Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on September 23, 2014, 09:56:10 AM
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Another what if scenario:
Should the Amiga have competed against the console market or the PC market?
Supposing you could only go one way, would you have had another big box Amiga or would you try and fit as much as possible into the one package?
If you went big box would you cease development on the AA chipset?
If you went for the wedge would an 030 min spec version be fast enough?
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Another what if scenario:
Should the Amiga have competed against the console market or the PC market?
Supposing you could only go one way, would you have had another big box Amiga or would you try and fit as much as possible into the one package?
If you went big box would you cease development on the AA chipset?
If you went for the wedge would an 030 min spec version be fast enough?
Amiga was designed to the console market. Amiga 500 made it big, CD32 and A1200 sold quite well.
A1000 flopped, A2000 and later big box Amigas had their strengths but sales were relatively small.
I say, it should have competed against the console market (and it did).
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I always thought the Amiga CD32 should have had at least 1MB of 32-bit Fast Memory. It would have given it so many more opportunities in the marketplace: the speed would have doubled and the extra chip memory freed up would have been invaluable. The 3DO if I remember at the time came with more memory.
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Yes
They were always worrying about a little extra cost in a time when they could have actually swung it... I never understood why they never made some quite sensible things standard since most people once they brought there standard Amiga setup brought the extras anyway, I do know since I did tutor families one on one back in the day and it was amazing how many had expansions.
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Home and pro market. Seeing the Amiga as just a games console is WRONG :( The Amiga chipset wasn't very suitable to compete with the 16 bit consoles anyway, just look at the SNES, the Amiga chipset doesn't hold a candle to it in terms of features that where relevant to the games of that time.
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Home and pro market. Seeing the Amiga as just a games console is WRONG :( The Amiga chipset wasn't very suitable to compete with the 16 bit consoles anyway, just look at the SNES, the Amiga chipset doesn't hold a candle to it in terms of features that where relevant to the games of that time.
Some of the SNES cartridges had an extra co-processor (like StarFox) that your standard Amiga couldn't match, but some other games weren't that far ahead. I remember seeing a pre-release SNES at Nintendos Redmond, WA. headquarters playing "Battle Chess" and the Amiga version looked better (unless it was an unfinished Beta or something).
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The FX chip in Starfox was cool and all, But Guardian on the CD32 was almost the same graphics-wise without the chip.
You do bring up a good point though. I'd say the expansion port on the CD32 would have given birth to several game-specific add-ons though. Granted, that would be more cumbersome to swap out etc. then having the chip built into the cartridge and require parental help.
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That C= didn't put at least a small amount of fast ram into all their systems was one of their more bone-headed moves. Practically a crime. But with their laundry list of dumb decisions, I suppose we should be happy we got any expansion ports at all. :angryfire:
An '030 system with AGA and a few megs of fast could've held it's own against the consoles for at least another year, if released by '91-'92. But, it's easy to second-guess the past. *sigh*
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Once the console wars started in earnest, C= were simply too far behind the curve to do much. Gaming moved from the computer desk to the living room and Commodore's console efforts were too little, too late, too underpowered and too overpriced. Not to mention all the big titles were on the mainstream consoles and devs never quite took after the CDTV and CD32, games development wise - both the CDTV and CD32 were essentially non existent - market wise, over here in North America.
I saved my pennies way back when, being the good Amiga fanatic that I was and picked up a lightly used CDTV from a local fellow and never used it again once I got a SNES that I got for Xmas around the same time. The SNES (and Genesis) were half the price of the CD32 over here and CD32 (and CDTV before it) simply stood no chance. When every 13 year old kid had a SNES sitting in front of the TV, it was a hard sell to get people to buy an off brand, non mainstream console no matter how promising it was. The Commodore name meant nothing to a console buyer, while it meant a lot to us guys familiar with the brand from the computer sector.
The Amiga based consoles always had so much potential, but it never quite hit when it came time to get to bat and the home plate, sadly.
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Home and pro market. Seeing the Amiga as just a games console is WRONG :( The Amiga chipset wasn't very suitable to compete with the 16 bit consoles anyway, just look at the SNES, the Amiga chipset doesn't hold a candle to it in terms of features that where relevant to the games of that time.
Agreed! It's definitely a great computer for games, but it could not compete on the terms that the video game market had already evolved. Lacking tile graphics modes and competent sprite hardware made the games that 16-bit consoles excelled in cumbersome if not impossible to implement on something like A500, not to mention the sound hardware.
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Amiga was the perfect bridge between the PC & Console world, it could run games straight from boot like a console (albeit from floppy) but then also have the option of installing games to hard drive and playing the games that worked better with keyboard/mouse.
If there was one thing that kicked the Amiga out of the running it would be 3D capabilities. Shoehorning a 3D graphics chip offering chunky modes that could do Doom style games fullscreen at 1x1 pixel at around 35-60fps would have made a big difference, and likely to have gone a long way to stem the mass exodus to PC, which is where I'd say most of the UK/Euro crowd went, rather than to console. The writing was on the wall by '92 in regards to 3D and Commodore should have responded accordingly.
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Agreed! It's definitely a great computer for games, but it could not compete on the terms that the video game market had already evolved. Lacking tile graphics modes and competent sprite hardware made the games that 16-bit consoles excelled in cumbersome if not impossible to implement on something like A500, not to mention the sound hardware.
It's sprite handling could have been improved, but from what I've read AGA wasn't a bad chipset with 030/Fast RAM so I think the Amiga's 2D capability wasn't uncompetitive in comparison. 3D was the next thing and that killed the Megadrive/SNES off pretty quick, especially when you consider how long the Master System & NES, and indeed, the C64 and Spectrum stuck around after their respective markets had peaked and the next generation came along. Doom and the Playstation made all 2D sprite games look like relics although in hindsight, I would say there is a consensus that says that the early 3D games have aged far worse than the 16bit sprite based games. But that was it, everyone wanted Doom/Quake/Duke Nukem etc.. and hardware that couldn't do it was put out to pasture pronto, this included all hardware listed above.
It would be a similar situation now with the PS2/PS3 and moreso with the PS4; because you can get a similar experience in the same way you could with Master System/Genesis, there is a lot longer transition from one generation to the next. When the next big thing comes that only the current gen can do, then you'll see a similar situation, which come to think of it, could be somewhat applied to HD gaming, which is probably what took the Wii out so early and finally laid the PS2 to rest.
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Amiga can be better than consoles on his age but games conversion on the amiga like Final Fight are not good because the coders did not have any help of the original team and they needed to do some reverse ingeneering with the original arcade machine, for nintengo or sega that is easy with the money for conversions.
