The Amiga: Why did it fail so hard in the United States?

[carlsson]

By the way, one of those resellers in December 1992 who indeed sold PC computers, also had lists of games software. At the time of writing, they had 45 titles for the PC on 3.5" disk and VGA graphics. Their corresponding list for Amiga was well over 120 titles, I didn't bother to count exactly. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to state with that, as probably the market for PC games still was only a fraction as big so no point in importing loads and loads of titles of which only some would sell, while for Amiga gamers they had several choices for each taste.

[carlsson]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

PCs could use cheap IDE drives with cheap IDE interface cards.

Probably that was one of the few things Commodore did somewhat correct at the end with the 600 and 1200 having built-in IDE interfaces, primarily to fit 2.5" drives but in particular with external power it is no problem running a standard 3.5" as well. I'm not fully up to date with which interfaces the big box models have, if those had both SCSI and IDE at the end. Then again I don't know what IDE/EIDE disks were like a few years earlier, and if it had made sense to include a such interface already on say the Amiga 500+, or if either of the two later models had arrived sooner.

[zzip]

21 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Probably that was one of the few things Commodore did somewhat correct at the end with the 600 and 1200 having built-in IDE interfaces, primarily to fit 2.5" drives but in particular with external power it is no problem running a standard 3.5" as well. I'm not fully up to date with which interfaces the big box models have, if those had both SCSI and IDE at the end. Then again I don't know what IDE/EIDE disks were like a few years earlier, and if it had made sense to include a such interface already on say the Amiga 500+, or if either of the two later models had arrived sooner.

Well IDE was an extension of the AT-bus and books on PC written around the time would tell you that it was so tied to the PC architecture that it wasn't practical to implement it on non-PC platforms.  Obviously that was incorrect because Amiga eventually implemented,  and Atari added an IDE interface to the Falcon.  But it sure took awhile to get it!   The 600/1200 and Falcon didn't arrive until 92, and that didn't help owners of older models.

 

At that point my attitude was that as much as I would have liked to have a Falcon, it would probably mean more years of being frustrated and being left behind.  It was time to bite the bullet and jump to PC. 

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, zzip said:

Why Europe stuck with computers while America returned to consoles.

People have already answered above but saying Europe was stuck with computers is a little exaggerated. ? Clearly the NES in particular was not as successful as in the US (especially in the UK, but it did well eventually in Europe as a whole), mainly because:
- Gaming was strong on 8-bit and 16-bit computers as already told

- NES games especially were expensive, while computer games were cheap (and could be copied easily) and the Master System had a budget line of games under ~$15

[roots.genoa]

By the way I discovered recently that France was the country where the PC was the most popular in 1988, but still far behind the Amstrad CPC, Thomson, and Apple computers.

So the Amiga failed in the US because the PC established itself a lot quicker there than in Europe. Here it happened around 1992-1993 thanks to Doom and its clones, because that kind of games were very difficult to port on the Amiga and the ST. And that precisely when both 16-bit computers started to slowly fade away.

[carlsson]

Aha! I have pinpointed exactly when the affordable PC compatible came to Sweden, and in the long run helped kill off the Amiga.

 

It actually turns out to be Commodore's doing all along. On September 1, 1992 Commodore Sweden decided to more or less halve their PC prices over night:

 

C386SX-25 (2 MB RAM, 40 MB HDD): from 9370 SEK incl. VAT to 5369 SEK (excl. monitor)

DT386-33C (4 MB RAM, 120 MB HDD): from 19875 SEK to 8119 SEK

DT486SX-25C (4 MB RAM, 120 MB HDD): from 19875 SEK to 8119 SEK

DT486-33C (4 MB RAM, 120 MB HDD): from 23625 SEK to 11995 SEK

 

Apparently there were already other PC compatibles on the market, with prices far below Commodore's so they decided it was time to cut theirs. Also note that some of those prices in September were slightly lower than the advertised prices in December, three months later.

 

That lead to several Amiga resellers bringing in Commodore PCs in their selection, because suddenly those were viable to sell. It also lead to some resellers offering other brands of PCs decided to finally begin to advertise in Amiga oriented magazines. Even if they had sold PC's at those prices before, not until Commodore themselves lead the way, they thought it was worthwhile to advertise in the enemy's territory.

