Amiga vs console vs PC

[Speelgoedmannetje]

The Amiga was 'underpowered' because it's market was too small to justify investing in quality software/arcade ports. Still, I prefer some games that were on the Amiga over the Sega ones (like Out of This World) as the music is so much better.
Besides, I always found the consoles to be totally lacking some 'unrestricted game feeling' the Amiga and other home computers (including PC) had - more variety in games thanks to k/b and mouse, plus the possibility of saving your games, and therefore enabling more complex gaming we're used to today.
And who doesn't remember all those awful fmv games of the mid-90s? That sure made me  realise good graphics is something to be very wary of.

[Fizza]

The 030 was unlikely to get much cheaper by the time the A1200 was launched and commodore didn't survive much longer in any case.
 
 With the A1200 they were relying more on outside manufacturers to build the chips etc, so their cut of the price was squeezed. They sold less because most people had moved on.
 
 Rumour has it they sat on AGA, if that is true then releasing it earlier might have helped them. But they needed to get it out in 1990 for the A3000 when people still cared.

Not to disagree because what you say is correct, but I guess where I was going was, in the hypothetical, if 14mhz 020 in, say, 1991 would have been affordable, by 1992 28mhz 020 may have been the same cost, then by early 1993, maybe 25mhz 030 would have been possible etc., although obviously you can see the same situation develop with the accelerator card market, which might suggest another alternative, and that being having the processor in the A1200 be on a detachable daughter card by default and then Commodore becoming the main provider of accelerator cards instead of third parties, that would have been a source of income for possibly less effort, plus using this method, other enhancements could be incorporated?

[haywirepc]

AGA came too little too late. It was beaten easily by a VGA card on pc.

Sound also lagged behind. There should have been 16 bit sound with software mixing at least on the 1200 and 4000 at least. They probably also should have
had decent midi synth chip built in by then, but they didn't.

Pc had this by then with soundblaster. commodore completely ignored the sound hardware and let it remain at what they made in 1985 for the amiga 1000.

7+ years and they did not improve the sound chip? 7+ years is ages and ages in the computer world.  It was revolutionary in 1985. By 1992 it was WAY outdated. How did they not do ANYTHING to improve sound in amigas?

They should have at least made it 16 bit instead of 8 bit.

I started my music career on amiga sound. I desperately wanted to do 16 bit cd quality sound and more channels. This, more than anything is why I HAD to switch to pc when I realized the new amigas had the same old sound. (Faster tracker II and Impulse tracker had 16 bit sound if you had a soundblaster)

AGA was not as impressive as vga and svga. An amiga 500 could easily complete with a nintendo or sega genesis as far as games. NO WAY an amiga 1200 or 4000 or even cd32 could compete with a playstation, released in 1994. Playstation blew these machines out of the water as far as graphics,
sound and game quality.

They dropped the ball. They lost the willingness to stay ahead of the curve
and be innovative. THATS why commodore died. When I heard that the 1200
and 4000 would have the same old sound, I knew commodore was either
dead in the water or had perhaps one final shot to redeem themselves.

I still thought they could make a comeback, and my stay with a windows
pc would be short.

I dreamed of an amiga 5000 with 16 bit sound, better video, cdrom games,
and more. I'm still dreaming...

[ElPolloDiabl]

The A1200 could have come with 28mhz 020 and fast ram. It was dropped to cut cost.
They could have released the A600 as the budget system, there weren't many AGA games anyway. Make a few game accessories for it, e.g a numeric keypad.

Then release a 3MB A1200 with fast 68020 price should be $1400. $1600 with hard drive. No further upgrades necessary.

[psxphill]

in the hypothetical, if 14mhz 020 in, say, 1991 would have been affordable, by 1992 28mhz 020 may have been the same cost, then by early 1993, maybe 25mhz 030 would have been possible etc.

 The 68020 was released in 1984, the 68030 was released in 1987. I imagine the price for both in 1991 was pretty similar to the price they were in 1993. I'm not sure commodore could have afforded to develop it either.
 
