Why did commodore went under?

[lassie]

Hi why do you guys think commodore went under? one must think that all the Commodores and amigas they have sold over the years must have been giving them a lot of money in the bank.

[weirdami]

I heard something about how even thought the Commodore 64 was still selling really well that they stopped making them.

[duga]

I heard something about how even thought the Commodore 64 was still selling really well that they stopped making them.

They manufactured them until the end; April 1994.

In Sweden they stopped selling the C64 in 1992.

[lassie]

Yes that old commodore 64 sold well here in denmark to. I got mine in 1992 :-)

[SamuraiCrow]

There is poor management and then there is Commodore's very poor management:

• They didn't keep up with the production processes of their custom chips and discovered at the last minute that everybody else's custom chips were able to clock faster than theirs.
• When they found out that it was going to be expensive to produce custom chips at a competitive clock speed, instead of forking out the cash and resources to get it done, they diverted funds away from the Amiga division and started an MSDOS PC compatible division.
• They also delayed the introduction of the A1200 and A4000 until the A600 was ready and discovered that the A600 was a total flop anyway and should never have been introduced into the AGA lineup.

There's probably more reasons but those are the main ones.

[duga]

CDTV and A600 shouldn't have been released at all.

[CritAnime]

The c64 was one of commodores best machines. I saw them still be sold around 1993 here in the UK. Some were reconditioned because the demand for them was still strong. If there were reliable upgrade kits like you can get for the Amiga I think I would do it for my C64.
 

They also delayed the introduction of the A1200 and A4000 until the A600 was ready and discovered that the A600 was a total flop anyway and should never have been introduced into the AGA lineup.

I don't recall the 600 ever been advertised in the AGA lineup. But your right there were a lot of poor decisions made at Commodore.

[lassie]

The c64 was one of commodores best machines. I saw them still be sold around 1993 here in the UK. Some were reconditioned because the demand for them was still strong. If there were reliable upgrade kits like you can get for the Amiga I think I would do it for my C64.

Did you not have a Commodore Magazine that ran until 1995 in the uk. Commodore Format i belive :-)

[CritAnime]

Yeah. I bought them right upto the death. Still have a lot of my tapes laying around.

[lassie]

Yeah. I bought them right upto the death. Still have a lot of my tapes laying around.

Cool :-) i have purchased some Commodore Format magazines from uk here the last couple of months, very cool magazine :-) A shame postage is so high to Denmark. most times it cost more to send them than the magazines them self

[djos]

Just plain dumb management wasting money on building computers like the 128, a600, CDTV and then doing a half a$$ed job on the s4000.

Commodore USA also entirely failed to market the Amiga line properly and probably overpriced the 1000 compared to a fully equipped 512ST.

[Megamig]

There are many reasons why Commodore failed here are my few:
 

• Lack of chipset updates. ECS is not even worth mentioning. No Paula update. No chipset support for high density floppies. AGA was released too late.
• Lack of professional software. Apple inc addressed this matter by setting up Claris. Commodore should have done the same or at the very least subsidised the development of professional packages such as Word Perfect.
• The Amiga 500 and 1200 were too expandable. The worst thing Commodore done was providing the A500 with a side connector that allowed pretty much anything available on their big box A2000 to be used on the A500.  Although the A1200 corrected this matter to some degree by replacing the side connector with a PCMCIA slot hardware developers got around this by using the A1200 trapdoor slot. The A600 trapdoor slot was a step in the right direction for commodore as it only allowed RAM expansion.
• The Amiga 2000. Oh dear. First it was a expanded A1000 then a A500 with a massive expansion board. Simply adding double the RAM was not enough. The Amiga 2000 never should have left Commodore without a 68020+ processor and on-board SCSI. As many will agree the A3000 was a big box Amiga done right!
• Releasing/developing the following junk

CDTV - Designed to be user friendly. This was hardly the case with terrible disc caddy system, old 1.3 ROMs and no in-built floppy drive (when all Amiga software to that date was released on floppy) made no sense

A600 / C65 - Desperate attempts by Commodore in reliving the  
C= 64 era

• Many more issues such as: poor marketing, lack of licensing the Amiga chipset to third party developers, not working with enemy Atari to bring down costs (by sharing components) and not moving to generic PC parts such as keyboards ultimately cost Commodore their business.

[lassie]

There are many reasons why Commodore failed here are my few:
 

• Lack of chipset updates. ECS is not even worth mentioning. No Paula update. No chipset support for high density floppies. AGA was released too late.
• Lack of professional software. Apple inc addressed this matter by setting up Claris. Commodore should have done the same or at the very least subsidised the development of professional packages such as Word Perfect.
• The Amiga 500 and 1200 were too expandable. The worst thing Commodore done was providing the A500 with a side connector that allowed pretty much anything available on their big box A2000 to be used on the A500.  Although the A1200 corrected this matter to some degree by replacing the side connector with a PCMCIA slot hardware developers got around this by using the A1200 trapdoor slot. The A600 trapdoor slot was a step in the right direction for commodore as it only allowed RAM expansion.
• The Amiga 2000. Oh dear. First it was a expanded A1000 then a A500 with a massive expansion board. Simply adding double the RAM was not enough. The Amiga 2000 never should have left Commodore without a 68020+ processor and on-board SCSI. As many will agree the A3000 was a big box Amiga done right!
• Releasing/developing the following junk

CDTV - Designed to be user friendly. This was hardly the case with terrible disc caddy system, old 1.3 ROMs and no in-built floppy drive (when all Amiga software to that date was released on floppy) made no sense

A600 / C65 - Desperate attempts by Commodore in reliving the  
C= 64 era

• Many more issues such as: poor marketing, lack of licensing the Amiga chipset to third party developers, not working with enemy Atari to bring down costs (by sharing components) and not moving to generic PC parts such as keyboards ultimately cost Commodore their business.

Thanks for your answer :-) yeah it seems like they made a lot of mistake along the way.

[djos]

Yeah also stupid projects like the Plus4, c16 and all the other daft C64 variants!

I'd also say wasting money on the never released c65 project was also dumb!

[bbond007]

Hi why do you guys think commodore went under? one must think that all the Commodores and amigas they have sold over the years must have been giving them a lot of money in the bank.

because they failed to settle a dispute over a patent to Cad Soft for the use of their XOR cursor and as a result they were banned from importing CD32s (for the US market) during the 1994 xmas season. they were already living paycheck to paycheck at the time.

If the CD32 was a success on they US market then maybe they could have kept the doors open.