 

The reason I can pinpoint this so precisely is that in the issue for the end of August, there is not a single reseller advertising any PC systems, but in the following issue for the beginning of September, suddenly several of the regular advertisers as well as some new ones had several different PC's to sell.

[zetastrike]

I always got the impression that the European consumer was ok with dropping a bigger check on the computer itself (vs a console) because the software and games were cheaper than carts, or often free.

 

One of the arguments that gets cited in favor of the micros is that with computers you could do things besides play games, yet whenever I ask someone from the UK if they did anything with their Spectrum/C64/Amiga/ST/etc aside from play games the response is "well, no..." or "deluxe paint".  

 

Were the 8/16 bit micros more of a Trojan horse to get video games into the house, easier to sell to parents than a dedicated video game?  

[Leeroy ST]

In the US people forget the C128 was the stepping stone toward the lack of success in the US for Amiga (putting the C64 race to the bottom aside,).

 

When things were rebounding the C64 was over 2 million sold in 85, the C128 maybe ~2-300k, and the new hyped Amiga did 80k or less.

 

During this time Atari managed to become the leader of the next gen computers in the US with ST, and profitable for the first time in Atari computer history.

 

The reaction and quick decline of the C128 in the US, and the ST approach that brought favorability with vendors and software developers (initially) put the Amiga in the hole from the start.

 

Amiga would struggle with some crazy sales to reach higher numbers in the US.

 

Commodore could never follow up C64 in the US and ended up dying in relevance with it by 1990.

 

[Leeroy ST]

22 minutes ago, zetastrike said:

I always got the impression that the European consumer was ok with dropping a bigger check on the computer itself (vs a console) because the software and games were cheaper than carts, or often free.

 

One of the arguments that gets cited in favor of the micros is that with computers you could do things besides play games, yet whenever I ask someone from the UK if they did anything with their Spectrum/C64/Amiga/ST/etc aside from play games the response is "well, no..." or "deluxe paint".  

 

 

In Europe the then younger generation of 6-12 year olds had access to games with micros, from the entry Spectrum to the Amiga, in Europe this demographic was more likely to game on computer than the US, though they did at times get consoles.

 

In the US the computer gaming scene was mostly a 13-30 type thing. The younger ones were basically almost always moved toward consoles for their ease of play, and the market leader in the late 80's heavily targeting the 5-10yo range. Consoles eventually becoming $50-70 helped things to.

 

It's also lines up with the differences why there were more floppy buyers in the US and more tape buyers in Europe.

 

If you were gaming on computer on the US, you saved up or had a well paying job because there wasn't a cheap ZX or Amstrad equivalent that was widespread like in Europe. In fact a computer below $120 at the time often carried the perception of junk unless it was an older mainstream favorite. The mindset was different.

 

In the US games and upgrades cost more, where in Europe even kids could get a chunk of games after blowing some lawns. Or pirate them free much more easily.

 

 

 

 

 

[mr_me]

5 hours ago, youxia said:

When it comes to action games PC was not a contender in that period. For example, Carmack has only managed to implement VGA side scrolling in the late 1990, and you could play Shadow Of The Beast on  Amiga in 1989. Sure, there were some action games ports for DOS, but they were mostly abysmal. The fact that VGA and SB were available on the market doesn't mean all games have utilised them. Amiga's ports were often weak too, but still better, plus it had lots of properly coded ones and some brilliant originals.

 

PC fared better when it came to "serious" games (sims/rpg/strategy/adventure), but still most of them were earlier and/or better on 16-bit micros (eg Cinemaware games). It only pulled ahead when devs started utilising 256 colour in VGA games (eg Monkey Island in 1990), but these differences weren't often that great.

 

As for numbers, when you compare collections such as eXoDOS and Gamebase, Amiga is slightly ahead in these years. So, not sure why anybody circa 1987, who was interested mainly in gaming and fun multimedia stuff, would want to pay a huge premium for an inferior experience. Maybe, if they could foresee appearance of the likes of Ultima Underworld and Wolfenstein 3D on the horizon, but this was still years ahead and you'd need to swap most of the components in your PC anyway to play them anyway.

You might be right about 1987 but in 1988, '89, and '90 some fantastic 3D action games came out for PC, well before Wolfenstein 3D.

 

I remember that time when the Amiga came out.  I wanted one but it was still a lot of money.  To me it seemed risky. By the late 1980s PC seemed like the obvious choice going forward.  VGA pretty much doubled the price of a PC but the upgrade path is what made the platform attractive.

