I'd say lack of advertising was a death wish for CBM. After owing a c64 for 3 years, living in the US, and being an avid reader of CBM centric magazines, I bought a C128 first quarter of 1986 not even knowing the A1000 exsisted. (6 months later I learned my mistake. Apparently advertising depended on where you lived. Some received it, but large parts of the world did not. And those markets that did see advertising, still saw a game machine instead of a serious business box. Lack of advertising and poor presentation in the advertising CBM did do were the largest mistakes in my mind. Execs at CBM had to be nuts. Sink millions in to development and production, but then keeping it all a secret hoping "word of mouth" would sell the system? Arrogance in the face of future giants Apple and MicroSoft.
And from the "What If" files....
What if Amiga would have been absorbed in to Atari? If I recall the history correctly, Amiga owed Atari a large amount of money. If it was not payed back by the deadline, all assest would have belonged to Atari. At the last minute CBM stepped in and payed the bills and purchased Amiga. In the end Atari met a similar end to CBM, but would that history have been changed if they owned Amiga instead of CBM? Maybe not. Atari never did much better at avertising their machines either from my recollection. And they had no intention of hiring the original Lorraine team, so the out come would have been vastly different for sure.
Plaz
