Amiga vs console vs PC

[Fizza]

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.

[Fizza]

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.

[Fizza]

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

[Fizza]

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?

[Fizza]

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..

[Fizza]

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.
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..