
The mysterious sales numbers of Commodore computers - erickhill
http://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45
======
hyperliner
Does anybody remember Cromemco?

My family was poor, so we did not have a computer. But my high school got a
16k Cromemco (with S-BASIC).

Since it help me get out of a poor neighborhood, I remember it fondly.

My life changed when a teacher said "Hey, so we got this thing called a
computer and nobody knows what to do with it. Why don't you open the box?"

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco)

------
toyg
Amiga "perceived as the cost-cutting budget computer brand"? In the US maybe;
in Europe it was considered absolutely top-notch, at least until PCs started
getting cheap consumer-grade graphic cards.

~~~
angryostrich
I was trying to understand that as well. I wonder if it was worded strangely
and meant that Commodore was seen as the cost-cutting brand that Amiga had to
separate itself from?

~~~
jandrese
That's how I parsed it. Everyone knew Commodore from the C=64, which was
really babby's first computer. Now that company is trying to release a full
power workstation at full power workstation prices and everybody goes "Why is
the toy company making work machines?"

~~~
toyg
But even the C=64 wasn't that terrible when Atari was still selling the 2600,
or at least this is the perception I had at the time. Sure, there was the
C=128 and the ZXSpectrum and Apple and so on, but the C=64 was still a
perfectly respectable and massively popular platform. C= US marketing must
have been really terrible.

~~~
jandrese
The C=64 had a built-in sprite generator. It had first class graphics (for the
era) baked right in. It had a complex and powerful sound chip (for the era)
for making games sound good, but not really good enough for professional
musicians.

It straddled the fence between game console and personal computer, much the
same way the Apples of the era did.

IMHO, this is a big reason why Steve Jobs was so hostile to gaming on the
Macintosh. He wanted people to take the machine seriously and he was living
through Commodore's failure on the Amiga.

I mean Amigas were powerful machines, with specs comparable to Unix
workstations of the era; yet the only thing most people remember them for is
the video toaster and the demoscene. It was perceived as a rich man's toy
machine unless you were part of the tiny niche of TV production companies.

~~~
scholia
_> The C=64 had a built-in sprite generator. It had first class graphics (for
the era) baked right in._

The C=64 had much less powerful graphics than the Atari 800, which was out
well before the C=64. The C=64 got big by reducing build quality and slashing
prices.

The Amiga was much more similar to the Atari 800. Commodore didn't develop it,
they just bought it from Amiga Corporation.

Jay Miner, "father of the Amiga", worked for Atari and developed the custom
chips for the Atari 800 before repeating the process for Amiga Corp.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Miner)

~~~
agsamek
I was Atari user.

C64 was better for games. It had text mode where each individual character
could have different colors. This was huge. Sprites were better for games.
Eigth of them with x and y position. Atari had 4 sprites that were entire
columns. All games were created in text mode since you were not able to
repaint entire screen otherwise.

Plus much better sound chip.

C64 was better for games.

~~~
scholia
Yep, games certainly looked and sounded better on the C=64....

Might be fairer to compare the Atari 800 with the Vic-20, since the Vic-20
came out well after the Atari ;-)

------
PeterStuer
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was huge at that time (according to Wikipedia 5
million units sold (excluding clones)), yet is completely absent from the
charts?

~~~
renaudg
And the Amstrad CPC had 3 millions units sold.

This just goes to show how regional the 8 bit markets were. You, and the guy
mentioning the BBC Micro, are obviously talking from a UK perspective.

I grew up in France and the Amstrad CPC (a British computer!) was the biggest
8-bit machine here by far. Same goes for Spain, I heard. There were also many
Thomson TO7 and MO5 in classrooms due to the government supporting this French
manufacturer in the same way the UK gov did for the Beeb. And just a few
people I knew had a C64, but felt left out. Never, ever heard of Spectrum or
anything else at the time.