 

 

----------

Regarding the popularity of computers vs game consoles in Europe, particularly in the early 1980s; I always thought it was simply because they were cheaper.  My understanding is that import taxes on game consoles were severe in many European countries and the UK.  And import taxes were much less if it had a computer keyboard.  I think those taxes relaxed in the later 1980s.

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by mr_me

[carlsson]

I dug up some more info from the end of 1992. At that point, Microsoft had decided to make a serious effort about PC gaming, beyond the flight simulator and golf games they already had released. The representative for their distributor commented that the PC market had grown a lot in the past year, and at that point the market share on the Swedish market actually was as much as 30% PC gaming! The article said that up to then about 1.3 million PC computers had been sold in the country, of which 15% were bought by private customers, compared to the situation in Germany where up to 40% of the PC sales were by private customers. Unfortunately I don't have a figure handy how many Amigas had been sold in Sweden by then.

Some attempt at math: 1.3 million * 15% (assuming only home users are interested in video games) = 195000 systems, that made up for 30% of the market meaning the total market reach would be 650000 home computers, which to me seems like a rather low figure, in particular if the distributor also did console games. Perhaps I'm over simplifying my math, and forget the fact that PC owners generally would be more wealthy than scrawny kids with Amigas, and thus actually buy more original games instead of relying on piracy. With that in mind, it is much harder to estimate total volumes of home computers based on some sales figures.

[Keatah]

When examining the Amiga, its proponents like to compare it against the early PC. And in that comparison the Amiga shines most certainly. But usually lacking in that comparo is the modularity and expandability of the PC. And zero mention of potential that that expandability brings to the market and machine.

 

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

I remember that time when the Amiga came out.  I wanted one but it was still a lot of money.  To me it seemed risky. By the late 1980s PC seemed like the obvious choice going forward.  VGA pretty much doubled the price of a PC but the upgrade path is what made the platform attractive.

It wasn't just the modular graphics and expandability that were highlights of the PC platform. There was activity surrounding sound, memory, HDD/storage, and ability to accept a wide range of external peripherals. And of course the CPU speeds and instruction sets were constantly growing too.

[roots.genoa]

9 hours ago, carlsson said:

It actually turns out to be Commodore's doing all along.

Probably not to the same extent, but Amstrad also helped establishing the PC in France, which makes sense.

[+swlovinist]

My perspective of the Amiga was that of a preteen when I got to play one at my friends house.    He was the only one who had one in my area of rural North California.  Of my close friends who had computers that I knew of, 3 families had a Commodore 64, one had an Atari 800xl, my brother had an Atari 520ST, and school was where I played Oregon Trail on Apple II computers.   In my area, C64 was still being used way after it was surpassed by more capable computers.   I look at the Amiga as the "sports car" of home computers, with graphics and gaming that really was ahead of its time.   I cannot remember seeing the Amiga in stores in my area, with the only computer store in my town promoting Atari products(hence why my brother got an Atari ST.  At the time it seemed that there were so many options for computers, and many opted for something that was already established.   I am thankful that I finally did get to own some Amiga computers myself, as I can see why people are very passionate about it.  

[Keatah]

Thing with computers ahead of their time is that not many developers develop for them. They're just as few and far between as early adopters of the hardware itself. And that translates into little or no software.

 

Whereas a commonplace less-state-of-the-art computer is likely to be owned by millions. That means tons of devs. And that translates into tons of software.

 

So give me that Apple II, without a graphics chip or blitter, without a sound synthesis chip, any day of the week. Because software! Software that I can use.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Keatah

[Laner]

On 10/1/2021 at 5:52 PM, Leeroy ST said:

In the US people forget the C128 was the stepping stone toward the lack of success in the US for Amiga (putting the C64 race to the bottom aside,).

 

When things were rebounding the C64 was over 2 million sold in 85, the C128 maybe ~2-300k, and the new hyped Amiga did 80k or less.

 

During this time Atari managed to become the leader of the next gen computers in the US with ST, and profitable for the first time in Atari computer history.

 

The reaction and quick decline of the C128 in the US, and the ST approach that brought favorability with vendors and software developers (initially) put the Amiga in the hole from the start.

 

Amiga would struggle with some crazy sales to reach higher numbers in the US.

 

Commodore could never follow up C64 in the US and ended up dying in relevance with it by 1990.

