Atari vs Commodore which one was stupider.

[Psy]

Atari vs Commodore which company screwed up the most.

Atari

- Atari was a key player in the Video Game crash of 1984,

- Drove away talent

- The stupid 5200 controller

- Turned down Nintendo's offer of Atari handling the worldwide distribution of Nintendo products outside of Japan then Atari tried to fight the SMS and NES with the mothballed 7800.

- ST R&D lacked vision causing IBM compats to catch up.

- Lynx was poorly supported

- Cancelled the Falcon in order to bet the entire company in the success of the Jaguar

- Lost money hand over fist

Commodore

- 8-Bit computer incompatible with each other

- C64 ran into the ground with no signifigant upgrands.

- Drove away talent

- Amiga R&D lacked vision causing IBM compats to catch up.

- Worse marketing then Atari

- Lost money hand over fist

Well that's just a start for both, so who was the most incompetent?

[Hyperspeed]

Wasn't Atari responsible for burying millions of cartridges of ET in a desert landfill because it was so crap?

I think the Jaguar was woefully underdeveloped as it was a 64-bit machine that couldn't do the 3D of Starfox on the 16-Bit SNES. Also the joypad was a little stiff.

At least the CD32 integrated a CD-ROM into itself (the Jag eventually got a Mega-CD style bolt-on CD drive).

I'm not sure Commodore marketed the Amiga poorly... after all the launch in '85 featured Andy Warhol and Blondie. What more could you ask for!?

Here in the UK there were Comic Relief charity bundles of the A600, the A1200 Desktop Dynamite pack featured a bundled licensed movie game (Dennis), they even put a CD32 advert on the billboard opposite Sega's London HQ!

I never saw a TV commercial for either Atari or Commodore though, which is odd.

[JLF65]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Wasn't Atari responsible for burying millions of cartridges of ET in a desert landfill because it was so crap?

Yes, 5 million ET carts, along with 5 million PacMan carts, and an uncounted number of other titles. PacMan was especially stupid as they had 12 million carts made when only 10 million consoles had been sold all total. It's amazing they managed to sell 7 million PacMan carts.

I never saw a TV commercial for either Atari or Commodore though, which is odd.

I saw those old ads Alan Alda made for Atari. Never saw a CBM ad.

[motorollin]

I've seen Amiga ads in England.

--
moto

[InTheSand]

I've also seen Amiga ads in the UK - around the early 1990s featuring an A500 running an EA flight sim, can't remember which one though!

 - Ali

[Crumb]

I also remeber watching an advertisment of Amiga 500 here in spain around 1990 :-) those were good times...

[Lando]

Commodore-Amiga was the most incompetent.  They had more to work with, and still threw it all away.  This is the computer industry.  You can't keep selling the same machine with minor improvements for nine years and expect to survive.

I was still a teenager in 1992 and it was obvious to me, even then, that C= was doomed.  I couldn't believe their stupidity in releasing the A500 (A1000 in a wedge design and 512K RAM), A500+ (A500 with a new ROM), A600 (A500+ with numeric keypad chopped off), A1200 (020 and AGA but the rest of the machine, including the blitter, sound and virtually everything else was the same as the then-ancient A1000), CD32 (an A1200 with a CD-ROM drive, same crappy 020 and no Fast RAM).

Everything Commodore released since the original A1000 was old before it even hit the shelves.  There was nothing original or groundbreaking.  They deserved to go bust a lot sooner than they did - they were very lucky to last until 1994.

[bloodline]

Commodore, was far more incompetent!!

Atari had a massive struggle against the Amiga, and put up a damn good fight... even becoming technologically superior to the Amiga with the Lynx and the Falcon... though they didn't have the experience that the Amiga had and so couldn't develop the technology.

Commodore bascily rehashed the A1000 for 10 years... With only 2 improvments... the AGA chipset (a damp squib in 1992) which should have been released in 1987... and AmigaOS 3.0, which was the first step toward a professional Operating system.

[Frags]

Amiga R&D did not lack vision, they were stifled by management.

[AmigaCori]

Yeah, I watch the video of Haynie, and saw Miner that was upset about management of Amiga computer.

Commodore got money for many years by C64, old and stupid home-computer, really home, not as Amiga called home-computer but more then home.

Commodore got Amiga form Miner and think how to get cheap Amiga, for massive diffusion as a new C64, not as NEW generation of multimedia computer!

Commodore was blind since 1987, I'm not surprise that they get bunkrupt....and I'm not upset for they, Commodore was a bad "mother" for Amiga, otherwise I'm upset for a good "father" Miner, he made Amiga computer-dream.

Thanks to Miner.  :cry:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

I think the Jaguar was woefully underdeveloped as it was a 64-bit machine that couldn't do the 3D of Starfox on the 16-Bit SNES. Also the joypad was a little stiff.

The Jaguar can do perfectly well 3d, far far better than the snes. Have you seen Doom running on it? It plays equal to high-end PC's back then.
The CD32 was underpowered and the A1200 was underpowered. The Jaguar and the Falcon most definately NOT. (these machines were also created by former Amiga engineers)

[foleyjo]

Lando wrote:
Everything Commodore released since the original A1000 was old before it even hit the shelves.  There was nothing original or groundbreaking.  They deserved to go bust a lot sooner than they did - they were very lucky to last until 1994.

CDTV - First CD Based Computer well ahead of its time!!! True it was just a CD based A500 but the main idea was original and groundbreaking..

The purpose of the A500 was that it was a cheap home computer.

As for the A1200 if they were so stupid why do people still use them today and spend loads of money upgrading them.

[_ThEcRoW]

The a500 was the most selled model of the amiga series!!!!. And i like more the keyboard shaped form of the 500,600, 1200 that the a1000 pcish case.
Just my two cents...

[uncharted]

Lando wrote:
Commodore-Amiga was the most incompetent.  They had more to work with, and still threw it all away.  This is the computer industry.  You can't keep selling the same machine with minor improvements for nine years and expect to survive.

Indeed.

I was still a teenager in 1992 and it was obvious to me, even then, that C= was doomed.  I couldn't believe their stupidity in releasing the A500 (A1000 in a wedge design and 512K RAM)

Am I mis-reading what you mean here?  Are you saying that the A500 was a stupid move by C=?

[itix]

@Speelgoedmannetje

Problem with Falcon was that it was too expensive, too incompatible and too late. ST was already dying and users moving to PCs.

And in the end Atari didnt have enough money to push Lynx and Jaguar forward. Too few games.


@foleyjo

CDTV lacked in software support and in the end it was just A500 with ancient Kickstart 1.3.

Commodore was notorious to push various crappy 8bit machines in hope of a gold mine and it didnt change with A1000... They just took old design and rebadged in hope it generates more profit than loss.

I wouldnt say IBM was much better really... they took a nose dive in early 90s too and were pushed out from the PC business.