What would U have done to make the Amiga succeed better?

[Keatah]

Back in 1984/1985, the Amiga announced unparalleled sound + graphics. And yet it didn't make a big impact on the computer industry. Everyone was content to plod along with their PC monstrosities. Only some artists and broadcasters picked up on it and used it as a practical tool.

 

I wonder if the machine was ahead of its time and the general populace didn't understand how to integrate its capabilities into their activities? Or could it have been the slightly "off" formats the OS used, like IFF. Or maybe it was made of cheap plastic compared to industrial strength metal like the PC?

 

So, what would you have done back in the day to better position the Amiga platform?

[phoenixdownita]

Nahh, in Europe it was all the rage. It was also extensively used in small video studios (as a titler or genlocked for overlay graphics).

Homebrew 3D imagery was almost born there. The 32/64 simultaneous colors out of a palette of 4096 was very high compared to what the CGA offered, even the EGA was only 16 colors out of 64.

 

What killed it was its incapacity to evolve in a back compat manner and at a faster pace.

The chipset it used had a clear advantage over its contemporaries but rather than capitalize and evolve, Commodore "stood still" for way too long.

It is possible that its fantastic chipset was its gift and its curse, it was designed over-optimized for the DRAM access pattern of the time and knowing how the 68K bus accesses work to tolerate for up to 28 "concurrent" DMA channels ... outstanding and a marvel of engineering for the time but ultimately it was "a bag of one trick ponies" and that made it very hard to evolve.

['cmon to this day no system can display "screens" at different res as bands on the same monitor ... with some limit granted (if one flickers they all do )]

 

It didn't really cater to the professionals as it didn't really have a high resolution video mode, I mean the flicker was terrible in 640x512 for anything serious (even editing text for programming put a strain on the eyes). Bitmap fonts were a cool gimmick in low-res but borderline useless anywhere else (like on actual paper). On top of it the basic it came with was dog slow (although it had no line numbers ... that's was "WOW" back then)

 

It did have a very advanced OS, at the time preemptive multitasking was not offered on anything but Unix workstations and up, and yes it missed the boat on the MMU but the cost would have been likely too high ... albeit a 68010 as a base could have helped a little temper the bad behaviors of a whole class of programs.

 

I loved it, I learnt to actually program in C on it, and basic gfx editing (DeLuxe Paint II), and some basic music (via Aegis Sonix though, SoundTracker was way too advanced for me). I had to use an AtOnce Vortex on it as the school I was going to taught Pascal on DOS machines and that little kludge worked wonders, it could even run Windows 2.x in Monochrome ... unbelievable.

[Bill Loguidice]

What I would have done was position it as a type of "universal computer." Advertise the hell out of the fact that it could be made compatible with PC DOS, Macintosh, and C-64, all the while talking about its state-of-the-art "native" Amiga mode. Make it this type of aspirational building block computer. This way you could target businesses as well as home users, and everything in-between.

 

Of course, I'm of the opinion that nothing was going to stop the continued rise of PC DOS (and eventually, Windows) computers. Markets like this love standards, and the Amiga was simply never going to be a standard in a world of dozens of inexpensive, quality PC clone machines.

[zzip]

Back in 1984/1985, the Amiga announced unparalleled sound + graphics. And yet it didn't make a big impact on the computer industry. Everyone was content to plod along with their PC monstrosities. Only some artists and broadcasters picked up on it and used it as a practical tool.

 

I wonder if the machine was ahead of its time and the general populace didn't understand how to integrate its capabilities into their activities? Or could it have been the slightly "off" formats the OS used, like IFF. Or maybe it was made of cheap plastic compared to industrial strength metal like the PC?

 

So, what would you have done back in the day to better position the Amiga platform?

 

It was doomed from the beginning, we just didn't realize it yet.

 

The only thing that could have saved it would be derailing the PC market. If IBM had made different design decisions with the PC. Maybe making it a bit more proprietary and not giving the clone market a chance to take off, then alternatives would have had a chance.

 

But PCs just gathered steam as the decade wore on, the competition lead to rapid advancement of specs, the economies of scale drove down prices below what Amiga could compete with.

[roland p]

It should have been a console instead of a computer.

 

Someone already made a thread about that: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/248927-how-would-a-game-console-amiga-have-competed/

Edited February 28, 2018 by roland p

[JamesD]

The Amiga needed mainstream software titles, it needed to continue the push for more speed and graphics to appear to be a leading machine.