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Forget about a tired graphics chip, slow RAM, little to no RAM and 8-bit sound by the 90's!
Two incredibly sorry things killed the Amiga gaming wise:
#1) Single button games.
#2) %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!ty least common denominator IBM/AtariST ports.
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A lot of PC Engine games are way better than Amiga ports.... and that was an 8-bit machine.
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I always thought the Amiga CD32 should have had at least 1MB of 32-bit Fast Memory.
Project?
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Some of the SNES cartridges had an extra co-processor (like StarFox) that your standard Amiga couldn't match
Even without extra processors, the Amiga's chipset was no match to the SNES: look at Street Fighter 2,..
SNES had scaling, rotation, transparency, 4 background layers with independant scrolling, 128 (8/16 color) sprites (32 max on scanline), mode 7 with matrix perspective...
Of course, when optimizing, the Amiga could output nice things, but that most of the time looked more like technical demos than real games since the gameplay was limited because of these tricks (eg. Beast,...).
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Forget about a tired graphics chip, slow RAM, little to no RAM and 8-bit sound by the 90's!
Two incredibly sorry things killed the Amiga gaming wise:
#1) Single button games.
Those kind of things could have easiliy been fixed. They were probably planning it for the next system, especially if the CD32 had it.
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Those kind of things could have easiliy been fixed. They were probably planning it for the next system, especially if the CD32 had it.
Could have been easy, but it took way too much time: even the NES had more buttons... Since there was no official support/push for more buttons, we had to wait 1993 for the CD 32.
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The two platforms which have survived from then and still dominate today were business machines. Commodore should have striven harder for the US business market. Eg. the A2000 should have had better specifications (eg. faster CPU) and/or been more competitively priced.
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It's always about the games :( Amigas aren't game computers :(
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The two platforms which have survived from then and still dominate today were business machines. Commodore should have striven harder for the US business market. Eg. the A2000 should have had better specifications (eg. faster CPU) and/or been more competitively priced.
The A2000 was okay when it first came out. One year later it came with 020 and hard drive as standard (price for me was $2000). One year later again the PC was dropping in price and increasing in power.
They probably would have got beaten thoroughly by the PC. If by 96 you had a min spec 060 and 8Megs of RAM for maybe $1500 (plus the badly needed sound DSP).
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It's always about the games :( Amigas aren't game computers :(
Jay Miner envisioned it as a games machine.
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A2000 stuff etc...
In y1989 I got A2000 with 3MB RAM and HDD etc.
In y1990 it was still far superior to normal PCs that people were buying.
In y1993 or so the 7Mhz speed was clearly not fun enough. (I got A3k/030/25 as a loaned HW)
In y1994 040 was still good to use (but more expensive than vanilla 486). (I got 4k/040)
In y1996 060 was compareable to P1 in performance. (I had also P1/75HW and got 060 for 4k)
Then x86 was too far ahead to really compare.
Untill y1999 A4k was my main system at home.
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It's sprite handling could have been improved, but from what I've read AGA wasn't a bad chipset with 030/Fast RAM so I think the Amiga's 2D capability wasn't uncompetitive in comparison.
You have to consider cost and availability as well, I think. You'd be paying twice as much for a bare A1200 at its launch than you'd have to do years earlier (depending on launch region) for Sega MD or SNES. Add to that your fast RAM or 030 and you have a very uncompetitive piece of gaming hardware. I definitely don't think the 2D capabilities of the Amiga are bad in comparison, just that it was unsuitable to compete with consoles released at the time, and the games on them that depended on what those consoles do best: sprites and tiles. Not to mention quite limited polyphony and as save2600 mentioned, one button games.
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Jay Miner envisioned it as a games machine.
Yes, and thank goodness it didn't turn out to be a one. What a damned waste that would've been.
and as save2600 mentioned, one button games.
Which is utterly absurd, because Amigas support no less than THREE buttons directly. Why on earth anyone thought it was a good idea to only use one button is completely beyond me.
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It's sprite handling could have been improved, but from what I've read AGA wasn't a bad chipset with 030/Fast RAM so I think the Amiga's 2D capability wasn't uncompetitive in comparison.
AGA was better than ECS, but it was rushed and there were a lot of compromises. Games hardly ever supported optional peripherals, some games started making use of accelerators but that was mostly after commodore had disappeared & most developers had jumped ship anyway.
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Forget about a tired graphics chip, slow RAM, little to no RAM and 8-bit sound by the 90's!
Are you saying anythin bad os the amiga sound? If you like the FM sounds of console game i can understand it but no way.
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Once Doom came out on the PC the final nail went into the Amiga as a gaming platform, imo.
I was a die hard Amiga fanboy one day, 2 Amiga's sitting here, both extremely kitted out and one running a massive BBS. The other I used for a bit of gaming, rendering, etc.
A friend picked up a complete built PC which cost less than the '060 card I had in my A4000 and showed me Doom. All my love for the Amiga, I couldn't get past what I'd seen and the writing was on the wall. I was sitting there, thinking Lemmings was one hell of a fun game on the PC, then I saw Doom - was simply no going back, even as much as I hated DOS and early Windows.
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Once Doom came out on the PC the final nail went into the Amiga as a gaming platform, imo.
Doom is commonly given as the reason. I started playing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_X-Wing at work, which predates Doom by a long way.
There were still c64, Amiga & arcade games I would play, but there was nothing like x-wing. Wing commander was as close as it got and the Amiga version of that was too slow.
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Yeah, I saw Doom as well... and didn't care. I certainly wasn't going to abandon my favorite platform for a game.
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Are you saying anythin bad os the amiga sound? If you like the FM sounds of console game i can understand it but no way.
I love the Paula sound but in some senses it's a lot more limited than e.g. SNES or Sega MD.
Let's start with polyphony, where Amiga was still stuck with 4 channels in 1992 while Sega MD had 10 channels of sound and SNES had 8. These leave a lot of sound channels available for both music and sound effects.
Sound on Sega/SNES is also potentially very dynamic. SNES comes with a crude DSP for reverb/chorus, and the MD has a full fledged 4 operator FM synth. To achieve the same with Amiga you will either need big samples or a really nifty play routine like AHX. Of course, ingenious composers never cease to amaze me in this area, but the MD affords a very good level of dynamic control of the timbre that isn't as trivial with short samples. The MD also has a Z80 that is practically mostly dedicated to sound.
Most importantly, by A1200, seven years had already passed since the A1000, and there were no changes to the sound hardware. SB16 had already been released and consumers were expecting more from computer sound, especially from a line of computers that had been known to excel in that area.
