Amiga vs console vs PC

[ElPolloDiabl]

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?

[ElPolloDiabl]

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.

[ElPolloDiabl]

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).

[ElPolloDiabl]

@above
You just made me feel ill when you mentioned floppies. 6 or even 10 on some games. Not a good games console.

[ElPolloDiabl]

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.

[ElPolloDiabl]

@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.

[ElPolloDiabl]

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.