The reason the Amiga failed.

[Lost Dragon]

It might be worth noting that here in UK, Psygnosis decided to start writing games for Amiga 1st, Shadow Of The Beast being the 1st, at a time when ST games were out-selling Amiga versions by something like a ratio of 5-to-1 (i forget exact numbers, if i find the interview again i'll quote direct).

My 'point' is, even at a time when ST had the lions share of the UK market, it failed to keep it and hence Atari seemed to be dancing to Commodores tune, reacting to moves they made, rather than getting in 1st.So whilst the Amiga might of sucumb to new competition, i'd never personally view it as a failure.

[carlsson]

Regarding the PC clones, a few years ago I saw an InfoWorld article from back in the days. It turned out that among all the low end 8088 computers, the Atari PC-1 (isn't it?) was the cheapest of them all, offering similar or better specs than several other noname systems costing more. Possibly the nonames had better expansion options though, but for someone looking for the cheapest way to get a DOS computer, at least at one point the answer was to get an Atari.

[FastRobPlus]

The PC-1 was really pretty too if I remember correctly.

[Tickled_Pink]

This thread perhaps shouldn't be asking the question as to why the Amiga eventually failed, but why it wasn't able to fend off the PC. It wasn't just Atari who were guilty of reacting to the competition rather than innovating their way out of trouble, Commodore did the same. Technically, the Amiga was superior to anything on the market probably as late as when the Intel 80386 based machines hit the market. And this is from someone who went the ST route and has NEVER owned an Amiga.

 

I remember being stunned when a friend showed me his 386. It wasn't that it was technically impressive in any way - it was certainly fast, but still lacked somewhat in graphics and sound - but because he had one at all. They were EXPENSIVE! Then, of course, I should have remembered that he was a BBC Micro owner. That was pretty much the most expensive of the popular 8-bit computers on the market in the UK at the time. At that time, which would have been early nineties, the self-build market still didn't really exist. It wasn't until the 486 machines came out that self-build took off in a big way. THAT's what led to the dominance of the PC and ultimately the demise of everything else. Now, instead of laying out £1000+ for a complete PC, people could choose what parts they wanted, how much they wanted to spend and effectively spread the cost. You could save up for RAM, then a couple of weeks later get the motherboard and so forth ... it was credit through the back door. And at that time it was cheaper to build the thing yourself.

 

It's the only reason I was able to afford my first PC around 93/94. And why I've never bought an off-the-shelf PC. It was also around that time that PC hardware started to overtake the capabilities of the Amiga across the board.

 

The Amiga was doomed to fail as developers started to jump ship and concentrate their efforts on these new machines.

[FastRobPlus]

I think the cost of hard disk drives was a huge nail in the coffin.

 

Not only was SCSI way more expensive, but if you'd paid $500 for an A500, you likely weren't the type to shell out an additional $500 for an external HDD solution.

Interestingly, laptop IDE drives started out pricey but started dropping fast. They were legitimately cheap just after C= went under, but imagine how much more longevity the Amiga might have had if there was a very cheap IDE solution a bit earlier.

 

AdIDE was an awesome device and dirt cheap, but the actual drive was a deal breaker for your typical A500 user. And the 1200/600 had IDE built in, but actually adding a 20MB drive was insanely pricy.

[Keatah]

I recall quite clearly asking my colleagues, fellow students, laser lab co-workers, everyday people in McDonalds, and the father of the ugly girl that wanted to date me; if they knew of or had an Amiga or knew anyone that did. The answer was "no", across the board. But they themselves had various levels of PC's from the 8086 up through the 486.. With the 386 being the most numerous. This PC was often accompanied by a Vic-20, C64, or Apple II in the same room. Surprisingly absent was the 400/800.

[FastRobPlus]

I recall quite clearly asking my colleagues, fellow students, laser lab co-workers, everyday people in McDonalds, and the father of the ugly girl that wanted to date me; if they knew of or had an Amiga or knew anyone that did. The answer was "no", across the board. But they themselves had various levels of PC's from the 8086 up through the 486.. With the 386 being the most numerous. This PC was often accompanied by a Vic-20, C64, or Apple II in the same room. Surprisingly absent was the 400/800.

