Differences between Euro gamers and American gamers?

[Thenewguy]

I'm going to have to go agaist the grain again I think

I've been looking through the prices for these systems dude, at launch the C64 was $600 and the Disk drive was $400, I've seen notes that you could buy a deal for both at $900

At the point of its cheapest hour in 1983 I'm fairly sure the C64 was being sold for between $200 (no profit for shops at this price) and $230, the shops selling for no profit were making money on the disk drive and accessories, the Disk drive seems to have still been around the $300 area (I can't find much info on the Disk drive dropping in price at all)

Taking into account inflation C64 + Disk Drive launched for the equivilent of ~$2000 in todays money, at its cheapest point in 1983 buying everything you need would have to cost you well over $700 in todays money, possibly closer to $1000 (I'm not sure if the rebate deal was still in effect, and whether there were still C64 + Disk drive bundles, though the mentioning of the shops making their money on the Disk Drive wouldn't work that way)

The Colecovision complete set was ~$170 in 1983, which is the equivilent of maybe somewhere in the region of $380 in todays money, it also came with a free Donkey Kong Cartridge worth $30, the 2600 was $99 (~$220)

There's no way that the C64 could've had that harmfull an effect on the consoles or cheap computers at that price, there was easily still enough room for cheaper machines, its like comparing the consoles VS high end PC's in the 90s, the market for those mainstream game playing machines probably just died due to the crash, mainstreamers lost interest and the die hard game fans who stuck around moved onto the C64.

Also, 8 million 2600s sold in the US in 1982, we know that all 8 million of them were used by videogamers, where it comes to the 2 million odd C64 buyers each year we don't know what percentage were actually games players, a notable amount could've been actually using them as computers

I think the crash was mainly market saturation with not only too many games but too many new consoles too, and consumer apathy caused by Atari's ever pervading greed with poor products and high prices (remember that $30 ET cartridge is the equivilent of ~$70 in todays money)

Also, its possible that the "next gen" video game userbase of the US was becoming too fragmented across too many formats for the software companies to make enough money anyway, most of these machines managed to get ~2 million sold, and then a lot of them went out of business leaving their userbase's without support and pissed off.

In regards to the 3D talk, I looked into it, I think the Spectrum games I mentioned are true 3D, they were mainly wireframe and filled polygon, also a lot of the games I mentioned as being 16-bit ports (Driller, Castle Master etc) were actually original Spectrum/Amstrad releases which were ported to the 16-bits and C64, because the Freescape engine was made for Spectrum/Amstrad first.

I added some of the 3D games into this video I made of only 48k Spectrum stuff (even the music is original Spectrum only) It didn't turn out as good as I wanted (If i'd realised how long these stupid videos take to make I wouldn't have bothered) but I think its a good representation of the hardware abilities and deficiencies

Pitfall II was also pretty awful on the Speccy as I recall, though you had games like Manic Miner to make up for that.

And Chuckie Egg (1983) and Stop the Express (1984) and Wanted: Monty Mole (1984) and Astronut (1984), and Sir Lancelot, and Turmoil, and Jet Set Willy (1984), and Technician Ted (1984), Britain was in the midst of Manic Miner cloning on mass during that year.

The platform game which was most popular in 1984 on the Spectrum (and most like Pitfall) was Rare's Underwurlde, I'm not a fan of this game, but its certainly ambitious, Pitfall II is, what? 8 screens across by 10 down? whilst underwurlde was 16 screens across by 52 down, underwurlde was also completely non linear with three separate ways to end the game, had item pick ups, and allowed you to shoot the enemies with an assortment of different weapons, whilst Pitfall II has you jumping over the enemies Donkey Kong style.

Of course the A8 version is different though, that version is double the length of the other Pitfall II ports leading to it having two 8X10 levels (still under half the size of underwurlde though)

Both the CoCo and (more so) the A8 should have been reasonably good at most of the popular European games at the time

Yes the Coco should've been reasonably good for Mega Drive ports too as you can see by this mock-up which looks exactly like the Mega Drive original -

Edit: Oh, and do you know of many MSX games that used sprites to fake smooth scrolling like that?

No, but there are some homebrew games which use repeating patterns on the tiles which are quite impressive, but I haven't seen this method used in the commercial software, not sure if this was due to this method being too time consuming, or whether programmers simply didn't think of the method at the time.

