The reason the Amiga failed.

[Keatah]

The reason the Amiga failed was because it was cheap and manufactured by a toy company. For all the might and mighty graphics & sound (of the day) it sported, businesses wanted nothing to do with cheap plastic machines that had limited expansion.

 

And let's face it, the blue and white default colors of the CLI were campy. Whereas the professional looking monochrome text of a real computer.

 

It had slots you say? That didn't matter, the custom chips weren't upgradeable because they were too entrenched in the backbone. While you could put a faster CPU in there, the custom chips were the real limiting factor. In fact making the whole system go faster would require redesign of those 3 parts - so intimate were they to memory and i/o.

 

It might have been better to have taken "Amiga technology" and package it into a multi-media board for the PC. And make it cheap. Had that passed through we might not have needed Creative Labs or 3Dfx/Nvidia or all those sound and videoboard add-ins we so painstakingly upgraded throughout the years.

 

Instead we'd have a board that would be known as the AM³. Amiga Multi-Media-Module. This was discussed but rejected due to the typical infighting and inability to settle on a standard, which was the downfall of many 80's companies.

 

 

[+wood_jl]

PC Clones. Same reason everything else failed. Next.

[The Usotsuki]

I'm going with the old saw: "Commodore's marketing was so inept that if they owned KFC they'd call it Warm Dead Bird."

[MarkO]

I'm going with the old saw: "Commodore's marketing was so inept that if they owned KFC they'd call it Warm Dead Bird."

Unlike Apple, that for the most part, can sell Snow to Eskimos....

 

MarkO

[MarkO]

PC Clones. Same reason everything else failed. Next.

Everything is Upgradeable...

 

MarkO

[Rybags]

It failed for similar reason to the ST - didn't keep up with the competition. They should have made 16-bit sound a priority and had it going when ECS came around in 1990. Graphically, AGA should have been more full-featured - at the least a 16 bit colour mode rather than pissing about with the HAM mode and it's inflexibility.

Plus they persisted with the lower specced 68K series chips, realistically by 1992 the 68020 at 14 Mhz should have powered the entry-level machines and 68040 at speeds better than the 25 Mhz of the A4000, although it's worth remembering the 68000 at similar clock speeds had better throughput than probably any x86 up to the 80386SX.

 

You can apply the same to the ST/TT/Falcon and even the 68K Macs - and the common element again is the CPU. It was almost as if Motorola lost interest in the 68000 by the time they started the joint PPC venture with Apple and IBM. I don't think the 68060 ever saw light of day in a major consumer computer as an OEM component, sure it was available later as an addon by 3rd party manufacturers for Amiga and Falcon but by then it was too late and it was very much a niche/special interest type of purchase.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Instead we'd have a board that would be known as the AM³. Amiga Multi-Media-Module. This was discussed but rejected due to the typical infighting and inability to settle on a standard, which was the downfall of many 80's companies.

 

 

 

Where do you get this nonsense?

 

Commodore horribly mismanaged allowing the hardware to remain stagnant too long, resting on laurels and spending the majority of profits on themselves rather then injecting back into hardware & development, us AMIGA fans and users who stuck with the AMIGA through thick and thin only to be constantly be disappointed with Commodore's lack of vision then financial failure lived through this, then the brand passed through several more companies all promising to evolve and "come back" in the ways Commodore should have done in the first place. That's pretty much it, the end and your post just comes off as yet another attack / bashing of a machine was was incredible in it's time but apparently you could not come to grips with and seem to have some sort of grudge against AMIGA as your constant bashing and misrepresentation, speculation and opinion seems to indicate. WE GET IT, you don't like AMIGA, YOU THINK IT SUCKED etc, etc, etc, YAWN, get over it. It's getting tiresome. YES you thought an a500 could render Babaylon 5 CGI out of the box and was disappointed it couldn't lol, boo hoo. When I read the title of this topic funny how I INSTANTLY KNEW who was responsible for it.

Edited November 7, 2014 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[high voltage]

Amiga didn't fail...in Europe

[Keatah]

They should have made 16-bit sound a priority and had it going when ECS came around in 1990. Graphically, AGA should have been more full-featured - at the least a 16 bit colour mode rather than pissing about with the HAM mode and it's inflexibility.

 

It cost too much to keep updating these chips. Only very recently can chips be simulated and revised in the manner the Amiga would have required to maintain a marketplace edge.

 

 

Plus they persisted with the lower specced 68K series chips, realistically by 1992 the 68020 at 14 Mhz should have powered the entry-level machines and 68040 at speeds better than the 25 Mhz of the A4000, although it's worth remembering the 68000 at similar clock speeds had better throughput than probably any x86 up to the 80386SX.