Offer developer cash to port popular applications. Getting Printshop, Word Perfect, Lotus, etc... early on would have helped sales.

Improve the Amiga Transformer emulation software and make it work with 68010+ CPUs. Release it for free.

Make Microsoft fix AmigaBASIC so it worked with expanded memory and properly worked with the OS.
Provide additional libraries to make using IFF files easy. (load/save pictures, sounds, music, etc...)

Make changes to the OS for future enhancements for virtual memory, protected memory, and multiple CPU support.
Make changes to the OS to make supporting new graphics capabilities easier. It was linked too closely to the launch hardware design.

Continue development on the the multi-cpu boards for the 3000. Continued development of the 3000+.
As Motorola lagged in speed improvements, that could have been offset by adding more CPUs, with DSP support, etc...
At the very least, this would have strengthened their hold on the video production market due to the ability to render 3D much faster.

Release the CDTV with a 14MHz 68ec020, internal expansion for FAST RAM, 2x CD, CD tray, and an IDE port for a hard drive.
Market it to schools and for corporate training (instructional technology) along with systems/software for video capture and CD production for the machines.
Full screen video should have been possible without the MPEG decoder and it would have been a far cheaper solution than PCs with video discs and specialized graphics cards.
This is a market they could have dominated just like video production.

Chunky pixel graphics modes.


Advertise. Don't just advertise it like the next C64 either.

[juansolo]

It was huge in Europe. People forget this. There was a period when computers, not consoles ruled in Europe and though the ST set out strong out of the gates, it was quickly superseded by the Amiga. It was the prominent games platform and was used heavily in CG circles. It had momentum here and awful mismanagement killed it more than anything else. A string of terrible decisions culminating with the release of the CD32 and A1200 just killed them. When Doom happened, it was already over.

 

Which is a crying shame because in comparison the PC was such a step backwards. The PC was just shoving a big V8 into an old vintage car. The Amiga in comparison was a racing car that was getting long in the tooth, but was still filled with cutting edge goodness, and just needed some more development.

Edited February 28, 2018 by juansolo

[Bill Loguidice]

It was huge in Europe. People forget this. There was a period when computers, not consoles ruled in Europe and though the ST set out strong out of the gates, it was quickly superseded by the Amiga. It was the prominent games platform and was used heavily in CG circles. It had momentum here and awful mismanagement killed it more than anything else. A string of terrible decisions culminating with the release of the CD32 and A1200 just killed them. When Doom happened, it was already over.

 

Which is a crying shame because in comparison the PC was such a step backwards. The PC was just shoving a big V8 into an old vintage car. The Amiga in comparison was a racing car that was getting long in the tooth, but was still filled with cutting edge goodness, and just needed some more development.

 

Huge is relative, of course, but it was certainly more popular in Europe than it was anywhere else, including the US. In the US, for a time, the Amiga was a relevant, if distant number two gaming computer behind the PC, but the US market didn't really transition to the AGA systems. By then, the PC was a more attractive option and AGA was a non-factor outside of some Amiga die-hards here.

 

In any case, no matter how big the Amiga was in Europe, it was still inevitable for the PC to eventually dominate even there. It's hard to see how the Amiga could have carved out a survivable single digit market percentage like the Macintosh with Commodore's relatively meager margins and poor financial standing.

[White Flame]

As a home computer, it should have better gaming facilities. At least 3 buttons on the joystick (which would have been compatible with the pinout), tile-based graphics, and smaller but more plentiful & hardware multiplexed sprites were what won out for 2d gaming. The blitter was insufficient for really dynamic gaming, and palette-per-playfield is much more limited than palette-per-tile.

 

Non-interlaced VGA should have become standard.

 

But really, the failure of the Amiga was Commodore's executives just cashing out and not caring about future success.

[zzip]

As a home computer, it should have better gaming facilities. At least 3 buttons on the joystick (which would have been compatible with the pinout), tile-based graphics, and smaller but more plentiful & hardware multiplexed sprites were what won out for 2d gaming. The blitter was insufficient for really dynamic gaming, and palette-per-playfield is much more limited than palette-per-tile.

 

 

When this generation of computer released (Amiga/ST/Mac), Tile/Character based graphics modes were seen as a relic of the past for the old text-based OS's The idea was bit-mapped graphics was all that was needed because they'd all be running GUIs anyway. I remember magazines (Compute?) touting this as visionary.

