Instead of catering for the low end they should have focused on the high end Amiga's. The high end will eventually become the low end over time. Last year a 2Ghz pc was high end. Now we have 3ghz at the high end followed by 2.5 then 2ghz.
This was not quite as true from 1985-1992, the reason the amiga sold well at all to begin with was because of low end systems like the 500 that got into homes becuase they were powerful AND inexpensive.
You have to remember that a high spec system these days can be put together for around $2000-$2500 from scratch, however, in the late 80's and early 90's, high end systems ran upwards of $4000, and it took MUCH longer for the prices to drop.
The computer industry didn't advance as quickly then as it does today, Moore's law works exponentially. There wasn't a new computer available to replace the old one every year, and systems lasted much longer without needing heavy upgrades to support current software. If commodore only had the 4000 available for the high-end world, and was simply going to wait for obsolesence inorder to create a lower end model, they would've tanked MUCH faster than they did.
The other difficulty that would have arisen from this would be that of chipset revisions. If the 4000 comes out with AGA, and everything else is still on OCS/ECS, what are people going to do for the 2+ years while they wait for the 4000 to become cheap? Supporting multiple different chipsets simultaneously creates a gross division of funds, and leaves the both the public and software developers confused and frustrated, case in point...the Amiga 600.
The 500, and 1200 sold well enough into homes to create a cashflow that could be used to support high end systems, and further enhance the operating system. I personally feel one of Commodore's worst failures was not supporting the operating system enough at the last couple of years.
I do agree that expansions for the 1200 and 4000 should have required little to no alteration between the two, mainly some issues with housing for the 1200 version.
There's nothing revolutionary about releasing a powerful machine for $4000 dollars, the reason the amiga was incredible was because of what it could do on a low end system, and low end machines are what kept commodore in sales.
And I'm willing to bet that if everyone saw shadow of the beast running on a $4000 computer instead of a $700 one Commodore wouldn't have lasted as long as it did.
