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I bet the demo setup was entirely fair and unbiased? I wasn't familiar with it at the time, but I heard that the STE's PCM audio was hobbled by a very limited range of playback rates- e.g. you couldn't play all notes of a musical scale without multiple samples? I've observed previously that, while the Amiga's pre-emptive multitasking is great, it- and the rest of the OS- doesn't appear to be reliant upon any custom hardware the Amiga has that the (also 68000-based) ST doesn't. In other words, from a purely technical point of view, there appears to be no reason that the Amiga OS couldn't have been ported to- and run just as effectively on- first-generation ST hardware. I know that the ST got a proper multitasking OS later on, but it'd have been nice if it had that earlier.

Thank you for the interesting responses. That said, I still don't think anyone really got to the bottom of the specific reason I started this thread... i.e. to figure out just what Atari were thinking- and expected to achieve- when they launched the STE. And if (as I suspect) they thought it might help against the £400 Amiga 500, why they did so in a manner that seemed counter-productive (for the reasons I explained in my original post) and short-termist. I'll perhaps excuse them on the initial pricing by noting that the Amiga's fall to £399 was apparently in late 1989- i.e. almost exactly the same time the STE was launched- so it's possible Atari still thought a £399 STE was competing against a £499 Amiga. But after that... nope. It's clear from adverts that the RRP of an STE "Turbo Pack" was still £399 circa late 1990. (#) Perhaps they couldn't afford to sell it any cheaper? Perhaps they just got greedy? Yes, I'll admit that I have the massive advantage of hindsight and time to ponder something which is rather academic 25 years on! Even so, they could have asked themselves whether it was likely people would buy an STE- admittedly improved over the base STFM, but was it as good as an Amiga, and where was the support?- instead of the already more-popular and supported Amiga for a similar price. Then again, it's quite likely that I've given more thought to this matter than Atari ever did at the time! (#) A mail order discounter was selling it for £379 (those typically being around £20 to £30 cheaper than retail).

I've seen a thread elsewhere on this site that discusses the STE; however, even that doesn't really answer the one question I've always had- what was Atari's business motivation and rationale for launching the STE in the first place? I know that an enhanced ST had apparently been in the works for a while, but by the time it came out I'm assuming it was supposed to counter the growing threat from the Amiga's recent fall in price. The problem with this- and the likely reason it completely failed in that respect- is that Atari marketed it in a short-termist way that completely destroyed any chance it had of doing this. IMHO, Atari shot themselves in the foot by not having it directly replace the STFM at the same price point as soon as it was available in late 1989. From what I remember, initial reports seemed to think that this was indeed the plan. (#1) However, after a while, it became clear that the STFM had not been discontinued, nor had its price been reduced- it was still the regular £299 bundle model, and IIRC the STE cost more. (Was it £399? Can't remember exactly.) So- who exactly were Atari expecting to buy the STE? Not me; I didn't have enough money, and if I had, it's likely I'd have overcome any Atari "loyalty" (#2) and have spent it on an Amiga, which was selling for £400 by that point. (#3) And that's the problem- I assume that anyone who wasn't already a diehard ST owner would have done the same. I've seen people in other threads here asking why there was very little support for the STE's enhanced features. It seems very simple to me- chicken and egg. No-one supported the STE features because few people owned an STE, and why bother paying more for an STE if its enhanced features weren't supported? (Especially since the Amiga already had well-supported graphics and sound if you wanted to pay more). Had the STE completely replaced the STFM at £299 in late 1989, it would have ensured a larger base of STE models- and fewer STFMs- purely by default. This would have made it worth software houses' time to support the enhanced features. And this might have extended the ST's popularity a bit longer... if Atari hadn't been so shortsighted. Atari seemed to think people were going to pay extra for what- in hindsight- should have been features of the base model if they hoped to see off the Amiga. Ha ha ha- no. So... why did Atari even bother releasing the STE in the first place? What did they expect? (Yes, I know the STE eventually replaced the STFM in mid-1991, but it was already too late by then; the Amiga had completely displaced the ST. I replaced my STFM (#3) with an Amiga- not an STE- at the end of that year). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (#1) Double-checking the Feb 1990 back issue of New Atari User- where I would have read it- confirms I'm remembering this correctly. It states that the STE had appeared unannounced in place of the STFM in existing bundles (presumably at the same price point) and that they- understandably- took this to mean that the STFM was now "gone". (#2) Even at the time I- as an 800XL owner- realised my fanboyism had its limits. In hindsight, it's clearer that Jack Tramiel's "Atari"- and the ST which was a product of his "power without the price" vision- was philosophically very different to the "Atari" (Inc) that gave birth to the 400/800 series, but I wasn't aware of such subtleties at the time. (#3) In fact, I'm sorry to say- with respect to the ST fans here- that I regretted my decision to buy an STFM. Even then it had clearly been overtaken by the now-affordable Amiga. I sold it just under a year later to buy an A500 Plus, and I never regretted that- the only thing I regret is not getting the machine I'd really wanted in the first place (in part because I was averse to navigating the secondhand market) and missing out on an extra year of it at the top. (#4) (#4) Disgruntled ST owners will like the irony that when I *did* get an Amiga (Christmas 1991), it was- in hindsight- at almost the exact point its popularity had peaked, with only one way to go in the face of competition from rapidly improving PC clones on one side and the Mega Drive (and later SNES) on the other. By the following year, the focus already seemed to have moved away from it. People say technology moves fast today, but in hindsight it's clear that the ST and then Amiga each had a surprisingly short time at the top.