Amiga 1300[What ifs]

[Khephren]

93' or 94' this could perhaps have worked. Later than that -your up against PS1 and Saturn at the low end, and Pentium at the high end. But with the A500+ quickly replaced by the A600, people had already had their fingers burnt. Imagine then getting the A1200 and having it phased out a year later!

A lot of these specs are what the A1200 should have had. I think Commodore had missed the boat once they'd buggered up AGA.

[Khephren]

True, there was always a place for nice low priced home computer, that could run good apps and play multiplayer games (I remember PC gaming in that era as a lonely hobby, before netplay became common much later).

I'm not familiar with PC prices of the era, there's a few price guides in ACE magazine. I'm interested in this, but can't find many figures. I expect even an amstrad 386DX with vga would still be more expensive than the 1300/1400 . But come with a monitor and HDD, which would make it more competitive.

I don't see consoles as a red hearing. Rather the low end Amiga's were a Trojan Horse. It sucked gamers in, and spat hobby computer users out. I know many in the UK and Europe bought the Amiga as a games machine (I did), but then discovered it's other joys You can't discount how important that was.

Many of my friends either dumped their home computers for consoles, or got a PC, or both. This pretty much happened in '94 '95. Low end Amiga's (which were the majority of sales) were, like it or not, stuck between the PC and the consoles. It could have been an advantage, but the lack luster A1200, and the overpriced A600 turned out to be otherwise. If Mehdi Ali (cursed be his name) and given the money and resources needed, it could  have been so different. Just my opinion of course

Also, would the A1200 have been discontinued? If not, you end up in a Falcon/STE situation, developers writing for the lowest common denominator.

[Khephren]

A2200 looks like a nice machine, and would have launched at the same time as the A1200? Not bad, but I still think a lot of it's specs are what the A1200 should have had. I would probably have missed out the A1200 and gone for this. What would that have been in £, anyone know?

[Khephren]

@Powermonger and dougal
I think Powermonger's right. The ship had already sailed. The Amiga succeeded or failed based on the strength of it's chipset. Does not matter what you bolt onto that. Updating the chipset was too long in coming, and not thorough enough. I mean, no sound update at all in 7 years?

Jay miner and co were geniuses. Commodore engineers post Amiga A1000 were good, but merely stood on the shoulders ofgiants and tinkered, and were later stifled of cash by the management.

They could still have competed with PC's on price, but not tech, the 2200 might have helped with that. And maybe held out long enough to rectify their loss with the next generation.

[Khephren]

I worked in 'game' (UK) at the time of the CD32 launch, we could not keep them on the shelves, and frequently ran out of stock. Which was slow to be replenished.

I can (sort of) understand it. The CD32 brought masses of data, 16bit CD sound, and very nice 2D graphics. It was never going to hurt the PC. But at £300 quid, it certainly gave the segaCD a run for it's money. It had quite a bit of the CD market at the time, I seem to remember.

We had quite a few returns due to build quality, normally the volume slider snapping, or the CD hinge. Generally case problems. Had a lot more returns on the CDi though.