 AGA was the big problem, it needed to be out earlier & it needed chunky pixels. Commodore said there wasn't enough ram to do chunky pixels, but it was a lie. If the blitter had also been expanded with some simple texture mapping then we could have had doom style games with an 020, which was always the "Amiga" way of low spec cpu but high powered custom chips.
 
 Paula needed more than 4 voices. The PlayStation had 24 in 1995, so maybe commodore should have had 12?
 
 Although increasing the amount of voices on AGA is probably harder than chunky pixels or texture mapping because of the fixed dma slots.

[itix]

4 channel 8-bit audio was dated but not the biggest issue. Amiga just needed more ram and computing performance, was it achieved by CPU or blitter or both.

However, I don't believe Commodore had a chance against PC or PlayStation anymore, Amiga was too small.

[Thorham]

Although increasing the amount of voices on AGA is probably harder than chunky pixels or texture mapping because of the fixed dma slots.

You can just use 14 bit audio and mix music from CD with fixed rate sound effects. It just uses a bit of CPU time. A faster CPU with fastmem and fast chunky graphics (not limited by chipmem bandwidth) are far more important.

[Fizza]

When using a machine for a specific purpose it's easy to come to the conclusion that something that wasn't important to that purpose wasn't important at all, but music was important to Amiga, quite a few techno/dance producers used it making tunes and the Amiga had an important impact in a few genres such as hardcore/jungle and gabba.

I think 8 channel 12bit would have been the minimum worthy upgrade, 12bit is good enough for professional quality, look at the SP1200 & Akai S950, which were staples back then, so beyond that I'd always choose extra channels over greater sample bitrate, ideally, 16-24 would have been fantastic, but even with 'just' eight, the trick of syncing two Amigas using null modem cable would have still allowed for 16 channels, which back in 1992/1993 would have been welcomed with joyous celebration..

[haywirepc]

Yes I agree, sound was more important for some folks. I mean, if your just playing games you won't notice the difference, but if your making music on your amiga and your forced to use 8 bit samples and everyone else is using 16 bit samples... Thats a big problem (and caused many digital musicians who started on amiga to jump ship to pc.)

Amiga gave me a great start. Learning tracking changed my life. but when a 90mhz pentium would let you do 32 16 bit channels on a tracker, I had to switch to fast tracker and a pc. I kept using my amiga for generating synth sounds, drumloops and games for awhile.

I suppose I'll have an amiga next to my pc for a long time... right now I'm rebuilding an amiga 500 tower, but I have a stock 1200 too. (Really needs an accellerator!)

[biggun]

The AGA machines were good platforms for 2D games and Adventures.
That AGA did not support Chunky pixels was a drawback for 3D...
If the A1200 and CD32 would have had fastmem the 68020 CPU would have been much faster.
But for the controlling work that is neede for typical 2D game the CPUs were fast enough without fastmem.
AGA was a nice improvement over OCS/ECS.
But it was not the earth shaking jump that many wished it to be.

But for AGA ++ some great upgrades were in the pipe.
A twice as fast blitter and Chunky 16bit direct mode was planned.
Combined with a CPU with fastmem the AGA++ machines would
have been both great for 2D games and very good for 3D games.

[psxphill]

But for AGA ++ some great upgrades were in the pipe.
A twice as fast blitter and Chunky 16bit direct mode was planned.
Combined with a CPU with fastmem the AGA++ machines would
have been both great for 2D games and very good for 3D games.

The AA+ project was announced but the design work was never started.
Scheduled for 1994, it's fate was sealed when PlayStation prototypes showed up & commodore started Hombre.

ECS should have had chunky 8 bit pixels, simple texture mapping blitter and 8 voice sound (some form of fast matrix processor for doing 3d transforms would have been necessary too).

AGA should have been upgraded to 16 voices, with 16 bit audio and 16 bit video and gouraud shading added to the blitter (with upgrades to the matrix processor).

 AA+ should have been FMV capable.
 
If they'd hit these milestones then commodore would have survived, but you can see how wildly they were off the mark.