 

While the C128 was little more than a glorified C64 in terms of how it was utilized, it ended up selling nearly 6 million units. Purely from a sales perspective, it was a success. It was never meant to set the world on fire, but rather to fill the gap in Commodore’s lineup as they prepped the launch of the Amiga.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Laner

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, Laner said:

While the C128 was little more than a glorified C64 in terms of how it was utilized, it ended up selling nearly 6 million units. Purely from a sales perspective, it was a success. It was never meant to set the world on fire, but rather to fill the gap in Commodore’s lineup as they prepped the launch of the Amiga.

But we are taking in the US, and the C128 hurt the brand there. It may have been worth it worldwide but it was a factor in commodore losing an important market.

[mr_me]

I seriously considered the Commodore128.  I thought the 80 columns and CPM software compatibility was a good idea at the time.  For people interested in games, probably most people, a C64 made more sense.

[shoestring]

On 9/30/2021 at 6:48 PM, Keatah said:

I consider the modular graphics and sound problem solved with the ISA bus and its descendants. Years before PCI.

No it didn't. It wasn't plug and play ( more like plug in and pray, as we would all say ) , it was only asynchronous. So it solved none of Dave's problems until PCI came a long.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by shoestring

[Keatah]

Plug'n'Play never quite worked right. ISA was totally successful in allowing graphics and sound to work off-board. PCI just gave more speed and features. As did other then-future buses.

 

Another thing is.. would the Amiga's performance allow it to support the extra overhead of the PCI bus to begin with? The PCI bus was tried on 486 machines - but it didn't really go anywhere for various reasons beyond the scope of this thread. It was the Pentium and Pentium II that popularized that bus.

 

[carlsson]

On 10/2/2021 at 2:38 AM, carlsson said:

Some attempt at math: 1.3 million * 15% (assuming only home users are interested in video games) = 195000 systems, that made up for 30% of the market meaning the total market reach would be 650000 home computers, which to me seems like a rather low figure, in particular if the distributor also did console games.

After some more research, it appears that the sales number for Amiga in Sweden was closer to 100000 systems, plus perhaps 100000 C64/128. That is interesting that already at the time of the PC begun dropping in price, it had sold roughly twice as many computers to home users as the Amiga which undeniably had been a "home computer" for 5 years.

 

Also I found a lengthy article in Swedish about the games distributor Wendros which indicates that they worked with computer games + Sega, but hit some obstacles once they tried to move into Nintendo territory in the early 1990s, so if 30% of their sales were PC, the rest 70% would be divided on Amiga, Atari ST, C64, Sega Master System and Mega Drive (perhaps a few on Macintosh too). Now if there were twice as many home PCs as there were Amigas, and my previous assumption that PC owners would be less into piracy than Commodore owners were, it would be interesting to see the complete breakdown by the end of 1992. Unlike many other European markets, over here the Sega consoles kind of played second fiddle behind NES but perhaps those anyway were installed in the range of 100000 - 200000 consoles and obviously even harder to copy cartridge games so in sales volume those may represent a big fraction anyway.

Edited October 4, 2021 by carlsson

[Laner]

On 10/3/2021 at 2:16 PM, Leeroy ST said:

But we are taking in the US, and the C128 hurt the brand there. It may have been worth it worldwide but it was a factor in commodore losing an important market.

How did it hurt it? 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Laner

[mozartpc27]

On 2/21/2017 at 10:56 AM, zzip said:

 

That is true. I recall that Clover, a Kmart-like chain, was still carrying Atari stuff in the late 80s when none of the other discount retailers were. Apart from that EB, I think was selling it, and dedicated computer dealers.

Must be from my area, zzip (SE PA).  Clover was regional here, and I remember the exact same thing.

[mozartpc27]

On 10/8/2021 at 11:33 AM, Laner said:

How did it hurt it? 

I would like to hear the answer to this as well.

 

I think the Commodore 128 is the most consistently underrated computer of the entire era through its release, and then some.

[Hwlngmad]

13 minutes ago, mozartpc27 said:

I would like to hear the answer to this as well.

 

I think the Commodore 128 is the most consistently underrated computer of the entire era through its release, and then some.

There is a perception that the C128 hurt Commodore.  However, while it wasn't the true C64 followup most wanted, it still was a very successful computer and I believe all C128 models sold between 4 and 5.7 million.  Those aren't figures to sneeze at, that's for sure.