 

I know at least ONE PERSON at MacDs used an Amiga. I got a 500 in a boxed lot of stuff a few years back and it had a bunch of employee handbook stuff on the drive. All sorts of stuff about how long your lunch break can be and what constitutes "one sandwich, one beverage, and one side." It was all done in Pen Pal, an old home WP/DTP package. I know I shouldn't be peeking at other people's files, but it was such a fascinating glimpse into franchise store management circa 1993.

[Bill Loguidice]

Regardless of anecdotes, it's pretty clear the Amiga was the second most popular +$1,000 computer series for at least the latter part of the 80s. That doesn't mean it was much of a contest with PC compatibles, though.

[skosh]

skosh, on 21 Nov 2014 - 8:34 PM, said:

I would agree with you to a certain degree about the term in a very general sense however I think that when Win 95 came out and the multimedia craze picked up it was more due to the fact the PC(cheap and huge marketshare) could now produce broadcast quality solutions that existed on the Amiga for years

 

Top end PC machines were still required along with extra hardware. The Amiga was a good choice for video production for longer than most think.

 

 

 

 

That is true and the Amiga needed it as well for things like the Toaster. Around that time all the major players in Amiga multimedia were making the transition to PC or already had started. Newtek was one and had employees(Paul Montgomery and others) leave for Play Inc. Anyone remember Snappy, Gizmos, and Trinity(broadcast switcher). Newtek created a PC Toaster / Lightwave / etc. Scala also made the transition to the PC and is still a major player in the multimedia space. The Amiga was used for our cable channel / preview guide until 2000 and every now and then you would see the guru error screen and would call in to ask them to reboot. When they updated to the PC for guide the experience was downgraded compared to the old Scala option. In terms of video(consumer/professional) the Amiga lasted very long and was used way after the "death" of the system as a personal computer.

 

I believe that all the Motorola systems(Commodore/Atari / with exception of Apple and MS support) suffered the same fate in some ways by excelling in new high end markets. DP / Music / video / etc. The average user was not involved in these things in the US and IBM ruled. For a while the PC was still pricey for what it offered yet I would see friends with PCs that cost 2-3 times the cost of an Amiga with just blah.... There was a saying "no one gets fired for buying IBM" and that was certainly prevalent in my area and it was basically a case as too little to late for the Amiga and even then it never excelled in selling its strengths. In Europe is was a success and a flop in the US .

 

In a way its ironic and laughable how systems of the past which were considered "toys" due to gaming / multimedia performance and now the basis of what is considered good. These things were viewed as trivial at the time and it was about how fast my spreadsheets, databases, productivity software worked and that was a key component to failures of the Amiga and other systems.

 

The Amiga "failed" for many reasons in the US... however had great success in Europe.. it also had success in the US in markets(multimedia) that could not support the platform on its own. Bills answer about selling the system as a PC/Mac clone was something that as a young man did not understand why people would not just buy an A2000 with a PC or Mac board as PCs for a while were quite expensive but I think it boiled down to the whole IBM mentality at the time. Convincing someone to purchase a PC was an easy sell compared to alternatives regardless of cost.

[FastRobPlus]

One of the maddening things about the Amiga was the way they raised the price of the Amiga 2000 (technically, it had been on a very long "introductory price" that C= let expire) but the increase hit right as the Video Toaster was really taking off. And to compound this mistake, the Amiga 3000 they phased in to replace the A2K couldn't fit the Toaster!

 

I agree with many here that there may not have been a winning series of moves in the long haul, but there were also some genuine missteps in the mix too.

[Keatah]

I still have my Snappy digitizer, manual, disks.. Someday I should pull it out and make some screen captures from my Hi-8 camcorder!

[The Usotsuki]

Prevue Guide. Full stop. That was the most I ever saw of an Amiga in use IRL.

[Chilly Willy]

And to compound this mistake, the Amiga 3000 they phased in to replace the A2K couldn't fit the Toaster!

Actually, you could MAKE it fit, but doing so would void your warranty. I knew quite a few folks who took their Toaster and A3000 to certain shops that would do the fitting for you and warrant it themselves... for a price.

[FastRobPlus]

I did! I hacked a hole in the back of my 3000. I didn't take it to a shop. And it showed...

[Chilly Willy]

I did! I hacked a hole in the back of my 3000. I didn't take it to a shop. And it showed...

Yes, there were instructions on how to do it yourself in magazines and on BBSes not long after the A3000 came out, but you really needed to be sure you weren't all thumbs as more than one person managed to kill both their A3000 and Toaster doing it themselves. If all you would up with for trouble was not as nice a looking job, yuh dun good!

[high voltage]

At the height of the Amiga it had approx. 30+ European monthly magazines, most of them in the UK (and I know, I bought every magazine dedicated to the Amiga in UK until the end of CU Amiga (that was a sad day indeed)). Bought a few Amiga Active, but the shops didn't really stock it anymore after 1999.

[R.Cade]

"The Amiga" didn't fail. It's time just came and went. It was revolutionary for the mid-80's, but others caught up.

 

This is not a failure, this is the evolution of technology.

[Tickled_Pink]

I recall quite clearly asking my colleagues, fellow students, laser lab co-workers, everyday people in McDonalds, and the father of the ugly girl that wanted to date me; if they knew of or had an Amiga or knew anyone that did. The answer was "no", across the board. But they themselves had various levels of PC's from the 8086 up through the 486.. With the 386 being the most numerous. This PC was often accompanied by a Vic-20, C64, or Apple II in the same room. Surprisingly absent was the 400/800.

It shows clearly just how different the European and US markets were right through the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Back then I knew more people who had STs than Amigas (I knew plenty who had one or the other) but only that one guy's family had a PC at home. Nobody in their right minds would use a PC of any description in the UK as a home computer back then.

 

It does seem that there was more disposable income in the US at that time, considering some of the machines that were popular over there. Either that or it was the dreaded phoney exchange rate that 'dumbed down' the UK market. It's often been the case that when it came to electrical goods, $1 would equal £1. So items in the UK would be more expensive than their US counterparts. The first remotely affordable PC available in the UK was the Amstrad PC1512. I was working at my first programming job when we got one in. Felt cheap as hell compared to the all-metal construction of the Tandon machines we had been using but it had GEM instead of the usual MS-DOS.

[Seob]

Guess, sometimes people forget that the European and Japanees markets are different the the US markets.

[fujidude]

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.

 

 

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that iNTEL's x86 architecture, well its evolutionary decendents anyway, are really RISC architecture at heart. That architecture has oodles of instructions, op-codes, and complex operations supported right in the chips. They're most definitely CISC based my friend, and everyone else I've ever heard or read so far sees it that way too. Now if we are all somehow mistaken, I really would like to learn the truth. But you just saying so isn't going to be enough. Sorry.

[fujidude]

I have not given it a lot of thought, but I sometimes wonder if the path to winning for Atari or Commodore might have been to become immediately more open.

 

For example, we know the ST was mainly built from off-the-shelf parts, but around an MC68000 rather than an Intel 8088. I wonder if somehow retaining rights to the platform but letting all the clone makers produce the systems in the same way it was happening for PC-DOS clones might have somehow been a winning bid.

You are hitting on what I always remembered as the reason that PC clones survived and all else fell by the way side sooner or later. The biggest reason everyone but the clone makers eventually folded, was precisely because they were not making low cost high, value clones, and instead were making high(er) priced, low(er) value, closed and proprietary systems.

 

The natural inertia of market is to move towards the better value, or at least what is perceived better value. Things that improve perception of value are good capabilities and low cost. Cost is pretty straight forward, but let's talk about capabilities for a second. In my view, in the context of this discussion, capability comes down to two things: hardware and software. If the hardware is crap, the software can only go so far. But just because hardware might be fantastic, it means NOTHING without software to take advantage. This brings me to the second biggest reason why only the clones really thrived ultimately: software.

 

In retail it's "location, location, location." In computing it's software, software, software. The PC clones were born into an existence of an enormous software library. And importantly, there was a lot of quality productivity software inside that library. So there we have it: computers available to buy that are lower cost due to off the shelf parts, AND plenty of good software which increased the capability. While it's true the hardware capabilities of the clones early on was less than that of contenders like the Amiga, the software library more than made up for that and allowed them to surpass the rest. This is the beginnings of the huge popularity of the PC clones. That inertia mentioned before now gets a force applied to it, making for it to become more popular. What we get is increasing momentum.