 

It is kind of unfortunate because text-rendering is relatively slow on these systems.

[rpiguy9907]

Commodore/Tramiel destroyed their relationship with resellers and distributors by allowing mail order houses and retailers like K-Mart to undercut them in the great price war with Texas Instruments. Commodore didn't only destroy their competitors, they destroyed their own distribution network and never recovered.

 

Because the Amiga 1000 was too expensive for K-Mart and Sears, there was literally no distribution channel for it. This was super important before the internet and direct sales.

 

Commodore literally had a product and no way to get it to consumers in the United States.

 

THEY ALSO STUCK THEIR NOSES UP AT THEIR 8-BIT USERS

 

Probably because the Amiga was an acquired company, it shared nothing with the Commodore 64.

 

Want to use your monitor? You will have to use inferior Composite out.

 

Want to get files off your old disks? You need to buy an adaptor and special software.

 

Want to use that Commodore printer you got with your C64? Sorry we won't include drivers or a connection for it.

 

At the time this created a rift between the two sets of customers. You will even read in Amiga magazines the editors imploring Commodore to stop "wasting" resources on 8-bit and go all-in on the Amiga.

 

In the 8-bit magazines you will read complaints about Amiga snobs, lol.

 

There are some things that would have helped:

 

- Better marketing

- PAL version of A1000 at launch, not a year late

- A500 like product at launch (could sell in Kmart/Sears, etc.)

- Better hard disk/standard hard disk at launch

- A bone for their huge 8-bit user base

- Distributors

- Invest more in AmigaDOS (couldn't boot from hard drive until 1.3 if I recall correctly)

 

I could go on... They only got more boneheaded as time marched on, but from the beginning they were doomed.

[rpiguy9907]

Commodore/Tramiel destroyed their relationship with resellers and distributors by allowing mail order houses and retailers like K-Mart to undercut them in the great price war with Texas Instruments. Commodore didn't only destroy their competitors, they destroyed their own distribution network and never recovered.

 

Because the Amiga 1000 was too expensive for K-Mart and Sears, there was literally no distribution channel for it. This was super important before the internet and direct sales.

 

Commodore literally had a product and no way to get it to consumers in the United States.

 

THEY ALSO STUCK THEIR NOSES UP AT THEIR 8-BIT USERS

 

Probably because the Amiga was an acquired company, it shared nothing with the Commodore 64.

 

Want to use your monitor? You will have to use inferior Composite out.

 

Want to get files off your old disks? You need to buy an adaptor and special software.

 

Want to use that Commodore printer you got with your C64? Sorry we won't include drivers or a connection for it.

 

At the time this created a rift between the two sets of customers. You will even read in Amiga magazines the editors imploring Commodore to stop "wasting" resources on 8-bit and go all-in on the Amiga.

 

In the 8-bit magazines you will read complaints about Amiga snobs, lol.

 

There are some things that would have helped:

 

- Better marketing

- PAL version of A1000 at launch, not a year late

- A500 like product at launch (could sell in Kmart/Sears, etc.)

- Better hard disk/standard hard disk at launch

- A bone for their huge 8-bit user base

- Distributors

- Invest more in AmigaDOS (couldn't boot from hard drive until 1.3 if I recall correctly)

 

I could go on... They only got more boneheaded as time marched on, but from the beginning they were doomed.

[Bill Loguidice]

I disagree about the "stuck their noses up at their 8-bit users." There's nothing wrong with a clean break. Certainly when I went from a C-64 to an Amiga 500, I had no expectations of using anything from that system other than the joysticks. I can't really think of anyone I knew - or anything in magazines or whatever - to indicate Amiga sales were retarded in any way by the lack of legacy compatibility. In fact, Commodore (and others if I recall) even had a C-64 emulator for the Amiga, so I'd hardly call that abandoning.

[rpiguy9907]

Many, many letters to the editor would disagree with you Bill. At the time the two communities were quite antagonistic, and Commodore did little to entice 8-bit users to upgrade. Even the later trade in programs were a bit of a joke, but not as much of a joke as the emulator which ran word processors at two thirds speed and choked on most games.

 

I dont think folks expected compatibility, but thrifty VIC-20 and 64 buyers werent eager to buy all new everything (monitor, printer, etc.)

 

Not enticing the 8-bit base to upgrade was a major missed opportunity.