 

With the 286 era setting and the beginning of the 386 reign was the time the PC became an unstoppable force. The 386 was such a quantum leap over it's predecessor that it blinded businesses to any other system. The PC platform was already established as a mover & shaker in that it went from 8088 & 8086 to 286 to 386 on somewhat of a schedule. The 486 and 586 would be natural followers; and that made business comfortable in knowing their software would not be instantly obsolete on this (PC) platform. No such showing was put up by the Amiga.

 

Without going off-topic too much. I want to say that the Apple II, early Macs, and PC architecture were (are) the same in philosophy. No custom media chips, minimal or no on-board peripherals depending on exact model. You have CPU, RAM, ROM, and Logic and slots. The very basics. What it comes down to is so many of the tricks were done in in software. Software that was easily revised. Software that would readily adapt to upgrades as "severe" as an entirely new machine with a 10x faster data bus. The Amiga was limited there. Relying too much on hardware which would rapidly outdate itself.

 

 

You can apply the same to the ST/TT/Falcon and even the 68K Macs - and the common element again is the CPU. It was almost as if Motorola lost interest in the 68000 by the time they started the joint PPC venture with Apple and IBM. I don't think the 68060 ever saw light of day in a major consumer computer as an OEM component, sure it was available later as an addon by 3rd party manufacturers for Amiga and Falcon but by then it was too late and it was very much a niche/special interest type of purchase.

 

Absolutely correct. Motorola lost interest in the 68000 faster than the Amiga would Guru Meditate. And like many custom chips, its architecture didn't lend itself to massive clock speed increases like x86 did.

[TheGreatPW]

The reason the Amiga failed was because it was cheap and manufactured by a toy company. For all the might and mighty graphics & sound (of the day) it sported, businesses wanted nothing to do with cheap plastic machines that had limited expansion.

 

And let's face it, the blue and white default colors of the CLI were campy. Whereas the professional looking monochrome text of a real computer.

 

It had slots you say? That didn't matter, the custom chips weren't upgradeable because they were too entrenched in the backbone. While you could put a faster CPU in there, the custom chips were the real limiting factor. In fact making the whole system go faster would require redesign of those 3 parts - so intimate were they to memory and i/o.

 

It might have been better to have taken "Amiga technology" and package it into a multi-media board for the PC. And make it cheap. Had that passed through we might not have needed Creative Labs or 3Dfx/Nvidia or all those sound and videoboard add-ins we so painstakingly upgraded throughout the years.

 

Instead we'd have a board that would be known as the AM³. Amiga Multi-Media-Module. This was discussed but rejected due to the typical infighting and inability to settle on a standard, which was the downfall of many 80's companies.

 

 

 

There was nothing cheap about the Amiga. It was a very expensive machine unlike anything Commodore made for the general consumer market.

 

The Commodore 64 was the "Machine for the Masses" and that meant incredible low street prices. How many Commodore 64 owners you knew only bought the keyboard for $99 and the disk drive for $139 along with a pair of joysticks and a couple of boxes of blank floppy disks knowing very well their parents would never spend a dollar more on that machine? I went with classes full of kids like that.

 

I don't know where Commodore thought their market would make the jump from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars but they were way off. I could count the number of Amiga owners I knew growing up with a few fingers. It's like all the shoppers at the 99 cents store suddenly showing up at Barneys instead!

 

On here, lots of people talk about the Amiga like it was common place, everyday popular item (which is pretty amazing since this is an Atari first website). In the real world (and I know many videogames & computers lovers and collectors in the real world), I don't know ANY that owns an Amiga either as a system they owned growing up or as a collectible now.

 

In the general world, the people I know from work, school and everyday life, that number remains: zero.

 

However change Commodore Amiga to Commodore 64 and that number of people who owned that computer or have an idea of what that computer is flies up like a rocket ship.

 

There's no doubt comparing the Commodore 64 to the Commodore Amiga is like comparing McDonald's vs. anything slightly to more fancier.

 

The car company: Hyundai makes a great luxury car called the Genesis. A really nice vehicle by any measure however Hyundai owners mostly go back to the Elantra or Sonata year after year. Even the new Hyundai customers.

 

Wrong market, wrong price.

 

Plus Atari was around and long live Atari! Every Amiga owner should have just bought an Atari ST series computer and saved some money.

Edited November 7, 2014 by TheGreatPW

[Keatah]

Commodore horribly mismanaged allowing the hardware to remain stagnant too long.

 

Actually they were smart and decided not to support a ship that wasn't sailing.

