3 box design. Was actually smarter looking than the Amiga 2000 tank-a-thon rubbish design too.
My second favourite Amiga product we manufactured, Siamese was my proudest though.
Steve (Ex Director of Checkmate Digital)
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Yup, post _manufacture_ and before marketing. Nintendo are the only exception having always sold their hardware at a profit. Even though the GameCube sold less than the Xbox and PS2 they still made more money from it than either competitor.
This is very well known stuff with consoles I'm surprised it still surprises people! They sell the hardware at a loss as they make all of the money from peripherals and gated development.
We cannot buy hardware direct from Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo without being able to demonstrate that we're at least in talks with a publisher, have previously released games OR have developers onboard who have previously released games. It can be a real pain for a startup just getting dev' kits.
Then you pay tens of thousands of dollar to submit your game to them for TCR/TRC testing, which will usually fail the first time so you'll re-submit until it passes. You do this for each territory that you release in, eg: EU/US/Asia and for each console. Once you've passed all of this you send your gold master to them to duplicate and they send you the discs which you pay for of course :) then when you sell it, they get slice of the profit.
If you think that's profit-tastico you should see how much they make on the peripherals!
Andy
Where are you getting the manufacturing costs of the various systems to assert that all, except Nintendo, cost more to make at the Chinese factory than the (wholesale) selling price?
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My second favourite Amiga product we manufactured, Siamese was my proudest though.
Steve (Ex Director of Checkmate Digital)
It looks like a nice kit, I guess Commodore's actions put you off doing the same for the A1200 - it would have been a far nicer solution than the PowerTower kits that were over the top and too bulky in my opinion.
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Steve i think an updated Siamese System
with aros will do very well today
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Siamese system is not needed now that we have Aros.
On CDL A1500 a version for A1200 would be pointless and too expensive now, they were expensive beasts to make and only worked financially back then.
Had fun in those days though.
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Where are you getting the manufacturing costs of the various systems to assert that all, except Nintendo, cost more to make at the Chinese factory than the (wholesale) selling price?
Sometimes it's straight from the horses mouth, but often analysts and others will tear-down and simply tally up the amount that the components cost. Whilst big companies do have more leverage when it comes to negotiating manufacturing and sales they can never come below the minimum sale price of a part.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29167/Yoshida_After_Three_Years_PS3_Hardware_Breaking_Even.php
You'll notice a link in that article too a company called "iSuppli" they do this for a wide range of hardware and can get at the unit costs direct from manufacturers of motherboards, other pcbs, chips etc.
http://blastmagazine.com/2009/12/12/sony-losing-40-on-every-ps3-sold/
Quite often we're (I'm a games developer) simply told at conferences about how much each is costing and thus when they expect to break even.
I've picked the PS3 here since it's got the most abundant breakdown info due to the massive overhead induced by the blu-ray drive. However google and you'll find a lot more.
Andy
Missed one! http://news.cnet.com/PlayStation-3-component-prices-Why-so-high/2100-1043_3-6042226.html
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Excerpt from above link:
"Selling a console at a loss is typical for Sony and Xbox house Microsoft. Console makers sell hardware below costs to establish an initial install base, then make money back after a time when economies of scale make hardware profitability possible."
The implication is that the console sales generally do become profitable in the long term, even without the hugely profitable software, so long as sales volume reaches expectations.
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The implication is that the console sales generally do become profitable in the long term, even without the hugely profitable software, so long as sales volume reaches expectations.
The development costs are finite, add to that that as the cost of components being reduced as the processes mature or are improved for lower failures per yield. Then of course, looking at the Playstation series you have the reduced component (the so called "Slimline") versions of the consoles which help no end in reducing the expense.
So yeah, it's more than possible for a console to become profitable hardware toward the end of its service life on a per unit basis, maybe even overall in cases like the original and maybe the second gen Playstations. But the pure profit by that stage has been rolling in for years through games and peripheral sales, not to mention now services such as Xbox live...
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I'd stop making my own video chips and contract with that new company, the one that seems to be missing a vowel in their name, nVidia, and have them design a version of their NV1 to higher specs for use in the new Amiga. They seem competent and in need of work...
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Excerpt from above link:
"Selling a console at a loss is typical for Sony and Xbox house Microsoft. Console makers sell hardware below costs to establish an initial install base, then make money back after a time when economies of scale make hardware profitability possible."
The implication is that the console sales generally do become profitable in the long term, even without the hugely profitable software, so long as sales volume reaches expectations.
Yes on a long enough timeline most of the hardware does become mildly profitable. Not always though, the original Xbox never did due to nVidia refusing to reduce the cost of their chipset, it was a fantastic cash cow for them. It's been speculated that was the reason MS went to ATi for the Xbox360s chipset/GPU.
Besides which by the time console hardware finally becomes profitable it's in the end-stage of it's life and so selling a much smaller volume of units. If you've sold 10 million units at a $20 dollar loss, but at the end you manage to sell 1 million units at $20 profit, you still made a $180 million loss overall.
It's not a problem because that's just not the model that they chase.
You seem to be arguing that they don't do this even though MS, Sony, Sega (Saturn & Dreamcast) and even Atari (Jaguar) all acknowledge that this is exactly what they do. I am understanding right or are you just wanting to find out more about it?
Commodore never did this because they couldn't control the format (disc/CD), peripherals and development in the same way that companies do now. Nintendo have never done it because they've never seen the need and would prefer it if everything just printed it's own money like the gameboy does for them with every minor revision.
Andy
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Besides which by the time console hardware finally becomes profitable it's in the end-stage of it's life and so selling a much smaller volume of units. If you've sold 10 million units at a $20 dollar loss, but at the end you manage to sell 1 million units at $20 profit, you still made a $180 million loss overall.
In general, that's not quite how economy of scale works. A company might sell X units at a loss, then later negotiate 5X that volume at lower manufacturing cost per unit to make a profit on every unit for that larger volume. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Nonetheless, it is clear to all that the console sales are not where the major profit rests.
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In general, that's not quite how economy of scale works. A company might sell X units at a loss, then later negotiate 5X that volume at lower manufacturing cost per unit to make a profit on every unit for that larger volume. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Nonetheless, it is clear to all that the console sales are not where the major profit rests.
True, but my example was a little contrived to make the point that not matter how many they buy they still can't get below the cost price of the items themselves.
When it comes to peripherals it's an interesting situation as you occasionally get approached by manufacturers to support their, sometimes quite mad: pads, sticks or in our case inflatable-wireless-motion-sensing-motorbikes... I kid you not :)
Still they make for some awesome splitscreen racing fun ;)
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When it comes to peripherals it's an interesting situation as you occasionally get approached by manufacturers to support their, sometimes quite mad: pads, sticks or in our case inflatable-wireless-motion-sensing-motorbikes... I kid you not :)
Still they make for some awesome splitscreen racing fun ;)
I so want one of these. :lol: