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[Rant] Was the Amiga a flop?ANN.lu
Posted on 10-Oct-2002 08:45 GMT by Anon60 comments
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In a Slate article the author predicts demise of the Tivo, drawing a parallel with the Amiga's fate.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 1 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 07:48 GMT
Lets see.. hmm.. the Amiga 500 just sold a handful of units..
right :)
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 2 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 10-Oct-2002 07:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Leif):
Typical clueless journalist.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 3 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 09:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Don Cox):
The Amiga was a flop compared to what it could have been.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 4 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Me over there! on 10-Oct-2002 10:33 GMT
It doesn't suprise me that someone writing for M$ say that a computer is better than the Tivo when M$ is about to release it's new Windows Media Center PC within weeks.
Come on don't you see from where the article comes: MSN!!!!
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 5 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by john on 10-Oct-2002 11:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Me over there!):
Don't expect too much from the M$ Media Centre PC. They're going to be expensive and restrictive, see this story http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27531.html
Amiga a flop? Agreed, though only through not realising it's potential. But definately not a flop when enlightening the huge amount of people that did realise that this "games machine" was in fact a:
Multi-Processing, Multitasking, Multimedia, Multicolour computer.
Without many of these firsts (at consumer level, anyway), M$ would not have been able to 'invent' them many years later.
Ask yourself a question: how much harder would a WinXX PC be to use, if M$ hadn't invented the right mouse button?*
-john
*Amiga patented the right mouse button BTW.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 6 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 11:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Me over there!):
Slate seems to be editorially independent from Microsoft and/or Bill Gates. If there's any influence at all (which is arguable) then it's certainly more subtle than "Don't buy TiVo, buy Microsoft".
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 7 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 12:20 GMT
Amiga a flop?
Only the third most popular microcomputer platform ever (after IBM-PC and Mac).
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 8 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Sam Smith on 10-Oct-2002 12:24 GMT
No.
Next question.
---
Sam
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 9 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 13:08 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
"Only the third most popular microcomputer platform ever (after IBM-PC and Mac)."
Rubbish.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 10 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 10-Oct-2002 13:30 GMT
The article describes the Amiga as technically very advanced for it's time. He was bang on there. Did it flop? Of course it did, Commodre died a painfull death, that's a flop! We all know Commodore could have marketed the Amiga way better. The Amiga had the technical merits to succeed if only it was marketted properly. It wasn't and so it flopped, and that's the sad truth.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 11 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 13:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Mike Veroukis):
By that reasoning, the C64 flopped to.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 12 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 13:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Leif):
When the Amiga came out it instatnly flipped like hell..
later it flopped. So I guess its a flip-flop then.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 13 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Sam Smith on 10-Oct-2002 13:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Mike Veroukis):
Utter nonsense.
The Amiga sold sveral million machines over the late eighties-early nineties period making money for it's parent company.
In the UK it was the focus of over ten monthly publications two of which had ABCs of around 200,000 copies at their high points (AF and CU). - The Amiga was no flop.
The fact that Commodore was led by an inept moron at the end does not alter the fact that the Amiga was, at first, a success.
I would consider a flop to be something that doesn't actually sell very well at all - ever.
---
Sam
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 14 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mr S on 10-Oct-2002 13:56 GMT
Some of you are incredibly stupid. The Amiga was a huge flop, financially. Fact. That's the point of the article. No one gives a crap if its good technology, the only thing that matters in business is financial success. The fact that some of you still use an outdated computer as a main system is a testament to the engineers who made it, but it was still a flop. Very few people bought the thing, compared to the C64 which was much more successful.
And to imply that because Slate is part of MSN means the writer works for MS is not only wrong, but paranoid delusional. But let's entertain the notion. Let's say the writer is Steve Ballmer's ass-buddy. He writes a story about Tivo, and how history shows that the first tech company to introduce something cool usually fails, only to be beaten out by a copycat company, then shows examples: Newton, Amiga. They could throw Tucker in there as well, though that reference would be lost on most readers. Do you think anyone at MS remembers Commodore or the Amiga, much less gives a crap about things that happened almost 20 years ago? No. The only people that give a rat's ass about Amiga are the few hundred people who actually still use them.
Third place in the PC world means you're a flop. Second place means you're hanging on by your teeth. The numbers don't lie, or else Commodore would have stayed in business. It's not all because of bad business moves. It's mostly because no one wanted what they were selling. Get over it and accept the facts. The only reason Americans (the main PC market) bought Amigas was the Toaster, and not enough of them sold to keep Commodore afloat. Too little, too late.
Some of you need to start reading business trades so you can have at least a concept of what the writer is talking about. Business runs the world, not geeks.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 15 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 14:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mr S):
BS, BS, BS.
It WAS financially very profitable.
So you mean that just because it never outnumbered PCs
it was a flop ?.
Lets say I start a company selling rectangular beach-balls.
Sales take off like a rocket and I suddenly have millions
on my bank. OH NO.. I havent sold as many balls as there
have been PCs sold... I have flopped!!
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 16 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Digby on 10-Oct-2002 14:07 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Leif):
Would you consider Betamax to be a flop?
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 17 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 14:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Digby):
I have never used or seen it so I dont know.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 18 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by bah! on 10-Oct-2002 14:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mr S):
The question is "was it a flop?", not "does it still endure as a market leader?"
Selling several million units, making money, and being the predominant games machine for several years is NOT a "flop". The fact that Commodore later made serious mistakes and lost the plot does not make them or the Amiga a flop.
By your reasoning, telegraph systems, steam trains, horse and cart, gunpowder, and any other invention that is no longer saleable is a flop.
I would argue that any computer platform (or other technology) that gets a widespread market share for a reasonable period of time is NOT a flop. This inlcudes Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, Spectrum, C64, etc and etc. Or will you still consider the M$ PC a flop when it finally loses it's monopoly?
And in actual relation to the article, I think the Amiga reference is out of context. The TiVo is struggling to get into the market because, although it's a fair idea, it isn't quite what people want. The Amiga struggled to stay there because it didn't change with people's needs.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 19 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 14:24 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
"Amiga a flop? Only the third most popular microcomputer platform ever (after IBM-PC and Mac)."
Didn't the C64 far outsell the Amiga?
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 20 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Sam Smith on 10-Oct-2002 14:33 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mr S):
Eh? But that's the point - it was a financial success for several years.
Fact.
The computer market of 89 - 91 was a very different beast to what we know now. During that period the Amiga dominated the home, game, computer market.
It was a success.
And another thing - let's stop the insults shall we? Let's all start acting a little more like adults and less like spoilt children.
---
Sam
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 21 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Digby on 10-Oct-2002 14:33 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (anonymous):
So did the zx-spectrum and the MSX.
It is all about expectations - we EXPECT that computers become a platform - a "format" that will be used in the future. The Amiga as far as the mainstream is concerned is a flop because it ( to them ) is not being used.
If it evolves into something else it's not a flop, maybe.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 22 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by bah! on 10-Oct-2002 14:38 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Digby):
You contradict yourself.
The Amiga *was* a platform. It isn't much of one now, sure, but at the time (it goes back to 1987 or so?) it was *extremely* popular.
Now where is that a "flop"?
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 23 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Sam Smith on 10-Oct-2002 14:40 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (anonymous):
Yes it did.
Over 17 million in fact.
The Amiga managed over 5 million.
I believe that it still has an entry in the Guiness Book of Records as the best selling home computer ever.
They must argue that the PC is not a 'home' computer.
---
Sam
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 24 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 10-Oct-2002 14:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (bah!):
"You contradict yourself. "
How so, please explain for the intellectually challenged.
"The Amiga *was* a platform. It isn't much of one now, sure, but at the time (it goes back to 1987 or so?) it was *extremely* popular. Now where is that a "flop"? "
It "flopped" in 1994.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 25 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Leif on 10-Oct-2002 15:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Anonymous):
"it flopped in 94"
WHAT flopped in 94 ?
Commodore flipped over, thats what happened :)
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 26 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Rob on 10-Oct-2002 15:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Leif):
>By that reasoning, the C64 flopped to.
As did every Atari console, every sega console, thew NEO GEO and every
game buy SNK, all of Williams' arcade games all graphics cards
manufactured by 3DFX. Peresumably if NVIDIA go bust in about 6 years
time the GEforce 4 will have been a flop.
If Amiga was a flop then surely Commodore would have gone bust in
1986.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 27 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by mark on 10-Oct-2002 16:30 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mr S):
If you think 3rd place or below means you're a flop, then that includes a lot of computer manufacturers, including Apple. Commodore were making profits (the company it is compared to has never made a profit, claims the article), and the Amiga was selling millions for years. Being a flop has nothing to do with how many are used many years later, or whether the company goes bust at some point in the future.
It may be true that the Amiga did not succeed in the end, but to me, "flop" means more of a complete failure (and a quick check to http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=flop agrees - perhaps you should read a dictionary as well as business trades?)
But the author does not just talk about it failing in the end, he suggests it never caught on in the first place. Partly he claims because the Atari was more popular, which is anything but true (except perhaps, to begin with). When Commodore went bust, it was PCs that were taking over, and Ataris were even more forgotten.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 28 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Lando on 10-Oct-2002 17:29 GMT
When I think of flop I think of Philips CDi or Sega's 32X and Mega CD. These machines had no third party support, software titles just about into double figures and hardly any sales.
In complete contrast, the Amiga had hundreds of companies developing games and other software, thousands of software titles, and sold millions of units. It was the predominant home computer (at least here in UK) until 1994 or so when PC's had started to catch up technically (and games like Doom and X-Wing came out...). Thats not a flop. Thats a massive success.
All my friends at school had Amigas or Atari ST, I only knew one person who had a PC and nobody liked him (he smelled and wore strange clothes). When we outgrew our Spectrums/C64's/Amstrads, it was the Amiga that everyone wanted.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 29 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by strobe on 10-Oct-2002 18:07 GMT
You people are hung up on the semantics of the article instead of the main thrust of it.
The article is essentially correct. TiVo could very well die as a company because its product is far too geeky and not user friendly and doesn't fall into a category consumers are willing to buy into. What the article is saying is Commodore shot too far, trying to push a digital hub PC when the market for that wouldn't show up until now. The whole point of the article is it doesn't pay to be first to market if either the product isn't polished or it doesn't interoperate with the products which it's supposed to (because either it wasn't designed well or the products which it's supposed to be used with aren't commonplace).
Every time you bicker about whether something is a "flop" or not you end up displaying your 2" penis.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 30 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by kriz on 10-Oct-2002 18:21 GMT
Hmm I thought Commodore had to shut down partly because of their pc`s (wich were no good and didnt sell very well) ..
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 31 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 10-Oct-2002 22:45 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (Leif):
>By that reasoning, the C64 flopped to.
What are you talking about? The C64 had atleast 30% of the market if not double that at one point. When it was phased out it was only phased out because technology was advancing and moving to new things like the Amiga. The Amiga died off due to poor sales. Big difference there.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 32 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 10-Oct-2002 22:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Sam Smith):
Okay, maybe I should clarify a bit. The Amiga did well in the UK and Germany, but in the US and Canada it always struggled. At first it was at mainstream stores here in Canada like Compucenter and Futureshop but it was eventually dropped due to poor sales. This was well before the demise of C=. So here in NA the Amiga flopped. In Europe it may have been a slightly different story. Don't want to sound arrogant, but the US market is the make or break market for most products. The NA Amiga was loosing ground from the start, and if it wasn't for the video toaster C= probably would have died even sooner.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 33 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 10-Oct-2002 23:03 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Leif):
>It WAS financially very profitable.
Well... I can see how someone might argue that the A500 generated a lot of profit in the early years, especially in Europe, but once C= started to phase out the A500 the Amiga market share stagnated pretty quickly. The A600 did very poorly. The A1200 did better but no where near what the A500 did. I would also imagine the profit margine on the A1200 was smaller then the A500. A4000s are pretty rare and where geared towards the pros not the mass market. Fact is the Amiga market fell apart with the fall of the A500 and a few years later C= filed for bankrupcy. So one might argue that the A500 was a success but Amiga over all was a bit of a flop. I hate to say it, C= could have done a better job to turn things around. It's not the Amiga's fault, obviously, it was Commodore's fault, and I think we all know this. Right?
