Hypothetical. C= doesn't get the Amiga. Then what.

[Steady]

... and gaming pcs would have been crap back then anyway ... CGA/EGA goodness ... mmmmm.

[Tripitaka]

... and gaming pcs would have been crap back then anyway ... CGA/EGA goodness ... mmmmm.

I couldn't agree more. I consider the true rise of the gaming PC to coincide with DOOM, the 486 and the soundcard/CD-ROM "multimedia kit", early 90's.

[CritAnime]

I had a soundblaster blaster pro in my 486 along with cd-rom.

[Middleman]

Or, to clarify things a bit let us say that Atari doesn't either. Say the Amiga is on a 3rd path, or Apple buys it and integrates parts into the Macintosh or something. But C= doesn't get it and there is no Amiga that we'd immediately recognize.
 
What does C= do next?
 
Pursue the C900 and make a go at Data General's (or even Sun or SGI's) marketshare?
 
Push the C65?

I think this could have likely happened....
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrFj-cFMp5A&feature=related

[martyg]

With hindsight, it would've been better staying under Tramiel's Atari company, away from the Goulds and the Alis. Although Sam Tramiel would've sunk it in the end anyway. There was really no stopping PC sales. Modularity. Ah well, too late now anyway.

It would have never been under his company. What you have is a chain of events: 1) Jack announced buying Atari's Consumer Division to form Atari Corporation almost simultanious to Commodore announcing they're buying Amiga. 2) Commodore immediately sues Shiraz and two others of Jack's engineering staff for theft of trade secrets and puts an injunction on them doing any computer work for Jack that lasts through the entire month. 3) Jack's son Leonard discovers the cancelled check from the previous Atari's investment in Amiga. Jack contacts Warner about it, negotiates for the contract with Amiga (it was with Warner but executed through it's Atari subsidiary) and launches a countersuit at Commodore via Amiga. 4) Both suits are settled out of court.
 
Without Commodore buying Amiga, you simply have a lawsuit against Shiraz and the two others and Jack with no way to apply leverage to fight it. Amiga would have been out of the equation. Likewise, the contract with the original Atari Inc. that Jack was suing over was never for any sort of ownership. It was simply for licensing (which Amiga would have made a ton of money from under the terms) and access to the chip documentation being held in escrow should Amiga go under. Amiga had several investors besides Atari, and Atari needed a way to recover their investment. If Amiga went under because of their financial problems, Atari Inc. would recieve the right to manufacture the chips on their own, no licensing required.
 
Regardless, had Commodore not bought it Amiga would have simply soldiered on seeking more investors and a potential buyout, or gone under because of the bad financial state they were in and its assets split up among the investors.

[psxphill]

Regardless, had Commodore not bought it Amiga would have simply soldiered on seeking more investors and a potential buyout, or gone under because of the bad financial state they were in and its assets split up among the investors.

With Amiga not being able to meet their payroll obligations or repay Atari the money they had borrowed, there was no way they could soldier on.
 
Without commodore the Amiga would have ended up being controlled by Atari, with (IMHO) even more disasterous results than what happened under commodore.
 
While commodore could have done better, Atari could easily have done worse. Either way, by 1993, neither of them could survive against the PC market.

[olsen]

Commodore did not even do half of what could have been possible with the Amiga.  They had no idea what they had or how to market it.  It was mismanaged right into the grave.

It wasn't certain from the start that Commodore would go down that path. If I remember my little bit of Amiga history correctly, the management which pushed for Amiga, Inc. to be acquired did not see the acquisition through, and subsequently left the company. Hence, the guys who had something of a vision where the Amiga fit into Commodore's future were not the ones who actually got to make something/anything out of it.

After the departure of the founder, Commodore was left without tech-savy management, which time and again hurt them until the end. I suppose not really knowing what to do with Amiga is but part of the picture. Did Commodore make good use of MOS Technology/CSG?

[Haranguer]

I hate CUSA bunches, but I understood it.

