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From: raible@cbmvax.commodore.com (Bob Raible - LSI Design)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.sys.mac.games,comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Mac and Amiga (Games--Macintosh vs A500)
Message-ID: <19467@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 4 Mar 91 05:57:06 GMT
References: <27253@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <1991Mar3.223546.12173@rice.edu> <1991Mar4.013846.26519@gsm001.uucp> <1991Mar4.030134.7183@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Reply-To: raible@cbmvax.commodore.com (Bob Raible - LSI Design)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 42

In article <1991Mar4.030134.7183@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> dbert@mole.ai.mit.edu (Douglas Siebert) writes:
>
>I don't see why anyone thinks this is very unusual....after all, many of the
>same people who designed the Amiga and made it what it is today also
>designed the 8-bit Ataris.  Both were designed with co-processors to take
>the workload off the main CPU, and both were designed to be great with both
>graphics and sound.  Both similiarly have ignored getting their computers
>recognized as being intended for very "serious" use.  I still have a working
>8-bit Atari which I still used occasionally up until a couple months ago when
>I got my Mac.  One of the main reasons I chose a Mac and not an Amiga w/Mac
>emulation is that I remembered that trying to find *anything* software or
>hardware wise for the Atari became all but impossible a couple years ago,
>while the old Apple IIs are still alive (though barely!)  Macs have found their
>way into businesses and Universities, while Amigas, with few exceptions,
>have not.
> 

In fact Jay Miner (former Atari guru) and Co. designed the Amiga to be
the ultimate game machine. It wasn't until CBM came along that the
decision was made to make a personal computer out of it. Soon afterwards
it got kinda silly with certain influential upper management types
deciding to take the Amiga upscale. The result was a marketing fiasco,
the A1000. This was to some extent corrected by the subsequent design
and release of the A500 and A2000. Though both machine shared almost
identical guts, they did a better job of addressing the needs of two 
different market segments. Oh yeah, before I get flamed by the 150K
diehard A1000 fans out there, I think the A1000 is as neat as you all
do. I just feel it was marketed all wrong. The A500 did much better in
the marketplace and the revenue it has produced has in large part made
it possible for us to keep pumping out new high end machines. It also
makes it financially feasible for the software developers to write all
kinds of really neat game software. Also since the architecture has been
around for five years they have gotten really sophisticated about
wringing out the maximum performance out of our hardware. I worked for
TI consumer before I joined Commodore, and I've seen this phenomenon
occur with the 99/4 as well as CBM's C64. It takes a while for the game
writers to write good code on new hardware and figure out the shortcuts.

>________________________________________________________________________
>Doug Siebert                                     dbert@albert.ai.mit.edu
>MBA Student (2nd year)
>The University of Iowa