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 34 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 11-Oct-2002 04:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (strobe):
>TiVo could very well die as a company because its product is far too geeky and
>not user friendly and doesn't fall into a category consumers are willing to\
>buy into. What the article is saying is Commodore shot too far, trying to push
>a digital hub PC when the market for that wouldn't show up until now.
Not too sure how TiVo works. I'm really curious as to why one needs a subscription??? Isn't it just a digital VCR? Strange. Anyway, I think Commodore never really understoof the Amiga. They never knew how to market it. All their attempts at advertisements were incredibly cheesy and lame. The Amiga sold itself despite Commorode. Commodore wasn't sure if it had a serious business machine, a game machine or a video dream machine. I suppose the fact that the Amiga was superior at everything was what did it in in the end. Commodore couldn't focus on any particulkar market and they simply weren't big enough to do an all out blitz on the media and they instead went no where. NewTek helped the Amiga in a big way by giving it some credibility in the pro video department and it got some respect. Then Commodore fumbled with hardware advancements, AGA was hardly mind blowing and lacked chunky pixel modes which the PC was fully exploiting at the time. In fact, I'd say that if AGA had chunky pixel capabilities Commodore would still be around, but oh well those days, along with those dreams are far gone. This is life in the digital age.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 35 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 11-Oct-2002 04:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Sam Smith):
>The computer market of 89 - 91 was a very different beast to what we know now.
>During that period the Amiga dominated the home, game, computer market.
That's highly arguable. The Amiga might have had the best games but even then the money was in the PC market. Once Doom came out it was pretty much over for the Amiga game market. At any rate, the game market back then was not what it is today. The computer game market was pretty small, far behind the business and education markets which the PC and Apple owned respectively. And again, the Amiga never really did catch on here in north america. perhaps it was a different story in Europe.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 36 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Janne Sirén on 11-Oct-2002 04:46 GMT
In reply to Comment 35 (Mike Veroukis):
>perhaps it was a different story in Europe
Yeah, well, that I guess is the problem with the article in question and this whole debate. We have an American (in the article) declaring the Amiga a flop, when the market where it flourished was Europe. Perhaps it was a flop in the States, I wouldn't presume to know. I know it was not so here.
Trust me, it was NOT a flop here. From late eighties to very early nineties it ruled. No matter how much you to try compare it to the much cheaper C64 or something, you can not say the A500 was a flop in Europe. It certainly was not in Finland, and I do remember those visits to places like U.K...
One doesn't need to do more than check some of the European home computing magazines of the time.
Sure, the computer market was much smaller then, but then you have to look at things in a context. Within that market the Amiga won all competition in much of Europe in the end (not in quantity, say, compared to the cheaper and longer-lived C64 but for a while certainly was THE gaming oriented home computer to buy).
Until the PC catched up sufficiently and Commodore didn't manage to keep up, of course. DOOM didn't get here until 1993. Amiga's heyday was prior to that.
There was more diversity back then, so there was more competition as well, but when the PC caught on there really wasn't anything else left in the home computer market here. Except for the Amiga. Even the CD32 started out as a late-blooming success for Amiga here, but then Commodore went bust.
Of course, the C64 was even more of a success then the Amiga. No denying that. Numbers and the undeniable global coverage speak for that. But unless was has a very weird definition of a flop, the Amiga was not flop. You might say a certain Amiga was a flop (say, the A600) but you can not say that of the A500.
But now I'm rambling. :-) Good discussion, thanks.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 37 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Serge Guillaume on 11-Oct-2002 05:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Lando):
This may be a bit off topic, but I think MegaCD and 32X were very different from CD-i. They were the result of Sega's attempt to keep an ageing 16-bit system alive, whereas the CD-i was intended to become a new CD-based multimedia platform for everyone's living room, licensed to several manufacturers.
The CD-i was a real flop, a whole new product that never took off. Yet it was far from a geek's machine (its UI was sooo simple), it flopped because the concept was ahead of its time (like the CDTV before) and the hardware limited. The A500 in its time was built around the well-known concept of the home computer, but with a killer hardware, expansion ports and (as an option for gamers) a complex UI.
BTW CD-is make very decent-looking CD-players.
Serge
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 38 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by themoose on 11-Oct-2002 06:40 GMT
The Amiga didn't flop, Commodore did.