 

 

That's pretty much it, the end and your post just comes off as yet another attack / bashing of a machine was was incredible in it's time but apparently you could not come to grips with and seem to have some sort of grudge against AMIGA as your constant bashing and misrepresentation, speculation and opinion seems to indicate. WE GET IT, you don't like AMIGA, YOU THINK IT SUCKED etc, etc, etc, YAWN, get over it. It's getting tiresome. YES you thought an a500 could render Babaylon 5 CGI out of the box and was disappointed it couldn't lol, boo hoo. When I read the title of this topic funny how I INSTANTLY KNEW who was responsible for it.

 

Yes, I do have a grudge.. Against Commodore marketing. Not so much the Amiga itself. The computer itself can hardly be blamed for the amount of fail built into it at the factory. I had a 1000 and a 500. I'm *still* upset that I backed the wrong horse. I recall opening up the boxes, setting them up, and being uber embarrassed when asked what this machine could do. I drew a blank. Lectures on the supposed superiority of the custom chips did little except garner laughs from my PC buddies.

 

There was real aeronautical software available, real astronomy stuff, real word processors.. Fractal software, Lorentz solvers, real test instrumentation. All on the PC.

 

Buying into the Amiga ecosphere set my 1st PC acquisition back by a good 2 years. I sheepishly justified it by saying it (Amiga) delayed my purchase of a 386 enough that the 486 would be the right choice. It provided some consolation.

 

Hypothetically: had I gotten an ST I might have transitioned, later, into a MAC. The ST was always something of a mystery to me in a good way.

 

 

On here, lots of people talk about the Amiga like it was common place, everyday popular item (which is pretty amazing since this is an Atari first website). In the real world (and I know many videogames & computers lovers and collectors in the real world), I don't know ANY that owns an Amiga either as a system they owned growing up or as a collectible now.

 

In the general world, the people I know from work, school and everyday life, that number remains: zero.

 

However change Commodore Amiga to Commodore 64 and that number of people who owned that computer or have an idea of what that computer is flies up like a rocket ship.

 

Every Amiga owner should have just bought an Atari ST series computer and saved some money.

 

The Amiga and ST have some common lineage. And many Amiga users are fanbois to the max. Very vocal.

 

I must have been the only Amiga user in a 100-mile radius back in the day. I felt like an idiot asking anyone if they had an Amiga. The answer was always PC or MAC, in addition to their "now-getting-old" 8 bit jobber. In my town the ST was even more rare. Ohh I wanted one of those too. But after the Amiga drained my money, there was none left. Not when getting a PC was a requirement.

 

No games to trade, no users groups, some BBS'es. But generally blechh..

[youki]

You can not find only one reason why the Amiga "relativly" failed. There are tons , from technology choice to marketing.

 

But for me, It fails to conquer the professionnals mainly because It has been designed as a gaming console.

 

Yes, i know, some of you will start to say , it is wrong Jay wanted to create a computer since the beginning , it is a computer at the origin that he makes up a console , then go back to a real computer... etc..etc..

 

But It is just an urban legend created by Marketting Guys. The Amiga is a game console in its genes. the architecture was too closed for evolution for a "real long term standard" computer , but thru quiet open for a console .

 

Imagine, when the Amiga have been released. Amiga Inc , humm... it was a console but to jump on market opportunity and to not lost our invest , we just put a Keyboard and few expension port and we sold it as a professionnal computer.

 

I don't think it is a good way to professionnal to buy the Amiga. So , some marketting genius, elaborate a legend that still run nowadays....

 

If you take a Genesis console, you put a keyboard, add some RAM and few Ports.... you will have more or Less an Amiga.

[English Invader]

I think the main reason the Amiga failed was because it didn't have a specialist market. Apple was the go-to machine for graphic designers, the ST was the go-to machine for musicians and while the Amiga packed a bigger punch in the video games industry than either of those machines it couldn't compete with the convenience of 16-bit consoles.

 

The Amiga was a machine for the hobbyist and it was very easy for that market to migrate to the PC where they would have a lot more choice over both hardware and software.

[Nebulon]

You can not find only one reason why the Amiga "relativly" failed. There are tons , from technology choice to marketing.

 

But for me, It fails to conquer the professionnals mainly because It has been designed as a gaming console.

 

Yes, i know, some of you will start to say , it is wrong Jay wanted to create a computer since the beginning , it is a computer at the origin that he makes up a console , then go back to a real computer... etc..etc..

 

But It is just an urban legend created by Marketting Guys. The Amiga is a game console in its genes. the architecture was too closed for evolution for a "real long term standard" computer , but thru quiet open for a console .