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I find it kind of odd that people in this thread are saying the A1200 was too expensive compared to the Sega MD (or Genesis for us USA people). The Genesis had more or less the same specs as an Atari ST. I think it even had very similar sound chips (though more like the STe's sound than the original ST.)
The SNES was released only a year before the A1200, and really for general use, the A1200 has better graphics capabilities, it's only for specific game use that the SNES is a bit better at things.
I have read multiple times that the CD32 was the nail in the coffin for Commodore. Both them and Atari could/should have just kept to selling computers, but they both did an an all or nothing into video game consoles. Apple kept on selling Macs.. then iPod came along and pretty much saved their butts. That's really all Commodore or Atari needed, some sort of device that was brilliant and everyone wanted.
slaapliedje
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No one had an A1200 sitting in their living room for the family entertainment device.
No one looking at buying a console considered an A1200, or any other computer. It was an ease of use thing. The perks of the console is I could throw in a disc or cartridge, turn it on and go. It's like comparing a hand cranked Model A to a '78 Civic - no one wanted the pain in the ass factor.
The concept of someone buying an A1200 and going out and buying a boxed game with floppies vs. picking up the latest Nintendo Games Pak with included game, it's not even comparable.
The A1200 was twice the price of a SNES or Sega in my parts. And the games were worse, and harder to find in retail stores.
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I find it kind of odd that people in this thread are saying the A1200 was too expensive compared to the Sega MD (or Genesis for us USA people). The Genesis had more or less the same specs as an Atari ST.
No. The MD has much less RAM and a slightly slower main CPU. It also has a pretty advanced graphics chip compared to the Atari ST. They are entirely different beasts.
I think it even had very similar sound chips (though more like the STe's sound than the original ST.)
No. The MD had two sound chips, none of which are particularly similar to that of the Atari ST (YM2149). The first was a four operator FM chip of six channels (YM2612) and the second was a simple PSG that wasn't as advanced as that of the ST (less frequency resolution and range I believe). The MD also had a secondary Z80 CPU for sound and backwards compatibility with the Master System.
The SNES was released only a year before the A1200, and really for general use, the A1200 has better graphics capabilities, it's only for specific game use that the SNES is a bit better at things.
"For general use" is the key phrase here. The SNES was designed to be a cheap game machine, and as such it didn't have a lot of RAM (game data is instead in mapped ROM, and graphics is usually managed on a per-tile/per-sprite basis), so unlike on Amiga, linear bitmap graphics were unviable. It was never meant for "general use", but the point is that it excelled at what it did, at a lower price, earlier than the A1200, with a much slower CPU and much less RAM. Platform games, shooters, RPGs etc. still most look, play and sound better on the SNES in my opinion.
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The SNES was released only a year before the A1200
You mean 2 years before I guess ?
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@above
You just made me feel ill when you mentioned floppies. 6 or even 10 on some games. Not a good games console.
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@above
You just made me feel ill when you mentioned floppies. 6 or even 10 on some games. Not a good games console.
Are we forgetting the Amiga CDTV here?
Also, remember that the Amiga is a computer, not a games console. Luckily those huge multiple disk adventure games were hard drive installable. PC games came on 10 or more floppy disks as well you know, so the Amiga wasn't alone in that respect.
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The CDTV and CD32 were both stillborn in the larger scheme of the console wars the moment they launched. Non starters over here in North America, in my experience.
I remember when they launched here - they were on the shelves for 2 months tops before retailers realized consumers had no use for them and after that you couldn't even find games on the shelves to buy for the things, esp. the CDTV. The mainstream consoles ran and sold circles around the both of them combined. Even my local Amiga only shop couldn't sell them at list/wholesale price.
Us Amiga guys, we dug them cause you could expand them into something approaching a "real" computer. Add an expansion box, a floppy, a keyboard and mouse, etc. - but for the market they were in, no one cared about that in the least. It'd cost you 4x to expand a CDTV or CD32 to remotely compare to their bigger, full fledged siblings, the A500 or A1200. They were a half baked console, and on the computer side of things who would spend that kind of money expanding them when a used A500 or A1200 could be had for a few hundred bucks tops.
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Amiga always seemed to have much more mediocre hard drive support, compared to PC games. Both because hard drives were more expensive (so fewer people had them), and of course the piracy issue. *sigh* If every game had been hard drive installable from day one, and if hard drives had been cheaper... if wishes were fishes! :(
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Lots of good points...
AGA Sound - I read/watched recently where, I think it was Dave Haynie who said that a DSP and extra channels were originally planned for AGA, a deal with a sound chip maker who had no idea of how the Commodore engineers were going to use it in the system, but when the deal fell through, used that information to pitch it to Apple, who quickly introduced it into their Mac systems.. But count me as one who was disappointed to still be at 4channel 8bit, even with that lovely distinctive crunch that was a semi-secret music production trick.
One Button Joysticks - A hold over from the 8bit/C64 days unfortunately I would imagine, everyone who went from an 8bit system to the Amiga had a joystick that worked, it became the lowest common denominator and I think that's why it partly stuck. Commodore should have done better with pushing three buttons at the very least and then introducing a few more for ECS etc... Three buttons as standard would still have been sufficient even if extra buttons never became popular enough to be supported by default.
Sprites - Again, AGA maybe should have done better, but between 3D capabilities and improved sprites, I'd choose the former, it wasn't lack of sprite power that killed the Amiga as a games machine.
Amiga as a games machine pt1. - Moreso in the UK/Europe, the Amiga was, initially and up till around '93ish, regarded highly as a games machine that could also do serious stuff. In the UK, the Amiga did well in the semi-professional video market, even into the mid-late 90s so it did have a serious side to it too that many people don't really talk about these days, but in the US, it is my understanding that the Amiga was viewed as a serious machine almost exclusively, especially due to the Video Toaster.
I don't think the A500 had the same impact in the US as a games machine because the NES had gotten a much greater foothold of the games market, by some accounts badly wounding the C64 games market from around '86, so it wasn't as much of a logical step to get an Amiga to upgrade your NES, which was still at it's peak in '87/'88, unlike in UK/Europe where the C64/Spectrum/Amstrad market was still dominant around that time, and continued even into the 90s, the consoles only started taking hold from the Genesis onwards, so everyone looked at the Amiga/Atari ST as a super C64/Spectrum in '87/'88 and viewed from a home computer market standpoint, which was the games market too, as a natural progression. By this time Amiga's also looked better than NES/Master System, so probably was a reason for their lack of success at that time too.