+1

[Haranguer]

If neither Commodore nor Atari got the Amiga, it would have died before it was born.

If Atari had got it, things probably would have gone much the same way.

[Pentad]

Well, here are some of my hypothetical thoughts:  :-)


1.  I think Commodore did a better job than Atari would have if they would have received the chips.  Jack's business sense worked well into the early 80s but as the business shifted I'm not sure Jack would have.  So I think he was still applying late 70's business sense in a new 80's technology world.

2.  Apple would not have been a good fit either.  For all the reverence Steve Jobs receives he is not some wunderkind.  He hated complex hardware, fought Woz on slots on the Apple II, and shot down anything 'open' on the Macintosh.  The Amiga would be the anti-computer to him.

3.  Companies I think that could have done the Amiga better (or that I think would be interesting):

-Microsoft - I think that Microsoft could have been an interesting player in all of this.  They had not hardware but were looking for a great GUI to sell to everyone.  They have could licensed the chipsets and sold the GUI to many different companies.  Granted, the hardware might have been a tough sell in the beginning but they had very smart people.

-SUN - Another company with very smart people and I think the Amiga would have been a great fit for them.  We all know that they like the Amiga 3000 and AMIX later on so I think they could have ran the Amiga in the beginning.  Of course, they could not stop the WinTel tour-de-force so we might have ended up here again.

-SGI - The Amiga would have complimented the SGI hardware on the desktop quite nicely during the time.  Again I think they would have been a great match.  However, SGI could not stop the WinTel team so the fate might have been Commodore like.

Of these three companies, I think Microsoft would have had the be shot of making the Amiga a standard in some form.  Bill Gates was/is very smart and given his transformation of Microsoft in ten short years during the 80's he could have done something very lasting with the Amiga.


Cheers!
-P

[psxphill]

I suppose not really knowing what to do with Amiga is but part of the picture. Did Commodore make good use of MOS Technology/CSG?

They definately did before Jack left, although "good use" means ringing every last cent out of them without investing for the future.

[olsen]

They definately did before Jack left, although "good use" means ringing every last cent out of them without investing for the future.

Business as usual, I suppose...

But, if I read this correctly, CSG went through a management-buyout and survived as a separate entity until 2001. Which I guess isn't such a bad sign for the company and its state at the time Commodore went out of business.

[martyg]

With Amiga not being able to meet their payroll obligations or repay Atari the money they had borrowed, there was no way they could soldier on.

They weren't supposed to repay the money. It was provided as show of good faith towards the signing of the licensing agreement that June.
 

Without commodore the Amiga would have ended up being controlled by Atari, with (IMHO) even more disasterous results than what happened under commodore.

How would it have been controlled by Atari? That was never part of the agreement.

[matthey]

I note that neither Commodore nor Atari survived the 90's.  There was a storm coming that nobody anticipated.  Apple survived by the skin of it's teeth.  There is nothing anyone without 20/20 hindsight could have done to survive.  The clone wars would even almost claim IBM, which was forced to reinvent itself as a non-pc company.

The Amiga would have had to start competing earlier to survive. This includes better products, marketing and R&D. I agree that once the clone wars began it was all but over. Jack Tramiel was NOT a good business man and would NOT have been able to save Amiga either. Gould was not bad but didn't understand the Amiga while Medhi Ali destroyed the company while he profited. I think the best thing that could have happen would have been for Motorola to buy the Amiga as it was floundering in the early to mid nineties. It would have been a bold move by the management of Motorola (but their management wasn't good either). It would have given them vertical integration. They could have continued to develop the 68060 but they probably would have kept their blinders on and switched the Amiga to PPC only. Keeping the 68k for the low end and doing PPC for the high end should have allowed them to sell more chips. I think the Amiga could have continued to be profitable under the right management through the clone wars. C= in Europe was profitable during the bankruptcy. They had good management and found a profitable niche market with the Amiga. Too bad they couldn't have taken over the company.