[Speculation] How to keep Commodore afloat

[runequester]

Inspired by the other thread..

Here's the ground rules: Speculate pointlessly about how to keep Commodore alive.

Suggestions should be at least somewhat realistic, and we assume that management is actually sane rather than trying to leech the company for funds as quickly as possible.


My random suggestions:

Advertise furiously. Its 1985 and you need to get across to everybody just what you have on hand. Compare mercilessly to the IBM's, Macs and ataris. Show them side by side.

Get more software developers onboard. Commodore wasn't terrible at this, but try to lure developers of PC office software onboard to get more stuff like amiga version of Wordperfect.

Do whatever is possible to keep costs of expansions down. In the end, amiga expansions weren't that unreasonable compared to PC stuff, but for a PC or Mac owner, adding a 700 dollar expansion to a 2000 dollar machine seemed reasonable in comparison. A 700 dollar expansion to a 600 dollar amiga felt like a ripoff even if it wasn't.

Limit ECS to the 3000. The cheap wedge machines dont need it.

As might be known, I rather like AGA. It'd have been nice if it could have been out a year earlier though, and there obviously needs to be something else on its way to replace it.

A better sound chip is priority though.

Ignore the CDTV. This is hard to tell in hindsight, but the world isn't ready for that stuff. Go with the CD thing though, and push to have CD ROMs accepted as a common expansion for amiga's. Push and encourage game developers to use them.

Cut down on the number of models: The 500+, 1500 and 2500 doesn't need to exist. Neither does the 030 version of the 4000.

The 600 should have remained the originally intended 300. Make it 1 meg ram, and limit other expansions. Ditch PCMCIA from it. If it can be made reasonably cheaper than the 500 with it, keep the hard drive interface.

3000 and 4000 comes with fast RAM on board, even a tiny bit.

1200 comes with 2 megs of fast RAM. If at all possible, take a line from the Falcon and use an 030, or a higher clocked 020.

Alternatively keep the 1200 with the same 020/14 and offer a beefier version with 030 and more RAM included (the one place where I'd offer up an additional model)

Consider VGA output and scan doubling internal, if it can be done cost effectively.

Dont worry about clone PC's. Put the weight completely behind amiga. In some cases, this involves subsidizing things that will drive sales of machines (f.x. expansion cards)

CD32. No clue. It seems to have sold well. Make it very ready for expansion as consoles are a super competitive market.




Blah blah blah

Share yours or tell me why mine are retarded

[TheBilgeRat]

Skip ECS and AGA entirely - introduce Hombre in 1991 and destroy Intel/MS and Apple entirely.  Build a 17" 1084 Flatscreen CRT that can handle the Hombre displays.  Build a machine that puts OCS and equivalent ROMS on a Zorro card for backward compatibility.  Push the PPC line early.

[runequester]

Your mention of hombre reminds me of the talk about "ranger".

A chipset that isn't as many colours on screen as VGA (256) is fine, if it can be out by 88 or 89.

[TheBilgeRat]

Wasn't the next killer graphics chipset called "hombre?"

[Franko]

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH....

You Did It... You Rotter...

[runequester]

Wasn't the next killer graphics chipset called "hombre?"

it was. Ranger was supposedly created on paper by Jay Miner but rejected by Commodore due to [insert conspiracy here]

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH....

You Did It... You Rotter...

[Digiman]

Ranger was finished, the price of VRAM was the reason it could never be used before 1994ish on anything but a £2000 top of the line machine like the A4000/040. The article with the interview with Jay was posted on here with 3 page scans last year and he says it was finished.

Firstly do NOT stop promoting the A1000 in 1986 waiting for the identically performing A500 and A2000 until late 87! Keep the momentum up and shove it up Steve Jobs gay ass

Secondly do NOT force us into 7mhz for 7 years. Instead of blowing profits on an absolutely pathetic and useless ECS upgrade put the money towards a fast CPU and OCS with more chip ram. Super Denise was a complete waste of R&D.

Thirdly do NOT think that A1200+CD = SNES beater. AGA had OCS A1000 sound, 16 colour parallax dual playfield and rubbish sprites. Blitter was barely faster. CD32 killed Commodore off, the final nail in the coffin.

Instead of CD32 get the bloody A1400 prototype into production FAST. Scrap the 4000/030....waste of time for the mass market and too slow and expensive to compete with 486 machines by 1993/4 which were half the price. A1400 = 2mb chip + 2mb fast, 28mhz 020, AGA, AKIKO and in a stylish A3000 style case. WIN! A1800 = same plus CD-ROM. A1400 = same speed as A4000/030 but HALF THE PRICE

That is all, the rest involves a blow torch, a pair of pliers, some rusty nails and a huge sledge hammer in a locked room alone with Medhi Ali :roflmao:

NB Hombre = Saturn levels of performance but at 200-300% the cost of a £299 Sega Saturn. Waste of development time again. Just buy out a company and stick PPC+Bvision in A1x00 line and A4xxx line to compete with Pentium MMX in mid to late 90s. It's good enough to play Wipeout 2 and Quake so what the hell, no need for R&D money down the toilet.