The 16 bit era was different : the Amiga and Atari ST managed to be extremely
popular all across Europe.

~~~
CmdrKrool
I recently saw this entertaining video about Amstrad and Alan Sugar in the 80s
and 90s (also by Kim Justice, not the first time he's been linked in this
thread), which makes the point that to Sugar's credit, Amstrad was the only UK
manufacturer to recognize the potential of mainland western Europe and make an
effort to market its machines there while the others were fixated on trying
(and failing) to 'break' America.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIXn9Tr5hI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIXn9Tr5hI)

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leg100
The industry was pretty regional back then, which may make for a fuzzier
historical record. U.S. insularity means some histories neglect this, and
assume what's true for the U.S. held true elsewhere (which is a safer
assumption today).

Interesting that the author says the 1200 "seemed to rule" in the UK in early
90's. Why didn't it succeed elsewhere? It seemed powerful and good value at
the time.

~~~
anexprogrammer
USA Amiga advertising was cringe-worthy. Truly bad. The initial 1000 launch
was fine, but the US 500 era advertising was mostly risible and simply gave
away millions of sales to Atari. Newtek and EA probably made more Amiga sales
than C= US.

They moved Pleasance to Commodore International to try and repeat UK success
in USA. _It is only then_ in 1991 or thereabouts that they started making
deals with big retailers like Sears, Walmart etc. Someone should have been
doing that in 86.

The successful packs - The Disney box, the Batman pack were all C= UK
(Pleasance) created. Germany was doing very well creatively too. C= Intl was
worth keeping for engineering, not whoever in West Chester was marketing.

------
julianz
No mention of the PET, which predated the VIC-20. Surely it would have shown
in the sales numbers at the early end of the chart.

~~~
macintux
My high school had a computer lab with PETs. Wish I'd taken more advantage of
that at the time.

------
anexprogrammer
Strangely incomplete.

No breakout of Commodore UK. UK Amiga sales were probably over 2m of those
2.75m "rest of Europe" [1] under Pleasance and Sumner. Pet and Radio Shack (
right up to TRS-80 16 user Xenix systems ) were huge in their day making Amiga
times for US especially disappointing.

In the time of the Amiga, UK and Germany kept Commodore going. US compared to
either was extremely disappointing. It's the USA that lead to the often heard
description that the Amiga succeeded despite Commodore rather than because of.
After the initial launch, later ongoing US advertising was terrible.
Eventually, but far too late, they tried putting David Pleasance into Intl but
he soon movd back to UK [2][3]. It would be interesting to compare figures by
region with the Atari ST.

Both UK and Germany had advertising and packages that made sales. A lot didn't
like it as it tended to focus on the gaming side, and ignore the MM side. That
said MM use was very successful in both countries.

For evidence of "corporate incompetence", see the video by Dave Haynie, his
history of, or the track record under Gould/Ali[4] compared to earlier times.

For a year after the bankruptcy C= UK under Pleasance was favourite to
takeover C= Intl. It was only the main Chinese backer of the UK bid changing
horse last-minute (2 days) to back Escom instead of C= UK that history turned
out as it did. Poetic justice, in the minds of some at the time, that Escom
went under within a year of the buyout and never really produced anything ([5]
HUGE wall of text). Escom never really wanted Amiga anyway, just the patents.

Pleasance publicly (and sent more info within the developer community) stated
plans to produce CD32, 1200, 4000 and CD 1200, and to complete the RISC based
follow-up to 3000+. That wasn't chipset compatible so was questioned by many
but it was all the R&D left.

C= UK actually stayed profitable from Amiga launch to Escom takeover. iirc
they started making speakers and other peripherals after old C= inventory
started running out, but _never_ showed a loss.

There was a better history site with more figures but it seems to be gone.

[1]
[http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/sales.html](http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/sales.html)
[2]
[http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwpleasance_e...](http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwpleasance_en.php)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Amiga#Amiga_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Amiga#Amiga_in_the_United_States)
[4] [http://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/mehdi-ali-the-
end-...](http://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/mehdi-ali-the-end-of-
commodore/) [5] [http://www.bambi-
amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/escomtruth.html](http://www.bambi-
amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/escomtruth.html)

I long ago threw away old developer notes, so can't give more exact UK
figures. They probably went round in the private newsgroups anyway.