Pt2. - Many people, including me, balked at the idea of spending £50.00 on a game even if it was plug and play and didn't mind at all loading a game from disk, I guess we all still remembered how long it took to load from tape in the 8bit days and still thought it fast.. Again, by this time, in the US with the dominance of the NES, I guess games players got used to instant loading so probably would look at the disk based Amiga as slow.
A1200 w/030 & RAM - Yes it would have been more expensive, but it would have been cheaper than paying for an 020 and then an 030, in hindsight Apple got it right, keep the price the same and keep upgrading RAM/CPU when they can be incorporated for the same price.. But 1Mb fast ram onboard would have been a great start at the very least..
If you finished reading all that, thanks :)
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Amiga always seemed to have much more mediocre hard drive support, compared to PC games. Both because hard drives were more expensive (so fewer people had them), and of course the piracy issue. *sigh* If every game had been hard drive installable from day one, and if hard drives had been cheaper... if wishes were fishes! :(
But even if only C= would came out a couple years earlier with the A570 CD player! Imagine CD sized games in your 500, at the same level of PC-Engine ones :(
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4 channels was too litle: lots of games had music *or* sound effects because of that. Or had to temporarily disable one channel from music while playing sound effects (eg. Aladdin).
Amiga either needed more channels (or dedicated music/FM) or faster CPU (to use the CPU to mix sound effects & music). It had neither. Of course, in 1985 this was revolutionnary, but a few years later this was lagging.
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A1200 w/030 & RAM - Yes it would have been more expensive, but it would have been cheaper than paying for an 020 and then an 030, in hindsight Apple got it right, keep the price the same and keep upgrading RAM/CPU when they can be incorporated for the same price..
The 030 was unlikely to get much cheaper by the time the A1200 was launched and commodore didn't survive much longer in any case.
With the A1200 they were relying more on outside manufacturers to build the chips etc, so their cut of the price was squeezed. They sold less because most people had moved on.
Rumour has it they sat on AGA, if that is true then releasing it earlier might have helped them. But they needed to get it out in 1990 for the A3000 when people still cared.
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The Amiga was 'underpowered' because it's market was too small to justify investing in quality software/arcade ports. Still, I prefer some games that were on the Amiga over the Sega ones (like Out of This World) as the music is so much better.
Besides, I always found the consoles to be totally lacking some 'unrestricted game feeling' the Amiga and other home computers (including PC) had - more variety in games thanks to k/b and mouse, plus the possibility of saving your games, and therefore enabling more complex gaming we're used to today.
And who doesn't remember all those awful fmv games of the mid-90s? That sure made me realise good graphics is something to be very wary of. :D
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The 030 was unlikely to get much cheaper by the time the A1200 was launched and commodore didn't survive much longer in any case.
With the A1200 they were relying more on outside manufacturers to build the chips etc, so their cut of the price was squeezed. They sold less because most people had moved on.
Rumour has it they sat on AGA, if that is true then releasing it earlier might have helped them. But they needed to get it out in 1990 for the A3000 when people still cared.
Not to disagree because what you say is correct, but I guess where I was going was, in the hypothetical, if 14mhz 020 in, say, 1991 would have been affordable, by 1992 28mhz 020 may have been the same cost, then by early 1993, maybe 25mhz 030 would have been possible etc., although obviously you can see the same situation develop with the accelerator card market, which might suggest another alternative, and that being having the processor in the A1200 be on a detachable daughter card by default and then Commodore becoming the main provider of accelerator cards instead of third parties, that would have been a source of income for possibly less effort, plus using this method, other enhancements could be incorporated?
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AGA came too little too late. It was beaten easily by a VGA card on pc.
Sound also lagged behind. There should have been 16 bit sound with software mixing at least on the 1200 and 4000 at least. They probably also should have
had decent midi synth chip built in by then, but they didn't.
Pc had this by then with soundblaster. commodore completely ignored the sound hardware and let it remain at what they made in 1985 for the amiga 1000.
7+ years and they did not improve the sound chip? 7+ years is ages and ages in the computer world. It was revolutionary in 1985. By 1992 it was WAY outdated. How did they not do ANYTHING to improve sound in amigas?
They should have at least made it 16 bit instead of 8 bit.
I started my music career on amiga sound. I desperately wanted to do 16 bit cd quality sound and more channels. This, more than anything is why I HAD to switch to pc when I realized the new amigas had the same old sound. (Faster tracker II and Impulse tracker had 16 bit sound if you had a soundblaster)
AGA was not as impressive as vga and svga. An amiga 500 could easily complete with a nintendo or sega genesis as far as games. NO WAY an amiga 1200 or 4000 or even cd32 could compete with a playstation, released in 1994. Playstation blew these machines out of the water as far as graphics,
sound and game quality.
They dropped the ball. They lost the willingness to stay ahead of the curve
and be innovative. THATS why commodore died. When I heard that the 1200
and 4000 would have the same old sound, I knew commodore was either
dead in the water or had perhaps one final shot to redeem themselves.
I still thought they could make a comeback, and my stay with a windows
pc would be short.
I dreamed of an amiga 5000 with 16 bit sound, better video, cdrom games,
and more. I'm still dreaming...
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The A1200 could have come with 28mhz 020 and fast ram. It was dropped to cut cost.
They could have released the A600 as the budget system, there weren't many AGA games anyway. Make a few game accessories for it, e.g a numeric keypad.
Then release a 3MB A1200 with fast 68020 price should be $1400. $1600 with hard drive. No further upgrades necessary.
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in the hypothetical, if 14mhz 020 in, say, 1991 would have been affordable, by 1992 28mhz 020 may have been the same cost, then by early 1993, maybe 25mhz 030 would have been possible etc.
The 68020 was released in 1984, the 68030 was released in 1987. I imagine the price for both in 1991 was pretty similar to the price they were in 1993. I'm not sure commodore could have afforded to develop it either.
AGA was the big problem, it needed to be out earlier & it needed chunky pixels. Commodore said there wasn't enough ram to do chunky pixels, but it was a lie. If the blitter had also been expanded with some simple texture mapping then we could have had doom style games with an 020, which was always the "Amiga" way of low spec cpu but high powered custom chips.
Paula needed more than 4 voices. The PlayStation had 24 in 1995, so maybe commodore should have had 12?
Although increasing the amount of voices on AGA is probably harder than chunky pixels or texture mapping because of the fixed dma slots.
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4 channel 8-bit audio was dated but not the biggest issue. Amiga just needed more ram and computing performance, was it achieved by CPU or blitter or both.
However, I don't believe Commodore had a chance against PC or PlayStation anymore, Amiga was too small.