[agami]

In an alternate history:
April 1987 - Irving Gould is convinced to not replace Thomas Rattigan
June 1988 - Commodore profit forecasts show decline. Rattigan decides that cost cutting is no longer viable; Commodore will need to decide what type of company it is?
February 1989 - Commodore reorganises for a 4th time and drastically reduces the amount of divisions. They rebrand under Commodore and no longer use CBM. In a WSJ interview Rattigan describes existing product range as “a mile wide and an inch deep”. Company to refocus on core competencies and value generators for the ’90s. Stock drops 23% on news.
March 1990 - Company posts profit largely due to selling off marginal divisions i.e. PC Clone division, UNIX division, Commodore legacy division (C64/C128). Keeps Amiga division, creates a new in-house software division, and the only thing it copies from IBM is the large commitment to R&D.
May 1991 - Company launches breakthrough new machines based on an all new backward compatible AGA chipset. The Amiga A3000 for the professional market and the Amiga A800 for the home/student market. With it a major update to the operating system OS 3.0.
February 1992 - R&D division announces a major project in collaboration with NASA/JPL. A3000 top seller in US region with Newtek Cards, A800 is a popular do-it-all machine with younger audiences in Europe, especially in former eastern block countries. Stock rises to record high.
March 1993 - Commodore announces it’s inaugural developer conference to be held in July in New York City, NY.
July 1993 - Commodore shows off the AAA chipset to developers at the conference and provides to all developers new SDK and beta version of OS 3.5. Stock price rises 12%
June 1994 - Commodore releases new line of computers based on AAA chipset; The Amiga A4000 for professionals market, the Amiga A1600 for home/student market, the Amiga A10 laptop computer for the on-the-go professional market. All units come with a CD-ROM drive as standard. Unlike Apple’s Powerbook the A10 runs a 68EC030. Commodore shows how the benefits of newly introduces OS 3.5 and AAA chipset allow them to offload many of the functions away from the core CPU. Stock rises to record high.
April 1995 - Commodore releases a new larger laptop computer; The Amiga A20, aimed at video editors with the inclusion of a special Newtek Video Toaster hardware designed for TV network field operations.
July 1995 - At the second annual Commodore Global Developer Conference (CGDC) Commodore announces they will be moving to the PowerPC and show a teaser of Amiga OS 4.
December 1995 - Commodore stock has dropped severely due to two successive quarters of poor sales. Industry pundits believe Commodore has “pulled an Osborne” with the early PowerPC announcement. Similar low sales have also been seen at Apple as it struggles to deliver a new multitasking OS for its line of PowerPC-based computers. Be Inc. is also facing challenges in entering the PC market with its own PowerPC-based Be Box and BeOS.
April 1996 - Rumours suggest that both Rattigan (Commodore) and Gassée (Be Inc.) have had secret meetings with Apple executives to provide their respective operating systems as a replacement for the defunct Apple Copeland project.
July 1997 - At the third annual CGDC Commodore announces they will be moving away from on-board custom chipsets for future PowerPC Amigas. They will no longer refer to them as chipsets but rather Signal and Data Processors (SDP). PowerPC dev-kits for Zorro III AAA Amiga computers bundled with a beta version of OS 4.0 is made available to developers.
January 1998 - At CES, Commodore unveils to the public its first PowerPC-based computer; The Amiga C1000 with desktop design that has been inspired by the original A1000. Commodore also previewed its upcoming Amiga OS 4.0 operating system, also some of the PowerPC applications they have been building in-house e.g. A new paint program that seamlessly blends vector and bitmap drawing. A new multi-channel audio editing suite, and a special port of Quake developed in collaboration with id software. All of the software has been designed to take advantage of the new Z400 SDP card.