~~~
Nr7
Additionally: here is an excellent video telling the history of the Amiga from
a European (or specifically UK) perspective:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1nLzT_t0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1nLzT_t0o)

~~~
anexprogrammer
Am watching this as I have lunch. Never come across this guy before. Very well
done, and funny too.

Half way through it's pretty accurate to my recollection of those days, the ST
creation and Tramiel with his take no prisoners scorched earth style. A couple
of snippets of quality C= Intl adverts too. "Amiga sold by a rudderless
company who blundered on a daily basis and couldn't sell Tuna to the cat" :)

I'd forgotten about West Chester burning the efigy of Ali.

------
Tloewald
Apple and IBM competed for similar users (VisiCalc started on the Apple ][),
Commodore was competing against consoles and crappier computers. Commodore was
eventually killed by PC clones -- IBM PCs were FAR too expensive for families
to buy to play games on. (IBM PCs were more generally as expensive as Macs --
clones drove prices down, with IBM maintaining obscene prices until its brand
name meant nothing).

Commodore continued to have huge success with the Amiga -- but less so in the
US than Europe and Australia. My recollection was of game stores being C64 and
cartridges and a bunch of lesser companies, and then Amiga and IBM gradually
taking over, with IBM only becoming dominant as Commodore finally succumbed to
mismanagement in the early 90s (after commodore when bankrupt, it was revealed
that during the years when the Amiga was the world's most popular home
computer, Commodore never turned a profit).

------
protomyth
The charts does point out one thing that gets in the way of a lot of
narratives. Apple didn't lose the the marketshare war to IBM, Commodore did.
Commodore had already passed Apple by a wide margin.

~~~
damon_c
My memories of being 12 and watching the C64 shelves at the video game store
rapidly give way to IBM/PC shelves definitely support this narrative.

I don't remember any Apple shelf...

~~~
scholia
Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined
in with the IBM PC in 1981.

Apple targeted the business market with high-priced machines including the
Apple III and the Lisa. That's where it lost out to IBM. The PC took over the
business market, and Apple was reduced to the education and hobbyist markets.
(Exception: after the Mac was launched in 1984, Apple also picked up a big
share of the graphics market.)

Commodore went into the home computer business with the Vic-20 and C=64 at
console-type prices (a couple of hundred dollars rather than $1,500-$3,000).

~~~
protomyth
> Apple dominated the microcomputer market with the Apple ][ before IBM joined
> in with the IBM PC in 1981.

In 1981, the Commodore VIC-20 (announced in Jan) dominated the market being
the first computer to sell over 1 million units. It picked up from the
Commodore PET and was succeeded in 1982 by the Commodore 64 which sold 17
million systems. Atari sold more computers in 1981 than Apple. Apple did
profit not market domination.

~~~
scholia
TIME magazine cover story 1982: America's Risk Takers "Steven Jobs, 26, the
co-founder of five-year-old Apple Computer, practically singlehanded created
the personal computer industry. This college dropout is now worth $149
million." From: "Striking It Rich, Feb. 15, 1982"

The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.

~~~
protomyth
I think he was fired a little over 2 years later, seems the hype was better
than the reality[1].

> The VIC-20 was a mediocre computer, but it succeeded as a cheap toy.

That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids than
Apple's BMW priced computers did. It also dominated the market. Saying Apple
dominated the market in 1981 is about as true as saying Apple invented the
personal computer.

1) I did love my NeXTSTEP 3.3 on Intel machine, though

~~~
scholia
Jobs was shown the door because the Mac flopped. It had nothing to do with the
][, which was keeping Apple afloat....

 _> That "cheap toy" delivered the ability to learn to program to more kids
than Apple's BMW priced computers did._

Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than
two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools....

Incidentally, Sinclair Spectrum/Timex owners make the same claim as Vic-20
owners and it's just as specious ;-)

~~~
erickhill
> Arguable since only a tiny percentage of Vic-20 owners ever wrote more than
> two lines of code, while vast numbers of kids use the Apple ][ in schools..

I don't know about your school, but at mine folks were playing Oregon Trail
and simple math word problems on Apple ]['s and that was about it. "Coding"
didn't happen until maybe 11th or 12th grade - as an elective choice.

Prior to that time, on my C64 I was copying programs (painfully) out of the
back of magazines in my free time after school. Point is, just because there
were computers in schools did not somehow create a legion of CS majors. Heck,
more than half the folks in the programming class I took (late 80s) all had
'cheap' computers at home. They only the class because they perceived it to be
an easy A or B.

------
elcct
I myself have around eight of C64 waiting for better times :)