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Although increasing the amount of voices on AGA is probably harder than chunky pixels or texture mapping because of the fixed dma slots.
You can just use 14 bit audio and mix music from CD with fixed rate sound effects. It just uses a bit of CPU time. A faster CPU with fastmem and fast chunky graphics (not limited by chipmem bandwidth) are far more important.
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When using a machine for a specific purpose it's easy to come to the conclusion that something that wasn't important to that purpose wasn't important at all, but music was important to Amiga, quite a few techno/dance producers used it making tunes and the Amiga had an important impact in a few genres such as hardcore/jungle and gabba.
I think 8 channel 12bit would have been the minimum worthy upgrade, 12bit is good enough for professional quality, look at the SP1200 & Akai S950, which were staples back then, so beyond that I'd always choose extra channels over greater sample bitrate, ideally, 16-24 would have been fantastic, but even with 'just' eight, the trick of syncing two Amigas using null modem cable would have still allowed for 16 channels, which back in 1992/1993 would have been welcomed with joyous celebration..
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Yes I agree, sound was more important for some folks. I mean, if your just playing games you won't notice the difference, but if your making music on your amiga and your forced to use 8 bit samples and everyone else is using 16 bit samples... Thats a big problem (and caused many digital musicians who started on amiga to jump ship to pc.)
Amiga gave me a great start. Learning tracking changed my life. but when a 90mhz pentium would let you do 32 16 bit channels on a tracker, I had to switch to fast tracker and a pc. I kept using my amiga for generating synth sounds, drumloops and games for awhile.
I suppose I'll have an amiga next to my pc for a long time... right now I'm rebuilding an amiga 500 tower, but I have a stock 1200 too. (Really needs an accellerator!)
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The AGA machines were good platforms for 2D games and Adventures.
That AGA did not support Chunky pixels was a drawback for 3D...
If the A1200 and CD32 would have had fastmem the 68020 CPU would have been much faster.
But for the controlling work that is neede for typical 2D game the CPUs were fast enough without fastmem.
AGA was a nice improvement over OCS/ECS.
But it was not the earth shaking jump that many wished it to be.
But for AGA ++ some great upgrades were in the pipe.
A twice as fast blitter and Chunky 16bit direct mode was planned.
Combined with a CPU with fastmem the AGA++ machines would
have been both great for 2D games and very good for 3D games.
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But for AGA ++ some great upgrades were in the pipe.
A twice as fast blitter and Chunky 16bit direct mode was planned.
Combined with a CPU with fastmem the AGA++ machines would
have been both great for 2D games and very good for 3D games.
The AA+ project was announced but the design work was never started.
Scheduled for 1994, it's fate was sealed when PlayStation prototypes showed up & commodore started Hombre.
ECS should have had chunky 8 bit pixels, simple texture mapping blitter and 8 voice sound (some form of fast matrix processor for doing 3d transforms would have been necessary too).
AGA should have been upgraded to 16 voices, with 16 bit audio and 16 bit video and gouraud shading added to the blitter (with upgrades to the matrix processor).
AA+ should have been FMV capable.
If they'd hit these milestones then commodore would have survived, but you can see how wildly they were off the mark.
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In an alternate history:
April 1987 - Irving Gould is convinced to not replace Thomas Rattigan
June 1988 - Commodore profit forecasts show decline. Rattigan decides that cost cutting is no longer viable; Commodore will need to decide what type of company it is?
February 1989 - Commodore reorganises for a 4th time and drastically reduces the amount of divisions. They rebrand under Commodore and no longer use CBM. In a WSJ interview Rattigan describes existing product range as “a mile wide and an inch deep”. Company to refocus on core competencies and value generators for the ’90s. Stock drops 23% on news.
March 1990 - Company posts profit largely due to selling off marginal divisions i.e. PC Clone division, UNIX division, Commodore legacy division (C64/C128). Keeps Amiga division, creates a new in-house software division, and the only thing it copies from IBM is the large commitment to R&D.
May 1991 - Company launches breakthrough new machines based on an all new backward compatible AGA chipset. The Amiga A3000 for the professional market and the Amiga A800 for the home/student market. With it a major update to the operating system OS 3.0.
February 1992 - R&D division announces a major project in collaboration with NASA/JPL. A3000 top seller in US region with Newtek Cards, A800 is a popular do-it-all machine with younger audiences in Europe, especially in former eastern block countries. Stock rises to record high.
March 1993 - Commodore announces it’s inaugural developer conference to be held in July in New York City, NY.
July 1993 - Commodore shows off the AAA chipset to developers at the conference and provides to all developers new SDK and beta version of OS 3.5. Stock price rises 12%
June 1994 - Commodore releases new line of computers based on AAA chipset; The Amiga A4000 for professionals market, the Amiga A1600 for home/student market, the Amiga A10 laptop computer for the on-the-go professional market. All units come with a CD-ROM drive as standard. Unlike Apple’s Powerbook the A10 runs a 68EC030. Commodore shows how the benefits of newly introduces OS 3.5 and AAA chipset allow them to offload many of the functions away from the core CPU. Stock rises to record high.
April 1995 - Commodore releases a new larger laptop computer; The Amiga A20, aimed at video editors with the inclusion of a special Newtek Video Toaster hardware designed for TV network field operations.
July 1995 - At the second annual Commodore Global Developer Conference (CGDC) Commodore announces they will be moving to the PowerPC and show a teaser of Amiga OS 4.
December 1995 - Commodore stock has dropped severely due to two successive quarters of poor sales. Industry pundits believe Commodore has “pulled an Osborne” with the early PowerPC announcement. Similar low sales have also been seen at Apple as it struggles to deliver a new multitasking OS for its line of PowerPC-based computers. Be Inc. is also facing challenges in entering the PC market with its own PowerPC-based Be Box and BeOS.
April 1996 - Rumours suggest that both Rattigan (Commodore) and Gassée (Be Inc.) have had secret meetings with Apple executives to provide their respective operating systems as a replacement for the defunct Apple Copeland project.
July 1997 - At the third annual CGDC Commodore announces they will be moving away from on-board custom chipsets for future PowerPC Amigas. They will no longer refer to them as chipsets but rather Signal and Data Processors (SDP). PowerPC dev-kits for Zorro III AAA Amiga computers bundled with a beta version of OS 4.0 is made available to developers.