I'd imagine that very simplistic patterns on tiles being used for scrolling wouldn't take too long, but more complex stuff would probably be time consuming, and require a lot of talent (remembering that games were made by very small teams or single individuals back then)

[Rottenbeard]

This is my first post here, and I hope it isn't too polemic, but there is a question that as an old Euro Mega Drive fan I can't help but ask to those who are more seasoned and experienced than me:

Do European and Americans REALLY have different tastes when it comes to games? I get really surprised when I see that games that are considered masterpieces here in Europe, like James Pond II or First Samurai, are just "meh" to American audiences. I feel it's a bit like when a game is considered "too Japanese" to be a sucess in Western countries (see Earthbound), but on a smaller scale. Or it is just that I'm getting a wrong impression here?

Rottenbeard hasn't read this thread so may be repeating this. The residents of Yankyland regularly ejaculate over the latest NFL/NBA/NHL game. Almost the same as those here over some sports, although it's mainly football. So the difference here is America spunks over a variety of sports titles. We just like football*



*Rottenbeard is in the exception. Football is boring.

[Rottenbeard]

But how come Where's Waldo is called Where's Wally in Europe?

Because Waldo is a bullshit name.

[kool kitty89]

I think the C64 was pushing below that though... (the C64 was down to $100 by 1984 I believe, but I'm not positive) and Coleco had already started shifting to the Adam.
And remember there were others getting purely dumped on the market (like the VIC and Timex machines).
And many of the console prices were dropped heavily during the crash. (the CV had launched at $200 in '82 and I doubt it would have dropped below $150 by the end of '83 otherwise -the 5200 had been $250 in '82, oddly more expensive than the contemporary 400)

It's not just about price, it's about marketing, and the C64 was very well marketed. (they sold a lot even early on at $600 with almost no software available) There was also more perceived value in computers in general.



Oh, and another perspective on the issue of the Atari machines specifically:

It got a LOT worse by 1982...

Atari brought it a big team from Control Data Corp into Atari's Home Computer Division around late 1981 and they set about taking the home computer line to just that level, but more to the extreme... to make a "Computer Appliance" A closed box, just plug it in and use it as is. They then through a division called "HAT" went to Racal Vadic and one of their first projects was to take the Atari 850 autoload design to the next level - the Atari 1030... Atari envisioned "Smart Appliance Devices" that you would just plug into your Atari computer and they would supply everything needed, the hardware and software. Just turn them on and use them. The 1030 modem was a very cool idea, its main flaw - no damned support for a disk drive (and why should there - there was no upload/download feature in the built in software) More narrowed minded thinking on a narrow minded path. Its why the 1200XL was a failure and why 3rd parties had to come to the 1030's rescue with more capable software.

It wouldn't be until spring of 84' that Atari realized it needed to empower its systems and software with more features and flexibility. The Atari 8bit world would be a much much different place today had the 1090 XL system been released for example. I know a lot like to point out - well ICD and CSS made Parallel bus products and that was it. There all in one boards didn't allow for other devices to co-exist and what was needed was a card card, and to foster 3rd parties to make add-on cards. Look at the Apple ][... the Atari 800 was far superior to it, yet it was taken as a more serious computer and more units sold of it, why - expansion - you have ram cards, 80 column card, rgb cards, printer cards, and so much more. It took a simple "box" and allowed it to grow well beyond its original design. Same with the IBM PC - it was an under powered box --- however, through in a floppy disk controller, MFM hard drive controller, Everex Multi-function card and a 3COM ethernet card and now you've got one serious machine.

This is what Atari needed - not a closed box - accept it as is and nothing more design. There in lied its biggest fault - its lack of growing outside of its off the shelve specification.


Curt

Atari was offered the apple and declined as they has thier own in dev.

No, it was just that at the time it was offered (Spring '76) Atari was focused on the VCS, and a lot of the engineers (includnig Al Alcorn) didn't see it as a viable product at the time. And they were right, in '76 personal computers were still homebrew type products with a limited market (which is exactly what the Apple I was). That all changed by the time Atari released the 2600 of course, you had Apple (the Apple II), Commodore (PET), and Radio Shack (TRS-80) all enter with more consumer orientated computers and really jump start the home computer market. Hence they went right from the 2600 to the early PCS designs.

Interestingly, they originally wanted an open architecture card system ala the Apple II, but Ray wouldn't allow it. In fact he had a grand vision for a consumer driven "appliance computer" market complete with color coordinated computers ala what Jobs did with the iMac almost 20 years later.