 

Imagine, when the Amiga have been released. Amiga Inc , humm... it was a console but to jump on market opportunity and to not lost our invest , we just put a Keyboard and few expension port and we sold it as a professionnal computer.

 

I don't think it is a good way to professionnal to buy the Amiga. So , some marketting genius, elaborate a legend that still run nowadays....

 

If you take a Genesis console, you put a keyboard, add some RAM and few Ports.... you will have more or Less an Amiga.

 

If you're saying that the idea that Jay Miner wanted it to be a computer is an urban legend, then you are incorrect. He clearly stated that he wanted it to be a computer in a published interview.

 

However, if you're saying that the idea of the Amiga being strictly a computer is an urban legend, then I'd have to agree with you. The Amiga is essentially a computer that is based around the design philosophy of a console. And that's because about half of the design team (including R.J. Mical) wanted a game console and most of them were very familiar with the use of custom hardware (like blitters) for the purposes of running video games.

 

Thinking back, I recall the Amiga having trouble in North America because the OCS series of machines didn't have monitors that were able to compete with the sharpness and clarity of the PCs and Macs and that programs like Lotus, DBase, Excel, and Word were never ported to it. Yes, the Amiga had alternatives, but it's hard to convince an office worker that their spreadsheet or database files can be easily read on an Amiga. And yes there was a PC compatibility option for the Amiga, but that was too much extra cost and 'hassle' for a lot of customers to consider. They'd just as soon buy a cheap PC and stay compatible with what was at the office.

 

Something that people keep forgetting in today's gaming-happy world is that a computer that ran games well was not considered a badge of honor back then. Instead it made people think the computer was a toy. Only years later did people start to catch on that a computer that can run games well, has a high likelihood of running productivity apps well too.

 

As Rybags mentioned, AGA was too little too late. It had the professional-level monitor output but didn't do full SVGA-equivalent graphics modes. And of course, there was the 8-bit sound issue....

 

No, the Amiga was definitely not cheap and it was not a toy. However, it was a tough image to shake... one that Atari struggled with as well.

[youki]

 

If you're saying that the idea that Jay Miner wanted it to be a computer is an urban legend, then you are incorrect. He clearly stated that he wanted it to be a computer in a published interview.

 

 

 

It is not because Jay Miner said that in an interview that it is the truth. Jay Miner was a great engineer but was also a own of a company. He has to sell a product, he has to manage guys, He has to worry to financial thing , He has to keep alive his company. He is a business Man too.

 

He was doing a game console , because he knows that (he made the Atari 2600, he made the Atari 8bit line that was intended to be a console at first too, and he was doing the lorraine intended to be a next generation game console when the market suddenly crashed. He has to find a solution , as the market moved to "computer" , he has modified its hardware to make it a computer. And then as most the actor at this time knew that Amiga was doing a Console , he has to convince people that it was selling a real computer not a console with a keyboard. So , Amiga and Jay decided to create the "legend" that Jay designed the Amiga as a computer since the origin. Just "Marketting", not the Truth.

 

For the rest i agree with you.

[Keatah]

I think the main reason the Amiga failed was because it didn't have a specialist market.

 

What about video production?

 

 

The Amiga was a machine for the hobbyist and it was very easy for that market to migrate to the PC where they would have a lot more choice over both hardware and software.

 

The Amiga was not a hobbyist machine. No one ever did hackjob projects with this system. Not like the PC and Apple II, and especially the C64.

[+Gemintronic]

I blame this chair:

 

[Chilly Willy]

It cost too much to keep updating these chips. Only very recently can chips be simulated and revised in the manner the Amiga would have required to maintain a marketplace edge.

Except that Commodore USED to own the largest chip foundry in the business. It was downright CHEAP for them to do these things. The end was started when management sold off the chip division to make a quick buck to stick in their pockets. At THAT point, new chips were expensive, which led to doing less in R&D. Again, it was PURELY MANAGEMENT that sunk the Amiga. Not hardware, and certainly not software.

 

 

Absolutely correct. Motorola lost interest in the 68000 faster than the Amiga would Guru Meditate. And like many custom chips, its architecture didn't lend itself to massive clock speed increases like x86 did.

Absolutely incorrect. The 680x0 family was just as "easy" to increase clock rates as the x86 family. You clearly don't recall that the way the x86 increased its clock rates was to move to an entirely different internal architecture and add a layer to translate the old x86 opcodes into the new opcodes. It adopted a RISC internal architecture.

