Wii vs. CD32

[Psy]

But even back then in the US, there was a concerted effort to make the world a single operating system world, and games were either Sega or NINTENDO. Marketing folk cleverly refered to the Amiga as outdated, and even though it was ahead of the competition for so long. Commodore rode that train for way too long.

That is because Commodore sucked at marketing.  Commodore should have just copied Sega's advertising style in the early 1990's of just saying how pathetic their competition is and talking like the competition is so laughably bad they are no threat.

For example:

This Ad focuses on Genesis being faster and cheaper then the SNES, Commodore could have done the same comparing the Amiga to a IBM compat (no point mentioning the Mac or AtariST as the point would be taking potential customers away from the IBM compats).

Commodore could have chewed the IBM compat in TV commercials even more then Sega chewed out the SNES as IBM didn't care about games thus there would be no major advertising campaign to defend the IBM compatible as a gaming system, thus the only ads gamers would see regarding the IBM clones is they suck as a gaming system. IBM wouldn't object as IBM positioned the IBM PC as a business PC, Commodore could have even have spun IBM marketing to their advantage, going see even IBM agrees with us that IBM PCs suck as a gaming system.

[Psy]

abbub wrote:
Eh?  I'm not sure that copying Sega marketing would have been a good idea.  Genesis/Mega Drive did okay initially in the U.S., when it's only competitors were the NES and the NEC TurboGrafx-16 (admittedly, it mopped the floor with the TurboGrafx), but once the SNES came out, Nintendo kicked Sega's rear in U.S. sales.

Europe is a different story, I guess, with the Mega Drive doing much better (beating?) Nintendo in the 16-bit era.

Actually in the US the Sega Genesis dominated the market till 1994 in terms of market share.  Sega's agressive advertising for the most part worked.

[Psy]

Hammer wrote:
But in the 1992 and 1993, the X86 PCs is ascending as a gaming platform i.e. falling 486 based PC prices vs 040 based prices. The PC has advantage of native chunky graphic architecture for Doom type games.

Intellivision had more tame ads showing Intellivision games next to Atari 2600, Commodore could have done such ads till 1990 when Sega started its aggressive ads against Nintendo and simply copy Sega's more agressive style.

If we look at Sega's success, Sega went from less then 1% of the console market to over 50% in only 3 years.  If Amiga had that kind of rapid growth in market share in the early 90's then by 1993 the Amiga would be far too big to not get Doom ported to it.  Again remeber IBM probably would not have launched a counter advertising campaign to defend the X86 as a gaming platform, as IBM was already driven out of the PC market, also at the time Microsoft marketing would have no matched to Sega style marketing.

Lets not forget gaming on the X86 till 1998 was a pain in the add because of Dos being overly complex for the average gamer and Windows 95 sucking all around.  Commodore could have done ads showing how long it takes a game to work on Dos vs the Amiga.

[Psy]

Lozrus wrote:
You mean like this? or like (maybe Commodores greatest marketing moment ever) this?
Personally, I usually hate marketing that stoops to putting down the competition but I just love that second one. Especially the carefully chosen location of the billboard.

The second is really cute as Sega of Europe slogan was "To be this good takes AGES" (AGES being SEGA spelled backwards) meaning Commodore took Sega of Europe's slogan and used it to poke fun at Sega.  

As for marketing that stoops to putting down the competition, while those ads put down Sega as they are ads for the CD32, Amiga ads would be putting down the X86 that would different as the X86 is no where as cool as Sega

[Psy]

Xamiche wrote:
I honestly don't think it would have worked. Commodore did try aggressive 'anti' Sega type ads but it was too little too late. The mistakes from their past had just caught up with them.

Those were CD32 ads and Commodore couldn't even manufacture enough CD32s.

Anyway Sega was no threat to Commodore's main market as Sega left the home computer market even before the Commodore 128 launched. It was the Dos systems that Commodore should have been targeting with agressive ads.

[Psy]

Hammer wrote:

Why would the X86 PC world care about IBM? Remember, IBM was against the PC clone market. IBM lost the PC market ever since the first 386 PC was launched (includes IBM's failed MCA vs Intel's VLB/PCI).

The defence of PC market is done by Intel (i.e. "Intel Inside" initiatives**), AMD (i.e. extended X86 to 64bits, X86 cloner), VIA(X86 cloner), S3(VIA), ATI(AMD), NVIDIA/3DFX and various other X86 centric IHVs.

"Intel Inside" initiatives was started sometime in 1990.
"Intel Inside" initiatives also herald the time that Intel Corp’s reference designs (includes Intel's VLB/PCI) leads X86 PC clone army, thus completely dethrones IBM in the X86 PC hardware design leadership. Also, Intel is active in complier technologies and optimisations.

CBM/MOS is not going to fight IBM, it's going to fight semi-conductor monster Intel Corp.

And how well could Intel counter Commodore slamming the X86 like Sega was doing with the SNES?

Also if Commodore had Amiga kiosks like Sega did (and later Nintendo when they saw what Sega was doing) including roaming kiosks that during summers are deployed at major events.

If done right youth would be exposed to far more Amiga marketing then X86 marketing thus kids would beg their parents to not get a lame X86 but a cool Amiga like the one they say on TV, print ads and they played on Amiga kiosks.

Not a big issue with DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) games e.g. DOOM and Descent doesn't use EMS or XMS memory.

I was runing WinDoom soon after Win95 was released. MotoRacer (1997, DirectX 3) was runing on my S3 Virge 3D card just fine. I was running Win95 OSR2 (second Win95 release) pior to Win98 (1998).

WinDoom was one of the demos during development preview of Windows Chicago (aka Windows 95).

After S3 Virge 3D, I soon switch to nVIDIA Riva 128(1997,DirectX 5) and TNT(1998, DirectX 6).

I disagree with "Lets not forget gaming on the X86 till 1998 was a pain".

Compared to the Amiga, the X86 was a pain in the ass.

[Psy]

arkpandora wrote:

I think that nothing could have countered the x86 PCs as long as their attraction was driven by as primary and unconscious impulses as the one I describe in my last post.  In this respect, linking the Amiga name with a console, whatever the kind of advertising, could only finish the Amiga.  This phenomenon should have been overcome by intelligence and information.  Instead most journalists chose to embrace the public's primary views instead of guiding them.  And that was it.

Ahh but Sega like marketing would only be to grab the attention of the consumer and get the system on store shelfs of major chains.  In North America even the Sega Master System was far easier to get then a Amiga as you could get the Sega Master System at Toys 'R Us, Sears, ect while only a few retailers carried the Amiga.  It wouldn't take much to show the Amiga could also do serious work.  With having Amiga kiosks run of hard drives Commodore could have it run though both games and productivity software when no one is using it and have a menu selection to so you can sample some software.

If Amiga had a dominant presence at the big retail chains then when the new computer users asked a Sears sales person about a home computer they would point them to the Amiga as they would have a Amiga kiosk that Commodore would have had a deal with Sears to have up and running, which would make the sales person job much easier so the sale person would try and push the customers towards the Amiga simply because it would be the path of least of resistance for them.