January 1998 - At CES, Commodore unveils to the public its first PowerPC-based computer; The Amiga C1000 with desktop design that has been inspired by the original A1000. Commodore also previewed its upcoming Amiga OS 4.0 operating system, also some of the PowerPC applications they have been building in-house e.g. A new paint program that seamlessly blends vector and bitmap drawing. A new multi-channel audio editing suite, and a special port of Quake developed in collaboration with id software. All of the software has been designed to take advantage of the new Z400 SDP card.
May 1998 - After almost running out of funding Commodore releases the Amiga C1000. Available with either a PowerPC 603e or a 604e. The rumoured tower case and a wedge design are not available yet. Commodore has made a statement in which they also mention that other PowerPC based computers will be available soon. Commodore also release long awaited update OS 3.6 which fixes many of the issues found in OS 3.5 and also brings native TCP/IP stack for internet connectivity.
July 1998 - The fourth CGDC is centred around the upcoming Z420 and Z440 SDP boards that also have native 3D graphics processing and expanded RAM. Newtek showcases new 3D effects that take advantage of the Z420 and Z440 cards. No new computers, no updates to the OS.
September 1998 - Commodore posts a loss for a third consecutive quarter. Rumours of major shake-up are abound. Commodore has failed to make any profit on the C-series of Amigas (PowerPC), whilst the A-series of Amigas (68k) have seen solid sales especially in developing countries. There are many third party add-ons for the A-series that make the low cost computer platform very popular.
December 1998 - The Commodore board of directors votes to have Rattigan replaced with ex Silicon Graphics CEO Edward R. McCracken
January 1999 - For the first time since 1991 Commodore does not show up at CES. Everyone is wondering what the new CEO McCracken is up to.
March 1999 - In a press release Commodore informed the investors of the 5th restructuring of the company to make it more relevant in the new millennium. Commodore will continue to support both A and C sires of computers until the end of the support contracts. Commodore will sell off all computer hardware and operating system divisions. Commodore will retain all patents. The SDP division will remain and the latest Z500 series of cards will be out later in the year. The software division will continue to work on specialised SDP productivity software and games. Partnerships with Electronic Arts, Newtek, and NASA are extremely valuable. The annual Commodore Global Developer Conference (CGDC) will be rebranded to Digital Graphics Conference (DGC) and will be focused on the exciting new domain of 3D graphics processors and other DSP technology.
June 1999 - Indian company Supratech Micropath purchase the C-series computer hardware and Amiga OS 4.x divisions.
July 1999 - At the first annual DGC Commodore showcases the new Z500 series of cards which in a surprise announcement will be available not only for the Supratech C-series computers, but also for x86-based Windows 95 and the new Windows 98 operating systems and for Apple’s PowerMac computers running Mac OS 8.x. Driver documentation and the SDP APIs will be made available to those who wish to make the Z500 series cards work on other systems.
September 1999 - Commodore stock rebounds on better than expected sales of the groundbreaking Z500 series cards. In several interviews with many leading computing magazines GM of SDP design Dave Haynie outlines the key difference between the SDP design and products from the likes of 3dfx, ATi, Nvidia, and Matrox.
March 2000 - Dot com crash. Commodore stock drops to just above $18 per share.
July 2001 - At the third annual DGC Commodore releases the Z600 series of SDP cards. Z600 series SDP cards have a new feature where they can be interconnected with another SDP card to work in tandem for massive parallel processing applications. Newtek showcases all new Lightwave 6 with support for Z600 series SDP cards for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS platforms.
November 2001 - Microsoft releases its first gaming console; The Xbox, which is built around standard industry components, a x86 processor and a special version of the Z600 series processor.
…
Present Day - Commodore ZX700 series SDP cards are used in many desktop computers, Microsoft’s Xbox One, Newtek’s TriCaster, and specialist laboratory equipment by Supratech Micropath. The ZM700 series is used in tablets and Smart TVs of many OEMs. The annual DGC continues to draw about 20,000 attendees each year. Commodore stock price hovers around $24 per share.
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Well we can forget AGA times as that was not cutting edge and 256 colour planar mode a knife in the belly so too little too late. ECS was an April fool gone way too far no?. AGA did nothing for solid polygon or 2.5D scaling graphics and the cpu needed to be 25mhz 020 AND 512K min 32bit Fast ram or empty simm slot to keep up with Doom or even SuperFX/SEGA SVP carts in mid 90s.
The Amiga 1000 was both radical and cutting edge A/V hardware but revolutionary in use due to multi-tasking GUI OS so it could do both so it's a redundant question. The most powerful computer==most stunning game graphics.
The problem was pathetic coding on games, did Outrun look like the SEGA 16bit console or 8086 EGA PC version? Exactly.
Unfortunately Commodore did not act like illegal monopolistic Ninbendo scum bags preventing independent releases on Amiga so could never compete with $100 NES CRAP as they made nothing on software and could therefore not sell hardware at cost.
To go from arcade perfect Marble Madness in 1986 to Ourun/SF2 turds from greedy UK nobheads is a joke but it's the story of Amiga. SNES can't do Lotus 2, Mega Typhoon or Shadow of the Beast but yanks/jap %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s still bought the slow boring Mario crap...go figure.
There was never much wrong with hardware but who wants to play ST ports like Chase HQ? If only C= had bought out Cinemaware and done CDTV versions of everything.....not NEC CD crap.
A500 says all about C= without Jack, 18 months to replace A1000 beatiful case, WORM Kickstart RAM and internal PSU & power switch with pig ugly looks, a ROM socket and Vic 20 style PSU with power switch on it. Designed by dicks 'managed' by diks = A500 project. They didn't even promote A1000 in 1986 waiting for 12 month late A500 turd.
They would have f*cked it up either way clearly as Plus/4, C128 and A500 turds ateste :)
(Apple/Wintel/Nnbendo scum winning is worse...thanks dumb yank pr1ks consumers for playing Marble Madness ad DotC on your gay PC EGA/NES machines and ignoring A1000 or C64...priks...hell even the 520STM @ $399 DUMPED ON $4000 256K Mac)
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The AA+ project was announced but the design work was never started.
Scheduled for 1994, it's fate was sealed when PlayStation prototypes showed up & commodore started Hombre.
ECS should have had chunky 8 bit pixels, simple texture mapping blitter and 8 voice sound (some form of fast matrix processor for doing 3d transforms would have been necessary too).
AGA should have been upgraded to 16 voices, with 16 bit audio and 16 bit video and gouraud shading added to the blitter (with upgrades to the matrix processor).
AA+ should have been FMV capable.
If they'd hit these milestones then commodore would have survived, but you can see how wildly they were off the mark.