 

Yes, momentum and the increasing of it. This is the third big reason. The increase in popularity for the reasons already laid out, is then benefitted by yet another principle. That is popularity begets poularity. Not only that but popularity begets a larger customer base to peddle new hardware and software upgrades to. That in turn leads to more and better hardware and more and better software. Do you see the "capability" angle getting some serious boost here? I do. And if that isn't bonus enough, more sales of hardware leads to the ability to have ever larger production runs on parts. Guess what that does..... lowers their unit cost. So what you end up with is a platform that has an ever increasing capability, with an ever decrasing cost. Companies who wish to keep all the profit potential for themselves and staying closed are eventually simply unable to compete. Look at Apple. It has adopted clone hardware now. If their OS wasn't so derivitive of BSD and Unix, I doubt the hardware aspect alone would allow them to survive this long. Look at IBM themselves. It's been several years since they have sold a PC that so many others imitated, because they tried to get their hardware closed again with MCA etc.

 

Well, those are the reasons I submit. I'm sure some may agree and some not, but I'm pretty well convinced of the reality of it. I do enjoy the discussion and am always hopeful to learn different perspectives though.

[Chilly Willy]

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that iNTEL's x86 architecture, well its evolutionary decendents anyway, are really RISC architecture at heart. That architecture has oodles of instructions, op-codes, and complex operations supported right in the chips. They're most definitely CISC based my friend, and everyone else I've ever heard or read so far sees it that way too. Now if we are all somehow mistaken, I really would like to learn the truth. But you just saying so isn't going to be enough. Sorry.

You must not be an engineer, nor read ANY boards that talk about hardware. I suggest you google "x86 risc core" and prepare to be blown away.

[Keatah]

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that iNTEL's x86 architecture, well its evolutionary decendents anyway, are really RISC architecture at heart. That architecture has oodles of instructions, op-codes, and complex operations supported right in the chips. They're most definitely CISC based my friend, and everyone else I've ever heard or read so far sees it that way too. Now if we are all somehow mistaken, I really would like to learn the truth. But you just saying so isn't going to be enough. Sorry.

x86 presents itself to the programmer as a box full of cisc instructions. Internally they are converted to risc and operated on from there. But it is the backward and forward compatibility, along with those expansion slots that provided for the longevity and rise of the PC platform.

 

I totally agree that anything proprietary can and will see limited adoption. It is also important to understand that things are considered proprietary as long they are in small numbers. When they gain market traction they become a standard.

[atarian63]

 

I think that was one option, certainly, as we know that Tandy was able to successfully establish their own audio/video standard that lasted until VGA/Sound Blaster took over, but you still wouldn't have had the features/performance that made the Amiga so special for the time.

 

I still think in hindsight a better approach would have been if Commodore was more aggressive pushing the Amiga as a PC compatible, which it was able to do without much issue, as well as a Mac compatible. They could have sold an Amiga for roughly the same price as most decent PC compatibles with a PC card pre-installed and offered three models: a base Amiga that just ran Amiga software (mostly for the home), a mid-tier that ran Amiga and PC software (for businesses), and a high-end tier that ran Amiga, PC, and Mac software (for specialty shops). While this still wouldn't have changed the Amiga's fate as a non-PC, it might have given Commodore the ability to transition better to a premiere PC clone maker once the market shifted once and for all, keeping the company afloat.

 

And yes, I know both Commodore and Atari created their own, separate, PC clones, but they were barely marketed/sold. The approach I'm suggesting would have been rather different.

St was much more PC and Mac compaitible and much more widely known for that than Amiga ever was. Neither company had a large enough niche to capitalize on to carry them forward was well as limited updates to the original designs, more like small steps forward than any leaps.

[atarian63]

 

It's all relative of course. The ST didn't quite catch on here like it did in Europe and was definitely behind the Amiga in terms of mindshare and general software availability in mass market stores as the latter part of the 80s wore on. The Amiga though was still a distant second to PCs running EGA and, eventually, VGA. So, to answer your question, there was that pesky growing population of PC users, despite the Amiga's early (and significant) audio-visual superiority.

Actually Amiga was an also ran until A500, in 89, until that point ST was the dominant of the two,at least here in the US. The change in 89 was mostly due to Atari shifting production capacity to germany and the rest of europe, it was maddening not being able to get product. Alsong came a cheap amiga and it sold well as it was the only real choice,unless you wanted a dull boring pc.