[zzip]

THEY ALSO STUCK THEIR NOSES UP AT THEIR 8-BIT USERS

 

Probably because the Amiga was an acquired company, it shared nothing with the Commodore 64.

 

Want to use your monitor? You will have to use inferior Composite out.

 

Want to get files off your old disks? You need to buy an adaptor and special software.

 

Want to use that Commodore printer you got with your C64? Sorry we won't include drivers or a connection for it.

 

At the time this created a rift between the two sets of customers. You will even read in Amiga magazines the editors imploring Commodore to stop "wasting" resources on 8-bit and go all-in on the Amiga.

 

In the 8-bit magazines you will read complaints about Amiga snobs, lol.

 

 

But was this any different than the rift Apple famously created with the Mac vs IIGS? It didn't stop them

Edited March 1, 2018 by zzip

[rpiguy9907]

 

But was this any different than the rift Apple famously created with the Mac vs IIGS? It didn't stop them

 

 

That is a great and interesting question. At first there was quite a bit of backlash in the Apple 2 community when the Mac was announced because it was supposed to cost $1000 but in actuality was released at $2500 dollars. Once that died down the two camps bifurcated pretty amicably with the Apple 2 in one market segment and the Mac in another. Perhaps it was because the Mac was so different from the Apple 2, or something about the users that lead to less strife between the two.

 

There was less of an upgrade issue anyway, because the Mac came with a monitor built in and you could share printers. Heck by the time the IIgs and IIc Plus came out they used the same connectors as the Mac, and you could get an Apple 2 card for your LC.

 

When the IIgs was cancelled there was a bit of backlash from the last holder's on, but 1992 was very different from 1985. Many Apple II users had moved off the platform by then.

 

Could just be that Commodore folk like me were a particular lot :-)

[zzip]

 

 

That is a great and interesting question. At first there was quite a bit of backlash in the Apple 2 community when the Mac was announced because it was supposed to cost $1000 but in actuality was released at $2500 dollars. Once that died down the two camps bifurcated pretty amicably with the Apple 2 in one market segment and the Mac in another. Perhaps it was because the Mac was so different from the Apple 2, or something about the users that lead to less strife between the two.

 

There was less of an upgrade issue anyway, because the Mac came with a monitor built in and you could share printers. Heck by the time the IIgs and IIc Plus came out they used the same connectors as the Mac, and you could get an Apple 2 card for your LC.

 

When the IIgs was cancelled there was a bit of backlash from the last holder's on, but 1992 was very different from 1985. Many Apple II users had moved off the platform by then.

 

Could just be that Commodore folk like me were a particular lot :-)

 

What I meant was the Apple management wasn't too keen on the IIgs because they thought it could cannibalize mac sales, so they purposely crippled it.

 

The Atari 8-bit user base was also at odds with the ST base as well, and there were very few shared peripherals there either-- but I don't think this was as deliberate as it was for Apple, at any rate Atari suffered the same fate as Amiga.

[Keatah]

Heh yeh the Amiga can be described as a bag of one-trick-wonders. Not bad in and of itself when it comes to that sort of thing. Though the industry wasn't looking for such a device. That and standards, but I've beat the "standards" argument to death, so I won't continue with that. There are other things, too, that needed to be different.

 

The A1000 needed to be more durable and rugged, not some cheap-o plastic. I never had a problem with my A1000, and little some issues with my A500. It was a warm day, and my soda can formed condensation that dribbled down into live powered-on circuitry. I recall the red and green light going wonky and the machine locked up. When it dried out it was alright.

 

I also found the connections in back were rather flimsy and I often had to re-seat them.

 

Despite the PC, PC-AT, and PC-XT's seemingly inferior performance they were rugged enough to work in the business and commercial environment. At the time I didn't recognize that, but it made sense to build them like tanks.

 

2 other aspects need mentioning.

 

The PC was adept at pushing text around very quickly. I bet the 8088 and 8086 issued less instructions to print a character on the screen than the Amiga with its complex bit-mapped graphics. The PC was very similar to the Apple II in how that took place. This made the PC desirable for a great many people who were in a position of power (to say it dramatically) to buy them and create demand. Every business wanted one.

 

Though the PC would eventually switch entirely to bit-mapped text, there would be low-cost "Windows Accelerators" which covered the text primitives and basic line drawing functions for Windows' windows. These accelerators were available even in lowly $150 graphics cards sold at every store.

 

What seemingly a strength (bitmapped text) for the Amiga turned out to be a liability because the hardware never evolved.