May 1998 - After almost running out of funding Commodore releases the Amiga C1000.  Available with either a PowerPC 603e or a 604e. The rumoured tower case and a wedge design are not available yet. Commodore has made a statement in which they also mention that other PowerPC based computers will be available soon. Commodore also release long awaited update OS 3.6 which fixes many of the issues found in OS 3.5 and also brings native TCP/IP stack for internet connectivity.
July 1998 - The fourth CGDC is centred around the upcoming Z420 and Z440 SDP boards that also have native 3D graphics processing and expanded RAM. Newtek showcases new 3D effects that take advantage of the Z420 and Z440 cards. No new computers, no updates to the OS.
September 1998 - Commodore posts a loss for a third consecutive quarter. Rumours of major shake-up are abound. Commodore has failed to make any profit on the C-series of Amigas (PowerPC), whilst the A-series of Amigas (68k) have seen solid sales especially in developing countries. There are many third party add-ons for the A-series that make the low cost computer platform very popular.
December 1998 - The Commodore board of directors votes to have Rattigan replaced with ex Silicon Graphics CEO Edward R. McCracken
January 1999 - For the first time since 1991 Commodore does not show up at CES. Everyone is wondering what the new CEO McCracken is up to.
March 1999 - In a press release Commodore informed the investors of the 5th restructuring of the company to make it more relevant in the new millennium. Commodore will continue to support both A and C sires of computers until the end of the support contracts. Commodore will sell off all computer hardware and operating system divisions. Commodore will retain all patents. The SDP division will remain and the latest Z500 series of cards will be out later in the year. The software division will continue to work on specialised SDP productivity software and games. Partnerships with Electronic Arts, Newtek, and NASA are extremely valuable. The annual Commodore Global Developer Conference (CGDC) will be rebranded to Digital Graphics Conference (DGC) and will be focused on the exciting new domain of 3D graphics processors and other DSP technology.
June 1999 - Indian company Supratech Micropath purchase the C-series computer hardware and Amiga OS 4.x divisions.
July 1999 - At the first annual DGC Commodore showcases the new Z500 series of cards which in a surprise announcement will be available not only for the Supratech C-series computers, but also for x86-based Windows 95 and the new Windows 98 operating systems and for Apple’s PowerMac computers running Mac OS 8.x. Driver documentation and the SDP APIs will be made available to those who wish to make the Z500 series cards work on other systems.
September 1999 - Commodore stock rebounds on better than expected sales of the groundbreaking Z500 series cards. In several interviews with many leading computing magazines GM of SDP design Dave Haynie outlines the key difference between the SDP design and products from the likes of 3dfx, ATi, Nvidia, and Matrox.
March 2000 - Dot com crash. Commodore stock drops to just above $18 per share.
July 2001 - At the third annual DGC Commodore releases the Z600 series of SDP cards. Z600 series SDP cards have a new feature where they can be interconnected with another SDP card to work in tandem for massive parallel processing applications. Newtek showcases all new Lightwave 6 with support for Z600 series SDP cards for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS platforms.
November 2001 - Microsoft releases its first gaming console; The Xbox, which is built around standard industry components, a x86 processor and a special version of the Z600 series processor.
…
Present Day - Commodore ZX700 series SDP cards are used in many desktop computers, Microsoft’s Xbox One, Newtek’s TriCaster, and specialist laboratory equipment by Supratech Micropath. The ZM700 series is used in tablets and Smart TVs of many OEMs. The annual DGC continues to draw about 20,000 attendees each year. Commodore stock price hovers around $24 per share.