So unlike Europe where it seems what was needed was a greater focus on a low end bare bones package (emphasis on tapes alone, perhaps no cart or joystick ports built-in at all, just a general purpose expansion port to add such a la spectrum -much like the PBI added to the 600/800XL), the US market had the opposite problem: not enough features and expandability. (something the 1200XL pushed further and the 600/800XL were well on the way to resolving with the PBI and planned 1090XL expansion system -a shame the PBI handn't been there in 1979)

Hmm, actually you have some overlap there: with the low-cost emphasis you have one consolidated (yet flexible) expansion port but few built-in features... so that could have worked out well on both fronts, though the US version would obviously have the cart slot and joy ports either way -the 2nd slot on the 800 was totally unnecessary though. (and they didn't have to have a whole array of internal expansion slots like the Apple II -adding significant cost and bulk... maybe something to include on the 800 but not 400)

In the case of the joyports, I believe the MOS 6520 PIA was used solely to provide joystick I/O (16 I/O lines for the 4 controller ports -used for the stick movement, the fire buttons were read by CTIA -the generation video chip- and analog polling was handled by POKEY -as well as keyboard inputs, serial I/O, and sound generation). They actually removed PIA from the 5200 and relied solely on GTIA/POKEY for I/O. (pokey reading the anlog joysticks and key pinouts -fire button 2 is treated as a key, and GTIA reading the fire buttons and using the 4 select lines to toggle POKEY key scanning for the 4 ports -technically they could have used fully digital joysticks and used POKEY to read everything, but not as fast as GTIA+PIA could -usually not significant, but perhaps for some very specific cases -aside from hacks using the A8 joyports as parallel I/O ports- you couldn't do that with the computer as the keyboard monopolized POKEY's key reading and I think the select lines were already in use... and you'd been 5 lines to toggle through the 4 joy ports and the keyboard and there's only the 4 trigger lines left -unless you limited it to 2 or 3 ports -given few games supported more than 2 players that wasn't so big an issue either -and you'd have 4-player paddle games still)


Hmm, actually for the Speccy, it's a bit odd that they didn't use the AY/YM sound chip to provide joystick I/O (16 I/O lines as 2 8-bit general purpose I/O ports), that would have meant any users with joystick ports would automatically have sound as well. (they'd have needed an analog audio mixing line going to the RF modulator though, or the beeper -but that would make for poorer quality)





As to using animated tiles for scrolling effects: the main drawback is memory usage as there's that many more tiles to use. (more VRAM usagae and more frequent updates plus more RAM/ROM usage and/or more limited graphics in general -many tiles dedicated purely to animation) Later systems use the same technique though including Sonic 3 in Hydrocity Zone. (far BG as a "3rd" layer)

[kool kitty89]

Another related quote from that same thread:

Actually Jay wanted to cap the Amiga (Lorraine design) memory at 128K believe it or not, infact he was a little annoyed when someone from the team admitted to the Commodore people - sure we can design the system to have more memory.


Most of the high end systems were shot down by Warner Comm management because they would've taken Atari into the realm of high end business computers - Warner wanted to stay in the entertainment business and therefor its owned companies - Atari being one of them had to product entertainment based products. It was that view that stifled Atari's ability to produce and sell more capable systems. Prior to GUMP was GAZA which was a known and documented working prototype system that ran on 2 (in the final spec 3) 68000 processors with high end graphics - meant to compete against HP Apollo and Sun workstations - the system ran CP/M 68K and was fully working and demo'd to Warner, once the demo was finished - again, Warner decided they didn't want to compete in the business field, the project canceled and that same team was then reassigned to build a high end next generation video game system around the Amiga chipset - codenamed "Mickey" after the team leader's wife.


I know one of the Corporate Research team was said to have written an OS for GUMP called "Snowcap" which was supposedly based on BSD Unix with a front end GUI. I am still trying to get information from him and if so, I'll be sure to include it.


Curt

[quote name='Tezz' date='Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:41 PM' timestamp='1255639277' post='1861234']
I'd be surprised if it would have been viable back then to produce it within the accepted price range and still make a sizable profit if it were a consumer aimed system. Perhaps the GUMP was a designers dream concept as mentioned above that would have been revised heavily for the released product? I don't know but I recall on the Amiga's inception after the take up by Commodore Jay Miner was adament that it shiped with 512k ram but Commodore said no way with the cost implications and it was revised by one of the team to 256k. If the Atari plan was to launch the GUMP as per the concept with 1MB of video ram, were Atari planning for it to be an expensive non consumer pro system?

