Amiga and retail chains

[Psy]

It seems a common story for people in North America the Amiga was not carried in large retail chains when they (or their parents) were looking for their first PC.

To put this in comparison the Sega Master System (and its games) was more widely carried in retail chains then the Amiga (and its software) in North America.

I read this A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues and was shocked with this bit:
"The Commodore 64 had been sold at big retail chains like Sears and K-Mart, but marketing executives felt that the Amiga was better positioned as a serious business computer. Astoundingly, Commodore actually turned down Sears' offer to sell Amigas".

That seems just retarded.

[Psy]

ral-clan wrote:
Well, I guess all these stories disprove the original posters first point, then!  The Amiga was carried in major retail chains in North America.

It was just poorly advertised & promoted.

It doesn't show that the Amiga had the same retail support as the Sega Master System (that was a failed console in North America), just look at amigadave's post

[Psy]

bloodline wrote:

coldfish wrote:
Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...

I assume that was directed to me...

I am suggesting that in 1987, when the A2K and the A500 were released. If Commodore had also put out a Multimedia ISA board, that would have been a great way to start a PC standard multimedia platform... in 87, most peolle would still have wanted an A500 for games... but if the PC world had access to identical spec gfx/audio as the Amiga... game developers would have had an easy time porting games over from the Amiga and the ST... so they would support it... thus if the market that the A500 and the ST were aimed at ever went titz up... Commodore would still have had a revenue stream...

It would have been better if Commodore pushed the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 as hard as Sega pushed the Sega Genesis.  Get the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 in as many store shelves and get better system box designs so they catch the eye on store shelfs.

If it worked then developers would have supported the Amiga simply because of the user base.

[Psy]

Advertising alone would have been difficult I think... Marketing the Amiga was always a problem...I wasn't a game console, but it fitted into that market... it wasn't a Business computer, but it fitted into that market... it was basically a home computer, much like the AppleII or the C64 or the Sinclair Spectrum... but it was better than those machines, but incompatible with their software bases... and was more expensive...

From Geek perspective the Amiga is a dream come true... but to the average joe... in the late 80s computer were specialist items... purchased for a specific purpose... The Amiga didn't really make sense to the public at large... The computer revolution really took off in 1995... The Amiga could have sparked that off much earlier, but Commodore didn't have the marketing knowhow/vision.

But what it did have was some great technology, and it could have licensed that to third party... Didn't Sun try and license the tech, but were refused? I rest my case...

It could have been marketed as a home computer, it was cheaper then a IBM clone yet could do everything a home user wanted to do.  Commodore could have kicked off the computer revolution through marketing the Amiga just like how Nintendo rebuilt the game console market by marketing the NES.

[Psy]

Well how many Amigas did Commodore sell?  Amiga Format in 1993 stated shy of 5 million Amigas were sold, if true it means the Amiga sales were at par with the sales of the MSX, so Commodore really really had a huge issue of not moving units no where enough units for the Amiga to ever hope to be a viable platform.

Hell Sega was able to sell 6.5 million SegaCDs while shooting themselves in the foot with marketing and SegaCD was a far tougher sell ($300 mostly just to get Genesis ports with better music and only a few good games) then the Amiga.