[Amiga_Nut]

Well we can forget AGA times as that was not cutting edge and 256 colour planar mode a knife in the belly so too little too late. ECS was an April fool gone way too far no?. AGA did nothing for solid polygon or 2.5D scaling graphics and the cpu needed to be 25mhz 020 AND 512K min 32bit Fast ram or empty simm slot to keep up with Doom or even SuperFX/SEGA SVP carts in mid 90s.

The Amiga 1000 was both radical and cutting edge A/V hardware but revolutionary in use due to multi-tasking GUI OS so it could do both so it's a redundant question. The most powerful computer==most stunning game graphics.

The problem was pathetic coding on games, did Outrun look like the SEGA 16bit console or 8086 EGA PC version? Exactly.

Unfortunately Commodore did not act like illegal monopolistic Ninbendo scum bags preventing independent releases on Amiga so could never compete with $100 NES CRAP as they made nothing on software and could therefore not sell hardware at cost.

To go from arcade perfect Marble Madness in 1986 to Ourun/SF2 turds from greedy UK nobheads is a joke but it's the story of Amiga. SNES can't do Lotus 2, Mega Typhoon or Shadow of the Beast but yanks/jap %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s still bought the slow boring Mario crap...go figure.

There was never much wrong with hardware but who wants to play ST ports like Chase HQ? If only C= had bought out Cinemaware and done CDTV versions of everything.....not NEC CD crap.

A500 says all about C= without Jack, 18 months to replace A1000 beatiful case, WORM Kickstart RAM and internal PSU & power switch with pig ugly looks, a ROM socket and Vic 20 style PSU with power switch on it. Designed by dicks 'managed' by diks = A500 project. They didn't even promote A1000 in 1986 waiting for 12 month late A500 turd.

They would have f*cked it up either way clearly as Plus/4, C128 and A500 turds ateste

(Apple/Wintel/Nnbendo scum winning is worse...thanks dumb yank pr1ks consumers for playing Marble Madness ad DotC on your gay PC EGA/NES machines and ignoring A1000 or C64...priks...hell even the 520STM @ $399 DUMPED ON $4000 256K Mac)

[Amiga_Nut]

The AA+ project was announced but the design work was never started.
Scheduled for 1994, it's fate was sealed when PlayStation prototypes showed up & commodore started Hombre.

ECS should have had chunky 8 bit pixels, simple texture mapping blitter and 8 voice sound (some form of fast matrix processor for doing 3d transforms would have been necessary too).

AGA should have been upgraded to 16 voices, with 16 bit audio and 16 bit video and gouraud shading added to the blitter (with upgrades to the matrix processor).

 AA+ should have been FMV capable.
 
If they'd hit these milestones then commodore would have survived, but you can see how wildly they were off the mark.

BUT Apple OS AND hardware was SH1T, ALL MS software was SH1T and dirt SH1T SNES 3mhz 8bit processor with free slow down were even more off the mark in 90s. I don't get how yanks could see the Pinto was the losers choice and yet bought the console/computer equivalents 85-95. Dumb moron consumers 1985 to 95 = why I have to put up with crap machines/OS today. We held out until 486/MEGADRIVE in early 90s at least over here!!

[ElPolloDiabl]

@agami
I like that alternate history. What would happen if the x86 processor was adopted instead?
As Dave Haynie was the engineer you might have a large dual-cpu system at the top end.

[biggun]

AMIGA is and was good machine.

Look back at game like SWORD OF SODAN, HYBRIS, or XENON
These 512K memory and the 68000@7 Mhz was more than fast enough for them.
These games really made good use of the capabilites of OCS chipset with 512 KB.


Later AMIGA models were rarely used fully.
2MB Chipmemory was common even with later ECS AMIGA.
Now imagine how nice and smooth a  SWORD OF SODAN for 2 MB with 4 times the background images and the sprite animation would have looked?
It certainly would have looked breathtaking.
Or imagine a good STREET FIGHTHER port making maximum use of 2 MB Chipmem.

The AGA machines had 2 MB chipmem, 256 colors and faster CPU.

Regarding Audio:
For games 8bit audio samples with own volume per channel is great.
With own volume per sample this give great sound effects for games.

In theory more than 4 channels would have made coding easier.
But on the other hand a 68020 with fast-mem has more than enough computing power to mix many channels together in real time.

Imagine if games would have been designed for AGA machines with 2 MB fast and 2 MB chip.
The typical 2D game has enough free CPU to allow real time mixing of 8 channels modules.

So you can imagine now a SWORD OF SODAN with 256 colors,4 times the animation frames and 8 channel audio sound in the background.

Or imagine a 2D Game like XENON in 256 colors, with 4 times as many sprite animations, and super mixed sound.

If games would have been designed for AGA Amigas + fastmem then these type of games would have been possible.