Amiga vs console vs PC

[Duce]

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.

[Duce]

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.

[Duce]

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.

[Duce]

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.