CBM built too many A500 and A600s. They had a huge amount of old stock they
couldn't shift. Despite the fact their money was tied up in all this old
stock, they spent more money on desiging the CDTV and CD32, which did flop.
They ran out of money.
I spent a year trying to buy my A4000 - they just couldn't be found, anywhere.
Commodore fixed returned A4000 and sold them again. Some poor bugger is missing his A4000 because he sent it back to CBM to be fixed and some enterprising employee fixed it and sold it to me. I got my machine just before they went bust.
If they had concentrated on what people actually wanted, they would never have gone bust, they _could_ have kept one step ahead of Wintel and DOOM _would_ have been on Amiga not on PC.
Yes DOOM stuff is bloody difficult on AGA but they could have done a different chipset, sooner. People said Amiga owners don't upgrade their machines - remember that? (They should see them now!) But those same Amiga owners sure
spent money upgrading to PCs once Wolfenstien and Doom were arround.
Commodore failed Amiga and the users left in droves.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 39 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 11-Oct-2002 07:58 GMT
In the Uk they had a smart marketing person making lots of right moves, they were replaced with someone stupid and arrogant.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 40 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Solar on 11-Oct-2002 10:47 GMT
You blame it on the marketing. You blame it on the Commodore PCs.
I blame it on lack of development.
By the time AGA / Zorro III / OS 3.0 / MC68040 appeared on the Amiga, the competition had already catched up much of the head start Amiga had - and was picking up speed with every day, while Amiga slowed down.
I had some hope that there was room for a reversal of those effects, for some time. Some of you here still have. But you can't just blame it on the marketing, or the Commodore PC's. Not pushing everything they had behind their flaggship, and not making the Amiga an open standard when they ran out of funds to push it themselves, that's the real blame.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 41 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 11-Oct-2002 11:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 40 (Solar):
>I blame it on lack of development.
>
>By the time AGA / Zorro III / OS 3.0 / MC68040 appeared on the Amiga, the
>competition had already catched up much of the head start Amiga had - and was
>picking up speed with every day, while Amiga slowed down.
I understand what you're getting at, but to me marketing is more then just advertising. The marketing department has to scope the market and tell the developers what needs to be developed. Marketing has to set the path for the company and in Commodore's case marketing didn't do much of anything.
- Mike
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 42 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Roj on 11-Oct-2002 12:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 41 (Mike Veroukis):
That's a very good point. It makes me wonder what AInc and Hyperion
have in mind for marketing in the future, especially outside the Amiga
community.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 43 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Jo on 11-Oct-2002 18:22 GMT
I use , mmm, i think about 18 years as a pro , computers...(AMIGA and the rest)
How do you dare to say/ask that the AMIGA was a .....
Shame on you...
Jo
Belgium
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 44 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by jo on 11-Oct-2002 18:24 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
Hello,
Do you live on mars ???
greettzzz...
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 45 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by sfsdfa on 12-Oct-2002 04:36 GMT
Amiga was a flop ...the PLATFORM 'DIED" ...DUHHH...it FLOPPED.....it's gone...nada...no more..
and the company that made it went right along with it to the grave.
Amiga was technically very advanced...it made 'SOME" money...but it tanked like a granite life preserver...
I like the Amiga...it was technically advanced...and he didnt say it wasnt...but it was i'll marketed and it flopped due to that.
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 46 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Raffaele on 12-Oct-2002 07:37 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (Lando):
1) The person talking about the TiVO is probably a lamish person. He had to kill the TiVO and uses Amiga as the sole argument he can use to make a comparison.
He failed because he uses Amiga as stone of comparison while he must point to products similar to TiVO such as Casablanca.
Casablanca was a good digital VCR based on Motorola 68040, recording on SCSI HDDs, but certainly it did not sold so many machines…
(By the way is TiVO from the same people of Casablanca? I didn’t check about this fact.)
2) the fact that moron MUST use Amiga as comparison indicates that Amiga is still well known, in the good or in the worst.
3) Remember (or listen) about the things the great Dante Alighieri wrote in XIII sec. in the Divine Comedy about the Indolents(*) who lay after the Doors of the Hell but outside it, because even the Hell refuses to be contaminated by this mob:
«Non ti curar di lor, ma guarda e passa!»