Also don't piss off RJ Mical and Dave Needle and you would have ended up by 1989 with Sega style sprite scaling and 16bit PCM sound chipset (Lynx) AND later on you would have had 3DO chipset which wasn't bad. They designed both together after leaving Hi-Toro thanks to the nobjockey manager who sacked most of the A1000/OCS designers and made the crap [ie identical performance] A2000 3 years later.

[Matt_H]

Never hire Bill Syndes or Mehdi Ali. Problem solved.

[KThunder]

Clones, cross license with atari, anything to make the platform dependant on just one company.

Back in the day people used to talk about the war between Atari, Apple, Commodore, and IBM. What they didn't realize was that it was really IBM and its clones, with all of their manufacturing capability, against everyone else. IBM was one of many.

[Tension]

Thirdly do NOT think that A1200+CD = SNES beater. AGA had OCS A1000 sound, 16 colour parallax dual playfield and rubbish sprites. Blitter was barely faster. CD32 killed Commodore off, the final nail in the coffin.

There's a lot of misinformation about the CD32.

What killed Commodore is that they couldn't make enough CD32s.

And the fact that they weren't allowed to import products into the US in Christmas 1993.

[dougal]

The A1200 was released at a time when the Playstation and Saturn were about to be released, and when CD-ROMS started becoming quite common on PC's.

The A1200 spec should have included:

50Mhz 68030 with MMU as standard
4MB Fast Ram as standard (8MB optional)
Buffered IDE as standard
VGA Out (Scandoubled/Flickerfixed) as standard
CD-ROM as standard
Better graphics custom chips with basic 3D support
Better sound custom chips
Microphone input

With this setup the A1200 would have been a little more expensive but it would have blown the competition away.

[ElPolloDiabl]

It was still the early age of home computers. Initially the Amiga was competing with the C64 and Atari plus a couple of others. By 94 it was Amiga vs PC vs Mac, with vanilla gamers going back to the console already. So maybe you've got 100k+ who actually want Amiga as a home computer. You would have to divide that into 2 preferably 3 system price points...
It probably would have been better to stick with big boxes (desktop/tower) this would have been a lot cheaper at the time. Maybe they could have copied the PC clone model: cheap looking, but powerful. I think what gave the PC it's final boost into orbit was the vast available cheap 2nd hand systems, if we had held out 3 more years we would have gained some users buying 2nd hand.

[AmigaNG]

I going to go for a more realistic approach of what could off happened/been done.
 Sell the entire State side of the business, no Commodore USA/International, make the German Commodore HQ and maybe keep the UK HQ as well as during the closure of Commodore these two areas of Commodore where making a profit and they had quite a market still in Gemany and the Uk, both in the PC and Amiga business, so make the company more European focus and concentrate    on marketing the machine there, still sell to the USA but only what's popular, first make the CD-rom add on for A1200, with complete Cd32 support,continue to market and sell cd32 as along as profitable, but get out of the games console market  as soon as it not.     introduce a Walker type product by 1995, same specs really, (68030, FPU, 2mb chip, 4mb Fast, AGA chip set, Cd-Rom, 250mb HD, Disk Drive, CPU / Zorro / PCI Slots) maybe to offer a lowest possible cost entry to Amiga do a version with out a Hard drive try and aim for that magic £399.99 price point,  maybe approach ID to make Doom and Myth port to launch with the walker to prove it can do game like that (I think this would help convince people that Amiga could still do game, game market/home market was bigger in Europe for Amiga remember) also give developers of say Wordworth and their office sweep some money to ensure Windows office formats are supported and make a big deal about it is compatible, also start to sell just motherboards of the Amiga products so users and companies could develop their own Amiga. Maybe the A5000 could be the same board as the Walker with just a high end 040 or 060  added and 8gb+ fast mem to it,  Maybe as well continue to try and make a low cost A1200 machine as possible and start marketing that in the Asian and Chinese markets might have been some big money in that. While all thats going on develop a real next gen Amiga, say similar to what the Amiga MCC was going to be and carry on to rule the world!

[ElPolloDiabl]

FYI @ above 32-bit processors are maxed out at 4 GBytes RAM.

[Khephren]

Matt H sums up the main point

Bill Syndes and his 'PCJnr' ideas killed the A600/A1200

I mean, we are getting use out of PCMCIA now, but it was a (very expensive) white elephent then. The money should have went on fast ram/processor. And they should have had high density floppies and a slimline CDROM slot.

And Mehdi Ali scuppered research money for AAA.
quoting Haynie 'revolutionary if released in 1990, pretty cool in 1992, ok in 1994'    -bang goes your 16bit sound, chunky, and HAM10, 24bit hybrid mode, 4mb floppies etc.

Other things i'd change:

--Release the A500 first, give Atari and the other formats a severe kicking earlier on.

--Realise the Amiga is the only egg you have left in your basket, and throw money at it.

--Realise your mid way between consoles and PC's (for wedge Amigas at least) emulate both, buy the best games developers (get some exclusives), make sure you have a good office suite.

--Stop making them baige boxes! your not a PC manufacturer, your used by artists, musicians, gamers and hobbyists. Stand out from the crowd!

--If your going to update to ECS, make it worth updating to.

--Don't sack the original Amiga team, they had more good ideas in one product than commodore had in it's whole history. Some of the stuff Mical and Needle went on to do, we could have had!


But really, If we could change history, i'd have commodore not getting hold of Amiga at all. They did not understand it or promote it enough, or spend enough money on its development.