[/quote]



Still, it seems management was out of touch with both ends of the market, both the higher-end and general US market as well as Europe.
Hell, the 1200 probably could have been adapted fairly well for the EU market directly (albeit it lacked the PBI ports -but that would only have mattered if more peripherals had actually used it, and with 64k it didn't need expansion so much, just further cost reduction -no RF shielding, smaller case, and probably a cheaper keyboard -they could have also excluded the MMU chip to save cost and limited it to 48k -if they kept to the older OS too, that would eliminate the compatibility issues as well)
And even the normal 1200 XL was more compact than the BBC Micro. (I think... at least it looks like it)

Even so the motherboard was a bit large, but there's another interesting project that got dropped:

The original 1982 Atari 600 (direct 16k counterpart to the 1200), and while 16k would have been a bit unattractive in Europe: it had a compact/sleek form factor, actually included the PBI expansion port (for RAM among other things), and like the 1200 it included BASIC built-in (on top of the OS). And really, given the general layout, they should have been able to put 64k on the board without much trouble (or 48k and remove the MMU and/or a 32k version with expansion to 48 or 64k depending on if the MMU was used -16k would be rather low). Hmm, if they REALLY wanted to cut cost for a EU specific version, they could have cut the MMU and the cart port and allowed the cart port to be added via a PBI peripheral. (maybe allow for expansion to 4 controller ports as well, but probably keep both normal joystick ports to at least compete with the C64)

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers.../600proto.html


I think it looks better than the later 600/800XL even with the all black top, let alone the rather boxy 1200XL (though some like it and it definitely looks better than the BBC Micro IMO).

[Thenewguy]

I think the C64 was pushing below that though... (the C64 was down to $100 by 1984 I believe, but I'm not positive) and Coleco had already started shifting to the Adam.

I've not run into a mention of the price dropping to $100 until much later, in fact the dealers were reportedly still buying C64s in for $100 from Commodore in the mid 80s. Also the machine is doing pretty well in 1983 at a price of $200-$230, nobody is successfully competing with them anymore by that stage so I see no reason for such a substantial drop that early on (C64's cost $135 for Commodore to manufacture in the early years so the price range you're talking about would lose them loads of money for no reason at all)

I guess with the earlier talk of price i'm not taking into account that the peripherals are kind of a hidden cost though, people wouldn't have had much experience with computers at that stage so a lot may have bought thinking that they were $200, only then realising that they needed to buy expensive disk drives on top of the base unit.

I've run into a lot of info on the Texas Instruments too, the price war was TI-994a vs VIC-20, the C64 had nothing to do with it, TI kept trying to match the VIC-20 price, the two went back and forth until they reached $130, which was the price at which the TI-99 was no longer making money, after this the VIC-20 dropped to $100 and was reportedly still making Commodore money, TI-99 stayed at $130 and was getting crucified so they dropped it to $100 and were losing $30 on every system sold, they were still losing to VIC-20 (which is the most weird element about the whole thing because a TI-99 at $100 in 1983 seems to be a damn good deal, though I guess we already mentioned the lack of software due to TI trying to control their software library which may have been a factor, and I've heard one mention that TI's peripherals were overpriced). Anyway by October sales are still not good, and TI quit selling the TI-99, shops start to discount even further to clear stock.

I've run into a mention in one of my magazines that the Spectrum was to be launched in the US at a price of $150 (exactly the same as my earlier guestimate) then, in a later magazine they mention that the system won't be released after all, and that Timex will release a "super spectrum" instead. The Timex 2068 seems to be originally sold in the US in 1983 for ~$200

The Coco was not involved in the price wars much at all (at least not up until late 1983, I haven't got much info for 1984 and later) I found an article which talks about public feeling that the machine is very much overpriced, and when it finally does drop late in 1983 it drops to $200 which the writer feels is not nearly enough of a price reduction (taking into account that the C64 is $200 I'd tend to agree, but the Coco would have much less hidden costs, as it was, I believe bundled with a tape deck, and much of its software was on tape as opposed to C64 disks). So, either Tandy had no interest in competitive pricing, or the machine was too expensive to manufacture, if the later is the case then it must've been an especially poor design because its price/performance standpoint is really pathetic at $200.