 

And if you bothered following the 680x0 family, you'd see that with a minimal amount of R&D, Motorola converted the 680x0 into the ColdFire, a RISC processor using most of the 680x0 instruction format, with a compatibility library for the now unsupported opcodes. Doing that, they were able to boost the clock rates an order of magnitude. They didn't bother trying to go any further as these were aimed at the normal 680x0 market - embedded microcontrollers, not PCs. Motorola NEVER sold all that many 680x0 chips for PCs, so they were more than happy to let IBM foot most of the bill on updating the PowerPC - its replacement in the PC market.

[am1933]

I don't recall any "failure" of the Amiga over here in the Uk, it was everywhere, it sold well, software and hardware availability was extremely mainstream and Commodre UK pushed the promotion of the machine at every possibility.

[KiwiArcader]

The Amiga lasted longer than the Atari so what does that tell you of Atari?

[skosh]

Here's an interesting video on the making of the Amiga. The breadboards were just amazing and how they were developing things without having the hardware ready. Later in the video they even had an emulator showing Lotus 123.

 

The Amiga's lack of acceptance in the business world as a serious machine I believe was a huge detriment. Nebulon mentioned the stigma of being a game machine was definitely something that had a negative impact on success with the business market. Word Perfect eventually made its way to the Amiga but to late. The Amiga had emulators for PC software in both software and hardware forms for ages however they did not prevail. It was a time when the Mac, ST, and Amiga had chances to change the course of history. The Mac had the benefit of having MS write software for it and of course the desktop publishing revolution which were huge for business. The ST and Amiga were mainly viewed as gaming machines even though each had their own niche markets... ST - MIDI / music, Amiga 3d and Video - Lightwave and Video Toaster(real time video switcher)-Newtek amongst other programs. http://www.amigareport.com/ar134/p1-12.html has a nice list of innovative uses of the machine that only started to appear in the mid 90s on a PC in terms of multimedia that existed since the late 80s early 90s on the Amiga. I recall when time magazine declared multimedia has arrived in when Win 95 showed up when in reality it was around for quite sometime. I'd blame lack of effective marketing ,dealerships and acceptance in the US market for both the Amiga and ST while in Europe they did very well. This also was a time where IBM PCs were king in the business world and if it wasn't a PC there was this stereotype against the 68000 based systems even though they ran circles around PCs. I used to show folks who worked in the government or consultants at its capabilities and would only here "where is the PC software" even though a hardware version was available. They were blown away by the multimedia aspect but viewed it as a toy and wanted their monochrome business apps even though they were options still would not budge. So effective marketing was a big problem and saying no to something from Big Blue was just unheard of. Computer magazines at the time for the Amiga were decent sized however compared to the PC side were tiny in comparison. Computer Shopper was like a decent sized phone book in comparison. It would be interesting to see how different things would have been if the Amiga, ST, or Mac were viewed more as serious machines than they were at the time. All were ahead of the PC for ages with the Mac having the largest support in order to succeed in the larger markets. At least that is my take on it.

[bojay1997]

I don't recall any "failure" of the Amiga over here in the Uk, it was everywhere, it sold well, software and hardware availability was extremely mainstream and Commodre UK pushed the promotion of the machine at every possibility.

Growing up in San Diego during the Amiga heyday, it was definitely not some totally obscure computer. I knew five people at my high school who owned them including myself and they were sold at Electronics Boutique, the NEX, and in several local Commodore dealers. The local community college also had a lab full of them for video graphics and art and several local television stations used them for titling and later for Video Toasters.

 

Commodore made its share of mistakes, but I was always proud to show off how much better Amiga games looked than comparable PC games at the time and spending $500 or so for an Amiga 500 was a much better deal than $1500 for a PC with the latest graphics and multimedia add-ons. There were also plenty of professional level applications for the Amiga including word processors and desktop publishing apps that were every bit as robust as what the PC was capable of doing at the time.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

 

The Amiga was not a hobbyist machine. No one ever did hackjob projects with this system. Not like the PC and Apple II, and especially the C64.

 

Apparently you were not following the AMIGA scene at all............

Edited November 7, 2014 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[high voltage]

I don't recall any "failure" of the Amiga over here in the Uk, it was everywhere, it sold well, software and hardware availability was extremely mainstream and Commodre UK pushed the promotion of the machine at every possibility.

 

The Batman pack sold shitloads

[carlsson]

I have barely ever seen a Tandy CoCo. Well, I did own one for a short period of time, but I found it to be utter trash so I only powered it on twice before letting it go.

 

Based on statistics, I can safely say that the CoCo line was a total failure, and when I consider how terrible the keyboard was on my unit, I can fully see why. Also none of my friends ever had a CoCo, so no possibility to share programs with them, which even more adds to the failure counter.