 

The next point was the documentation. At the time I didn't know how important complete and thorough documentation was, but I do today. I only took note of a sense of warmth and sophistication when I saw what the Apple II and the PC had. Both were documented inside and out in 100 different ways. And the PC manuals were all printed and bound in binders and books as durable as the computer itself. There was lots of reference material and this doesn't include the thousands of 3rd party books published and sold at retail computer stores like Compu-Shop or ComputerLand.

 

And of course there was Commodore, they more or less dropped the ball and I think they wanted to rely too much on consumers and industry to support the machine. I don't doubt IBM had a huge and mobilized salesforce writing contracts daily to sell trucks of the PC. What did Commodore do?

 

The wife said they spent too much time writing demos and not enough time making applications. This also seems to be true. When I had my A1000, that's all I could do with it! Watch demos. When I got my PC I was able to get into productivity instantly, out of the box, the same evening.

 

So yes, there were lots of things C= needed to do differently.

[roland p]

The wife said they spent too much time writing demos and not enough time making applications. This also seems to be true. When I had my A1000, that's all I could do with it! Watch demos. When I got my PC I was able to get into productivity instantly, out of the box, the same evening.

 

 

I disagree. I don't think that the people who made demos are the same people that make productivity applications.

 

The harsh truth is that, for productivity you don't need fancy sound/graphics. Behind every 'app' you use there could be a boring database running with tables and columns

[zzip]

Despite the PC, PC-AT, and PC-XT's seemingly inferior performance they were rugged enough to work in the business and commercial environment. At the time I didn't recognize that, but it made sense to build them like tanks.

Those old PCs certainly were built like tanks. I'm not sure that really was a secret to their success though, as it helped send the costs skyrocketing and they were priced out of most home-users budgets. Later PCs and clones were built out of much cheaper material. I got an original PC as surplus and the thing was utter crap, but I can't argue with the build quality, and it had a VERY nice keyboard, easy to type on compared the the mushy keyboard on my ST.

 

 

The PC was adept at pushing text around very quickly. I bet the 8088 and 8086 issued less instructions to print a character on the screen than the Amiga with its complex bit-mapped graphics. The PC was very similar to the Apple II in how that took place. This made the PC desirable for a great many people who were in a position of power (to say it dramatically) to buy them and create demand. Every business wanted one.

This is true on a PC one text character means pushing a single byte, while an 8x16 font on an Amiga would require 16-bytes pushed per character. It's even worse for a scalable font.

 

Though the PC would eventually switch entirely to bit-mapped text, there would be low-cost "Windows Accelerators" which covered the text primitives and basic line drawing functions for Windows' windows. These accelerators were available even in lowly $150 graphics cards sold at every store.

Didn't the Amiga use the blitter for graphics in the UI? The ST machines that had blitter chips drew text and GUI graphics noticeably faster when it was enabled in the UI. This was kind of an early form of graphics accelerators.

[rpiguy9907]

Keatah's point is well taken. Amiga and STE blitters were still quite slow for full screen scrolling of text at 640x200/400 resolutions compared to the IBM PC. There were a couple of quite fast text editors, Transwrite and CygnusEd come to mind, but they were not full word processors. Plus a lot of folks said, hey we want it to have graphics and be fast. Why give us a graphical word processor only for it to be so slow?

 

It was like giving someone a Ferrari with a Hyundai four cylinder engine. Why give me a car with carbon ceramic breaks, dynamic stability control, and 200MPH rated tires when I can't even chirp the tires on launch?

 

Part of the Amiga's problem was that it was way ahead of its time. Multitasking really requires more memory than was practical on launch (for a home computer). Scrolling bitmapped text at high resolution takes more memory bandwidth than was available at the time of its launch, etc.

 

The Amiga was not the only computer criticized for this. The Epson QX-10 with Valdocs and bitmapped texts was thoroughly criticized at the time.

 

So to Keatah's point, some kind of character might have helped.

 

I disagree with Keatah that the A1000 needed to be better made. I would argue it needed to be more cheaply made. Commodore chose to have it made a facility in Japan that cost a lot more than their facility in Hong Kong. Had the A1000 been made in Hong Kong, it could have shaved hundreds off the introductory price.

[rpiguy9907]

Keatah's point is well taken. Amiga and STE blitters were still quite slow for full screen scrolling of text at 640x200/400 resolutions compared to the IBM PC. There were a couple of quite fast text editors, Transwrite and CygnusEd come to mind, but they were not full word processors. Plus a lot of folks said, hey we want it to have graphics and be fast. Why give us a graphical word processor only for it to be so slow?