Lastly, if the US market is how you say it is, the 16k 400 should be completely obliterating the C64, with the rebate deal in effect its going for like $100, and this is before the C64 is at its lowest point (for a good amount of time in 83' the A400 with rebate is 99$, whilst C64 with rebate is $279) taking into account inflation the 400 is hugely cheaper. Personally I think the A8 must've been either really poorly marketed, had bad distribution, or Atari's name in general was worth mud, none of these elements can be blamed on Commodore business practice at all, Commodore manufactured the C64 for $135, sold it to retail for $200 and then the shops charged what they wanted with many getting the money back off of the peripherals.

It's not just about price, it's about marketing, and the C64 was very well marketed. (they sold a lot even early on at $600 with almost no software available) There was also more perceived value in computers in general.

Yes but as soon as we move away from price the argument falls apart, if it wasn't the C64 price which was causing these systems to struggle then their downfalls were their own fault, or a direct cause of the crash, at the equivilent of over $700 for a C64 there was tons of space for reasonably priced machines like the A400 and Colecovision.

So unlike Europe where it seems what was needed was a greater focus on a low end bare bones package (emphasis on tapes alone, perhaps no cart or joystick ports built-in at all, just a general purpose expansion port to add such a la spectrum -much like the PBI added to the 600/800XL), the US market had the opposite problem: not enough features and expandability. (something the 1200XL pushed further and the 600/800XL were well on the way to resolving with the PBI and planned 1090XL expansion system -a shame the PBI handn't been there in 1979)

The Spectrum was mainstream popular in Britain and Spain with gamers of all ages, taking into account inflation I severely doubt mainstream video game fans were buying the C64 in the US in 1983 at all, it was the hobbyists, the hardcore gaming fans, and the families feeling pressurised into getting a home computer because it was "the future" who were buying the system, the mainstreamers in the US stayed with their 2600s, and Intellivisions, and, if they were lucky Colecovisions. Mainstream and casual game fans do not happily pay out over $700 for a system to play games on, British people didn't care about expandability in the Spectrum because all they were using it for was playing Manic Miner and Jet Pac, Americans cared about expandability because in that period many more of them were actually using the C64 as a computer, realistically there is no other logical explanation, all in all for most people the Spectrum was never anything more than a glorified games console for playing the latest and best games, why would these people even consider expandability for a second?

I think that all the people who bought C64s because computers were "the future" ended up selling them second hand, or giving them to younger relatives like nephews etc as games machines, and by the mid 80s when the C64 was reportedly sold to shops at $100 this was when it became a more mainstream games machine with the US public.

If the magazine news section I read about the original Spectrum being set to be released in the US at $150 was correct, that would make it the equivilent of ~$340, this is not cheap, by todays standards that is a moderate hardware launch price, when the PS3 was launched at $500 for the 20gb I remember all the Americans online denigrating the price as too high and unnacceptable. The Colecovision and the Spectrum were the machines which were in-line with todays pricing, they were not cheap, in 1983 they were like the 360, whilst the 2600 was like the Wii, and the C64 was like a high end PC.

[kool kitty89]

I need to look more into prices, but as for gamers in general and prices: the attractive options would have been the 2600 (low-end) Intellivision (not looking so great against the VCS once larger games got pushed), Colecovision, and 5200 (the latter 2 selling rather similarly with a lead to the CV I think, but with Coleco pulling back in '83 to rush forward with the Adam hurt things and then the crash when you had lots of hardware and old games, but not so much new hardware). So the holiday season of '83 would have been the really big start for the C64 and something Atari missed out on as reorganization had just begun and operations were halted for the last quarter of the year. (probably the only notable bad thing Morgan did at Atari, a real shame it hadn't been a year earlier)

Even so you had some back stock of A400/800s (more so 400) along with the unliked 1200XL and a limited number of 600/800 XLs. In terms of pure cost/performance and game library of the time, the 400 would have been the best value aside from the 2600, especially with it under $200 at the beginning of the year and down to $100 by the holiday season. (again, in that sense they probably could/should have simply pushed the 400 instead of the 5200 back in '82, especially if they could follow up with the 600 and not cancel it or at least a single-board version of the 400)
The 400 was also simply expanded to 32k via an internal expansion card slot (48k expansion kits required soldering though -at home or a service center), but most cart games should work in 16k.