BUT Apple OS AND hardware was SH1T, ALL MS software was SH1T and dirt SH1T SNES 3mhz 8bit processor with free slow down were even more off the mark in 90s. I don't get how yanks could see the Pinto was the losers choice and yet bought the console/computer equivalents 85-95. Dumb moron consumers 1985 to 95 = why I have to put up with crap machines/OS today. We held out until 486/MEGADRIVE in early 90s at least over here!!
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@agami
I like that alternate history. What would happen if the x86 processor was adopted instead?
As Dave Haynie was the engineer you might have a large dual-cpu system at the top end.
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AMIGA is and was good machine.
Look back at game like SWORD OF SODAN, HYBRIS, or XENON
These 512K memory and the 68000@7 Mhz was more than fast enough for them.
These games really made good use of the capabilites of OCS chipset with 512 KB.
Later AMIGA models were rarely used fully.
2MB Chipmemory was common even with later ECS AMIGA.
Now imagine how nice and smooth a SWORD OF SODAN for 2 MB with 4 times the background images and the sprite animation would have looked?
It certainly would have looked breathtaking.
Or imagine a good STREET FIGHTHER port making maximum use of 2 MB Chipmem.
The AGA machines had 2 MB chipmem, 256 colors and faster CPU.
Regarding Audio:
For games 8bit audio samples with own volume per channel is great.
With own volume per sample this give great sound effects for games.
In theory more than 4 channels would have made coding easier.
But on the other hand a 68020 with fast-mem has more than enough computing power to mix many channels together in real time.
Imagine if games would have been designed for AGA machines with 2 MB fast and 2 MB chip.
The typical 2D game has enough free CPU to allow real time mixing of 8 channels modules.
So you can imagine now a SWORD OF SODAN with 256 colors,4 times the animation frames and 8 channel audio sound in the background.
Or imagine a 2D Game like XENON in 256 colors, with 4 times as many sprite animations, and super mixed sound.
If games would have been designed for AGA Amigas + fastmem then these type of games would have been possible.
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Phase 5 went bankrupt in 2000 is this not some level of proof that the PowerPC was a bad choice.
If it was chosen for compatibility then in retrospect it would have been better to only go PowerPC for high end Amiga. You could have dropped most of the legacy hardware.
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Just take a look at NEO-GEO
The NEO-GEO console had so many wonderful 2D games.
Take a look when these games game out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Neo_Geo_games
Most games game out after and years after the AGA amigas.
The AGA AMIGA could have run games in similar quality to the NEO GEO games.
If these games would have been designed to make use of 2MB chipmem and fastmem.
For all the 2D games you do not need much CPU power.
The 68020 of the A1200 was already oversized for the type of games.
In theory similar quality 2D games could have been come out for the CD32.
There was certainly market for these games.
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You mean 2 years before I guess ?
Oh, sorry, for some reason I grabbed the North American release date for the SNES, you're right, it was a full year that it was out in Japan. But since I'm pretty sure the Japanese wasn't exactly a huge market for the Amiga, I compared the market of the North America, which I guess really was fading away as a popular Amiga place even then.
Sad times those were.
slaapliedje
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Well we can forget AGA times as that was not cutting edge and 256 colour planar mode a knife in the belly so too little too late. ECS was an April fool gone way too far no?. AGA did nothing for solid polygon or 2.5D scaling graphics and the cpu needed to be 25mhz 020 AND 512K min 32bit Fast ram or empty simm slot to keep up with Doom or even SuperFX/SEGA SVP carts in mid 90s.
The Amiga 1000 was both radical and cutting edge A/V hardware but revolutionary in use due to multi-tasking GUI OS so it could do both so it's a redundant question. The most powerful computer==most stunning game graphics.
The problem was pathetic coding on games, did Outrun look like the SEGA 16bit console or 8086 EGA PC version? Exactly.
Unfortunately Commodore did not act like illegal monopolistic Ninbendo scum bags preventing independent releases on Amiga so could never compete with $100 NES CRAP as they made nothing on software and could therefore not sell hardware at cost.
To go from arcade perfect Marble Madness in 1986 to Ourun/SF2 turds from greedy UK nobheads is a joke but it's the story of Amiga. SNES can't do Lotus 2, Mega Typhoon or Shadow of the Beast but yanks/jap %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s still bought the slow boring Mario crap...go figure.
There was never much wrong with hardware but who wants to play ST ports like Chase HQ? If only C= had bought out Cinemaware and done CDTV versions of everything.....not NEC CD crap.
A500 says all about C= without Jack, 18 months to replace A1000 beatiful case, WORM Kickstart RAM and internal PSU & power switch with pig ugly looks, a ROM socket and Vic 20 style PSU with power switch on it. Designed by dicks 'managed' by diks = A500 project. They didn't even promote A1000 in 1986 waiting for 12 month late A500 turd.
They would have f*cked it up either way clearly as Plus/4, C128 and A500 turds ateste :)
(Apple/Wintel/Nnbendo scum winning is worse...thanks dumb yank pr1ks consumers for playing Marble Madness ad DotC on your gay PC EGA/NES machines and ignoring A1000 or C64...priks...hell even the 520STM @ $399 DUMPED ON $4000 256K Mac)
Most sense I've read on here in a while. ;)
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This is why we can't have nice things.
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@psxphill
>The AA+ project was announced but the design work was never started.
AA+? AAA prototypes were already in the testing phase.
>AGA should have been upgraded to 16 voices, with 16 bit audio and 16 bit video
I think Amiga 8bit had enough quality untill late 90's. 16/24bit was/is needed for professional use.
>AA+ should have been FMV capable.
You mean as a standard? AGA needed the extra decoder.
>If they'd hit these milestones then commodore would have survived, but you can see how wildly they were off the mark.
Commodore died because of the losses in PC sales. Same for Escom.
Perhaps Commodore would have survived if it had focused on Amiga in early 90's.
IMO: the biggest handicap of A1200 and CD32 was the lack of fast RAM as a standard.
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>AA+? AAA prototypes were already in the testing phase.
AAA was purely for the high end. It was nowhere near finished. It was a zombie project that kept stumbling along because some people wouldn't let it die. IMO like the commodore 65 it would have died before it was manufactured, commodore worked a bit strange like that.
I think Amiga 8bit had enough quality untill late 90's. 16/24bit was/is needed for professional use.
The systems that it needed to compete against had 16bit audio. Whether you think it's good enough is irrelevant when someone is comparing between two products based on their specification.
You mean as a standard? AGA needed the extra decoder.
Yes, it needed some form of FMV. Not necessarily MPEG, like the CD32 FMV. The PlayStation managed with MJPEG.
Commodore died because of the losses in PC sales. Same for Escom.