 

It was like giving someone a Ferrari with a Hyundai four cylinder engine. Why give me a car with carbon ceramic breaks, dynamic stability control, and 200MPH rated tires when I can't even chirp the tires on launch?

 

Part of the Amiga's problem was that it was way ahead of its time. Multitasking really requires more memory than was practical on launch (for a home computer). Scrolling bitmapped text at high resolution takes more memory bandwidth than was available at the time of its launch, etc.

 

The Amiga was not the only computer criticized for this. The Epson QX-10 with Valdocs and bitmapped texts was thoroughly criticized at the time.

 

So to Keatah's point, some kind of character might have helped.

 

I disagree with Keatah that the A1000 needed to be better made. I would argue it needed to be more cheaply made. Commodore chose to have it made a facility in Japan that cost a lot more than their facility in Hong Kong. Had the A1000 been made in Hong Kong, it could have shaved hundreds off the introductory price.

[zzip]

Keatah's point is well taken. Amiga and STE blitters were still quite slow for full screen scrolling of text at 640x200/400 resolutions compared to the IBM PC. There were a couple of quite fast text editors, Transwrite and CygnusEd come to mind, but they were not full word processors.

Another issue was OS drawing/rendering techniques. There where programs on the ST like quick ST that replaced the OS drawing routines with much faster ones. If you run this on an ST and especially combine with blitter, it feels like an entirely new computer. Windows fly open, text prints much faster. IDK if Amiga had anything like this, or if it needed one, but if it was built into the OS it would have helped a lot. Still isn't as fast as a character mode would be of course.

 

Plus a lot of folks said, hey we want it to have graphics and be fast. Why give us a graphical word processor only for it to be so slow?

At the time WYSIWYG was the next big thing. Didn't matter that it was slow, it just mattered to show that you could do it. This has always been the way in the computer world. You need to show that you are in on the latest thing.. even if you do it poorly at first (as most do)

 

 

It was like giving someone a Ferrari with a Hyundai four cylinder engine. Why give me a car with carbon ceramic breaks, dynamic stability control, and 200MPH rated tires when I can't even chirp the tires on launch?

In the mid-80s there was a wall of separation, you want legacy character-based business apps? You want a PC. You want a future-looking state-of-the-art multimedia, GUI, WYSIWYG, multitasking, etc? You want an Amiga. It was unthinkable that PCs would be competing in the same space, VGA wasn't even a thing yet, the ad-lib soundcards didn't exist yet either. So the designers of that 16-bit generation were trying to capture an emerging market, not compete in PC's space. I just don't think anyone expected the PC to evolve so rapidly starting in the late 80s and not only catch up, but do it cheaper.

 

 

So to Keatah's point, some kind of character might have helped.

In retrospect, it would be nice to have text-modes. They weren't quite as obsolete as the designers of 16-bit systems assumed.

[White Flame]

Keatah's point is well taken. Amiga and STE blitters were still quite slow for full screen scrolling of text at 640x200/400 resolutions compared to the IBM PC. There were a couple of quite fast text editors, Transwrite and CygnusEd come to mind, but they were not full word processors. Plus a lot of folks said, hey we want it to have graphics and be fast. Why give us a graphical word processor only for it to be so slow?

 

IBM text modes also supported a full 16 colors per cell, fg & bg. That's much more colorful than the often-used higher res Amiga desktop modes, especially when the default um, "unique" low saturation palette in 4-color mode was used.

 

Higher resolution Amiga bitmaps also take a lot of chip ram bandwidth "at rest", which can slow down a base model, especially when the color depth is increased.

 

Text modes have a lot of advantages for that era of program interfaces. The Amiga needed more bandwidth and a faster blitter to really make use of its own feature set.

Edited March 3, 2018 by White Flame

[zetastrike]

From a games standpoint, it might have helped commodore to

 

A) release a standard 2 button gamepad or joystick with the Amiga.

 

B) buy out or fund some development talent

 

C) enforce some kind of "Commodore Seal of Approval" for games (not for practical software). This could set some bare minimum standards so the Amiga wouldn't be plagued with so many crappy direct ST ports (that don't even scroll properly or use sprites among other things) or games crippled from being based on ST games.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J727AZ using Tapatalk