In English:
«Don’t take care of them, but look (simply take a look at them) and pass away)».
So, Don’t look at that moron who wrote bad of Amiga, just pass away.
4) FLOP? What is a flop? A lots of things in the past were considered flop because the firm which manufactured them sunk down and then they were manufactured by other firms… from the other hand, there are plenty of things which needed a lots of time to gain consideration they deserved…
Some examples?
Computers themselves, television, underclothes, steam engine boats (train was a success compared to the acceptance of steam engine boats), water closet seat and bidet seat (this last one still not used in many countries because in the past it was considered *indecent* and for prostitutes only), the plough with plough-share (2000 years passed and in some countries is still used plough simple).
How about the Flop of IBM? In the ’80 IBM was the ABSOLUTE LEADER, I mean it *REALLY* DOMINATED the computer market.
The fact they didn’t trademark the architecture of the PC-IBM left open the backdoor to the chinese clones which eroded IBM Market…
…The fact they didn’t bind Microsoft with a tie contract and non-disclosure about the DOS they bought, left open Microsoft the backdoor to realize MS-DOS.
…And later it was pinched up by Microsoft in the unfortunate OS/2 affaire, in which it is plain and clear that MS picked from OS/2 a lots of coding and information technology they could carry out up to realize Windows 95 and then they came out from the project leaving IBM with pants down.
Results? IBM suffered of a huge restructuring, became smaller and now is none but a company among the others. It is becoming a firm offering services, instead of a manufacturing firm.
--- Answers to some comments ---
In comment 28 lando wrote:
> When I think of flop I think of Philips CDi or Sega's 32X and Mega CD.
> These machines had no third party support, software titles just about into
> double figures and hardly any sales.
Dear Lando, don't forget machines like 3DO born as an Amiga and AmigaCD32 Killer and immediately nicknamed 3D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival).
And there is someone who remembers the Jaguar? I had to search on a site involved in console history to recall about it…
In comment 32 Mike Veroukis wrote:
> Okay, maybe I should clarify a bit.
> The Amiga did well in the UK and Germany, but in the US and Canada it always struggled.
> At first it was at mainstream stores here in Canada like Compucenter and Futureshop
> but it was eventually dropped due to poor sales.
This is because Amiga was considered a serious computer for long haired people, geeks, artists, etc. and because IT WAS LAUNCHED as a multimedia computer by some talented people like Andy Wahrol.
CBM spends a lots of money for the launch of Amiga (a rare event) but does not push it in the market of North America as a game console as did in Europe.
Certainly Amiga had a great market in North America in the world of Video production, but this fact moved it quickly towards a niche environment.
> The Amiga did well in the UK and Germany,
It did it also in Italy. After the launch of A 2000 and A500 we were the first in Europe with 10.000 machines. First country in which was produced an Amiga magazine made entirelly by Amigas (Enigma Amiga Run).
Then UK and Germany quickly surpassed us, and in UK there were sold over 1.000.000 machines.
By the way, total number of machines sold in Italy about 250.000.
Sure I think that best division of CBM worldwide was CBM Germany who creates A2000 and A500, the desktop machine and the PC/Home, both created the true fortune of Amiga, and that the most aggressive about the market was the UK division…
In Msg. 34 Mike Veroukis also wrote:
> The Amiga sold itself despite Commodore
Yes man! You are right!
> NewTek helped the Amiga in a big way by giving it some credibility in the pro video department and it got some respect.
Hundred of people claim Newtek for a PAL TV Standard version of Videotoaster and Newtek leave them unheard. Lamish!!!
Bye,
Raf
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Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 47 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Raffaele on 12-Oct-2002 07:41 GMT
--- continues from previous message ---
About Commodore:
They had an invoice balance of about 10 million dollars of assets in comparison to all the budget of about 100 millions dollars (100 millions dollars was the entire balance IF I remember well)...
...and THE INFAMOUS DUO (Gould-Ali) eroded all the assets in millionaire salaries (their salaries) and continuous squandering like the corporate jet, which was used 2 times a week to collect CBM directors and travel them to Bahamas (the place in which Gould had his place of residence and in which CBM firm was moved), only to issue two times a week the corporate business meeting of CBM management...