That is an old rumour, but I don't see how. AFAICT commodore germany did the PC's on their own & they were one of the subsidiaries that survived.
Commodore international went bankrupt because they didn't pay the $10 million fee for the xor patent. They were prevented from importing anything until they paid the fine, which they couldn't because they couldn't import anything to sell (they were counting on CD32 sales).
To avoid commodore going bankrupt they would have needed something that people wanted to buy in 1992, but not enough people wanted to buy an A1200/A4000. It didn't have the same impact as the a500 or the c64 before it.
IMO: the biggest handicap of A1200 and CD32 was the lack of fast RAM as a standard.
Fast ram makes a difference to performance, but not enough. It would have made a huge difference to the price.
A500 says all about C= without Jack, 18 months to replace A1000 beatiful case, WORM Kickstart RAM and internal PSU & power switch with pig ugly looks, a ROM socket and Vic 20 style PSU with power switch on it. Designed by dicks 'managed' by diks = A500 project. They didn't even promote A1000 in 1986 waiting for 12 month late A500 turd.
When commodore bought Amiga, the A1000 it was nowhere near finished. They paid a lot for Jay Miner etc to actually finish the hardware and software.
Unfortunately Jay Miner didn't want to do a low cost version, so he declared that the Fat Agnus was impossible to manufacture. Commodore didn't really have a chance to get anything out quicker as they had to do it in house rather than have the original designers do it. As far as I can remember, they promoted the A1000 more than the A500.
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The systems that it needed to compete against had 16bit audio. Whether you think it's good enough is irrelevant when someone is comparing between two products based on their specification.
Audio bits are important but DAC's can be more so, 12bit with high quality DAC with 8-24 channels might be more cost effective and sound better than 16bit with cheap DACs, which was the scenario for the soundblasters at the time..
Fast ram makes a difference to performance, but not enough. It would have made a huge difference to the price.
This is the thing, I think price was something to be concerned with, but the A500 was initially £499, and the A1200 was £399. I would say that for £549.00 it would have still been bought at a configuration that put it in a better position technologically and therefore better overall value. A1200 was cheaper at release than A500 but yet sold a lot less. Given a £549 price target, or even £599, what could have been incorporated during design/manufacturing?
A1200 case:
1) make it fit 3.5" hard drives by design - no more overly expensive 2.5" Hard drives that delayed hard drive uptake, which eventually led to everyone shoehorning 3.5" drives in there anyway..
2) make the floppy drive enclosure a removable bay to enable the ability to swap out a CD Rom drive.
Motherboard/Chips etc..
1) IDE connector conveniently situated for above mentioned CD ROM
2) Allow external Floppy Disk connector to be switched to DF0 and boot.
3) CPU put on a daughter board that can be easily upgraded by user for use of incremental processor upgrades supplied by Commodore, from 7mhz 68000 (yes! see below) base config with options at time of purchase going up to 030 with FPU, then let the market figure out what it wants..
4) Two fast RAM slots with greatest capacity for price ratio - I would be sure how much supporting 256MB ram would add as opposed to, say, 16MB. With options at time of purchase for upgrades.
5) Upgrade serial port for faster transfer
6) Ethernet port.
7) 12bit audio with as many channels as costs allow.
8) Support for joysticks with 6 buttons as standard.
9) Chunky modes
10) RGB to SCART as standard and have modulator external, like A500, compatibility with it even better.
11) More sprites
12) With chunky mode, AKIKO can go bye bye, instead source 3D chip.
13) PMCIA - keep, but lower importance in cost/performance ratio than those above
A600:
Discontinued, machine totally cannibalized sales for A1200.
Instead: Offer 7mhz 680000 processor daughter card for A1200 without ram for cheapest end of the market, but still allowing for access to all upgrades.
Other things..
Software - Commodore securing licensed conversions of games/apps critical to market; ie: Wolfenstein, X-Wing, Cubase, Photoshop etc… It's worth reiterating that in the mid 90s, Amiga was using same processors and same clock rates as Apple Macs so the market was more open, thus seeing something like Photoshop on an Amiga wouldn't be as crazy as imagining it to happen nowadays.
Something like the above could have kept things going, with the possibility of 060 cards and possibly even the ability to upgrade the 3D chip, things could still be ticking quite nicely into the latter 90s for when the next major upgrade was to be released with PowerPC or whatever..
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Unfortunately Commodore did not act like illegal monopolistic Ninbendo scum bags preventing independent releases on Amiga so could never compete with $100 NES CRAP as they made nothing on software and could therefore not sell hardware at cost.
To go from arcade perfect Marble Madness in 1986 to Ourun/SF2 turds from greedy UK nobheads is a joke but it's the story of Amiga. SNES can't do Lotus 2, Mega Typhoon or Shadow of the Beast but yanks/jap %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s still bought the slow boring Mario crap...go figure.
There was never much wrong with hardware but who wants to play ST ports like Chase HQ? If only C= had bought out Cinemaware and done CDTV versions of everything.....not NEC CD crap.
A500 says all about C= without Jack, 18 months to replace A1000 beatiful case, WORM Kickstart RAM and internal PSU & power switch with pig ugly looks, a ROM socket and Vic 20 style PSU with power switch on it. Designed by dicks 'managed' by diks = A500 project. They didn't even promote A1000 in 1986 waiting for 12 month late A500 turd.
They would have f*cked it up either way clearly as Plus/4, C128 and A500 turds ateste :)
I have very often wondered what would have happened had Atari been able to get the Amiga design, instead of having to slap together the Atari ST.
Not that they were managed much better at that time, though it seems they went downhill after Sam took over.
Then again, I have once thought of an alternate history where Nolan Bushnell didn't get overwhelmed with running Atari and didn't sell it to Warner Communications, who then went on to pretty much make the whole video game industry crash.
After reading about some of the back room crap, it sure seems to me that Commodore snagged Amiga from Atari, and then didn't know what the hell to do with it. Again though, it's not like the Tramiels would have known, but maybe they would have done a bit better. Oh well, something that's occasionally fond to ponder. Hell for that matter, it sounds like me Jay Miner wouldn't have quit Atari in the first place if it weren't for Warner Communications. The 'golden era' of Atari. It was sad to see it become just another game publisher.
slaapliedje
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Also, a quick note to this discussion;
Seems to me that the Playstation IS more or less the continuation of the Amiga as a console. At least in the fact that some of the greatest games made for the Amiga was made by Psygnosis, which then more or less went on to create the Playstation, sell it to Sony and become Sony Entertainment (or whatever they're called now).
slaapliedje