(this latest news I mentioned is a report of a voice from the street)
They spended a lots of money to move CBM directors from a place to another instead of supporting projects like Amiga DSP, Amiga Unix, Amiga 24bit Colour Card, Amiga AAA chips (only to mention some)...
Gould had deserved to continue to sell Pepsi'cans instead of killing the golden eggs chicken (i.e. pillaging the CBM).
But even stingy avaricious things was made by CBM management (before the infamous duo had to come) refused to spend a few cents (52 cents?) in manufacturing on any A500 motherboard a MIDI interface built in (and that thingie had had canceled Atari positively in musical business environment)...
Take some examples in comparison to the CBM behaviour:
PHILIPS
Philips lost a HUGE amount of money in supporting their loser product CDi even after his worldwide debacle ONLY NOT TO LOSE ITS IMAGE so they rescued their reputation...
ATARI
they had a NAME because Nolan Bushnell litterally invented the market of Arcade videogames & Coin-ops, then the market of home videogame consoles, and spended a HUGE amount of money in advertisements.
Think about the movie Blade Runner, Atari advertisements are everywhere.
Within 100 years, every moron who will see that movie, then he will start to thing that we all had an Atari at our home.
APPLE
Needed not to spend money because they invented the Macintosh and this computer became rapidly a MYTH...
It received non-direct advertising from hundreds of creative people worldwide.
An example:
The Mac hit the hearts of people like Douglas Adams the author of "The Hitch-hikers'Guide to the Galaxy" who celebrates the Mac in every book he wrote ("How good is the Macintosh!", "How good this computer is"!).
And we are talking of a masterpiece in sci-fi literature, well known also outside sci-fi environment because it is a good funny hilarious book...
Another example, here in Italy there is a very famous comics character "Doctor Martin Mystere" (Martin Mystery in English edition).
The character is a talented University Professor who indagates unsolved archeological mysteries (Atlantis, Agarhti, Yeti, Avalon, etc., etc.).
Martin Mystere usually starts (or finish) a story by collecting the adventures he had lived into WP files on his Macintosh, so the first stripes usually shows the character writing in front of the screen of his Mac.
There were stories in which Martin Mystere mumbles about to change his old 128K Macintosh, and finally it was replaced in other stories with some more recent models.
Some curiosities:
Even Amiga was showed into Martin Mystere comics.
It was a story about the early computer viruses... and do you believe it? Only to show the SKA Virus screen!
The underneath strip said "Computer viruses are a well known problem on some platforms!"
(By the way, the Amiga logo was not drawn to avoid legal suit!!!).
And finally:
Do you remember movie "Star Trek IV the Voyage Home"? We who use Amiga can recognize Amiga fonts when Spock wrote on his computer... BUT IT WAS NOT SHOWN IT IS AN AMIGA!!! The computer which "won the competition" for the "best non human actor" in that movie was Macintosh used by Scotty to realize chemical formula for the aluminium transparent glass.
That’s it.
Bad historians want to modify history to use Amiga as an example of something worst.
In the hands of those who really used the Amiga (we who understood the philosophy of using an elegant computer) lays the responsibility to write a decent version of the history, (the things as they happened) and leave in times to come (among the public opinion) a positive image of the Amiga and the place in the history she deserves.
Bye,
Raf
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 48 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Julian Cassin on 12-Oct-2002 08:08 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mr S):
I wonder which models of other computers really did outsell specific Amiga models? I am sure that Commodore made a sh*tload of money out of the Amiga and that would consider it definately not a flop!
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 49 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by Julian Cassin on 12-Oct-2002 08:10 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (strobe):
To some degree I have to agree, the Amiga and the TIVO - both are not sheep feed!
Was the Amiga a flop? : Comment 50 of 60ANN.lu
Posted by KARL on 12-Oct-2002 09:38 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (kriz):
The Amiga did not flop, it made money. Commodore went bust trying to be a multi platform company and make crap IBuM clones as well. These did not sell and
Commodore lost a big wedge.
The Amiga did not get developed enough due to lack of cash so did not sell as well. Commodore did not make enough profit from the Amiga to cover the losses it made trying to make and sell IBuM clones.
What I am saying is Commodore flopped not the Amiga.
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