However, a major argument from you was that carts were too expensive and tapes were more attractive (and at the time the A8 would be 2x the speed of the C64 in that regard), but the tape market had declined significantly on the mass market in any case, especially with disks dropping to more reasonable prices.
And we've already established that the A8 kicks the C64's ass in that regard with 8x the loading speed. (there were also quite a few 16k games that would thus work with an unexpanded 400, though 32k would open that up a lot, and the full 48k expansion more so -though I'm not sure big a percentage 48k games were, I know MULE is among them)

Atari was also getting plenty of software support at the time, but that trailed off quickly around '85. (many moved on to the ST compared to the C64 and Amiga getting a lot of parallel support in the US and Europe in the late 80s)

A recent thread on AA popped up and ended up touching on some of this: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...st__p__2124746

If the magazine news section I read about the original Spectrum being set to be released in the US at $150 was correct, that would make it the equivilent of ~$340, this is not cheap, by todays standards that is a moderate hardware launch price, when the PS3 was launched at $500 for the 20gb I remember all the Americans online denigrating the price as too high and unnacceptable. The Colecovision and the Spectrum were the machines which were in-line with todays pricing, they were not cheap, in 1983 they were like the 360, whilst the 2600 was like the Wii, and the C64 was like a high end PC.

That's totally a matter of perspective, but tech was more expensive in Europe by a good marging, and ALL of that stuff was expensive by modern standards, especially if you look at 1977-1982 console and game prices.

The PS3's price really isn't that bad if you compare things likewise... people were crying "3DO" when the 3DO's 1993 price would have equated to almost $1000 in 2006 (still close to $700 at the $500 late '94 price), the 1992 Sega CD launch at $300 US would be $430, and the Saturn's May launch price ($400, same as the 3DO at the time) would equate to $530 in '06 while the $300 fall PSX/Saturn price in '95 would be $400 in '06, but the $200 PSX/Saturn/N64 price in '96 finally matches $250 in '06 fairly closely. (if you go back to the JP Saturn/PSX launch they're closer to 610/560 US in '06 and the JP MCD launch in '91 would be roughly $560 in '06 as well)


It's rather ironic that the Wii is actually the most overpriced by far this generation, even if they didn't sell at a massive loss like the competition, remember the GC had been at $99 shortly before and (by Nintendo's own claims) that was not at a loss either. (the Wii should easily have launched at $100 less and still been above cost -though why do that if Nintendo could market it and make big profits at the higher price and still be very popular? )
OTOH, they also could have beefed up the hardware a good deal more and still sold above cost at $250. (just still a good bit behind the competition in sheer performance) Or likewise the competition could have done that. (not just the BD player in the PS3, but the whole design isn't that low-cost in many respects)
Or another 3rd party. (say if AMD wanted to get into the business or partner directly with a distributor as the OEM, in 2006 they acquired ATi, so they'd be in a very good position to save cost though vertical integration and put together a competitive embedded system as a game console derived from AMD/ATi's CPU and graphics chipsets, and probably using a derivative of Linux for the OS -avoiding MS, though you would have a conflict of interest with ATi producing the Wii and 360 GPUs)

[Thenewguy]

After spending the last few months looking into the Coco and its software I'm going to have to say that you've been backing the wrong horse there (sorry coco owners) everything you've said about the Apple II is pretty much true for the Coco on a smaller scale, the Coco was very much overpriced and underpowered the whole time it was on sale, not only that, but it lacks the impressive Apple II software library, and merit as a "professional system" that the Apple had, with its sturdy built computer, proper keyboard, and good business software etc. Also, at this stage I have run into far to many instances of criticism on the reliability of Coco tape loading for it to be ignored. The Coco really didn't have much of anything going for it at all.

In fact, the Dragon 32 clone in the UK was most certainly more competitive than the Coco was in the US, in the UK the Dragon 32 sold in what would've been around the same price bracket as the Coco in the US, but had improvements to it such as a real keyboard, and, I think better video output and printer port. Also, most of the best Coco games were actually imported to Britain and officially sold as Dragon games by companies like Microdeal, which added to the British made dragon games and ports (like Manic Miner and Chuckie Egg) to provide a bigger library of quality games.

A recent thread on AA popped up and ended up touching on some of this: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic...st__p__2124746

You're really starting to get a handle on a lot of this stuff now LOL

In that thread Oky has some interesting points, but I like to note a few things

1. His price ranges are for the UK are a little misleading, for the most part by the time the C64 started dropping in price the 16k Spectrum was £99

2. As we've already established, the Spectrum was not cheap and cheerful, it was moderately priced when taking into account inflation.

3. In its price range the Spectrum wasn't really underpowered at all, in the US systems like the 2600 were still extremely popular in 1982, and by 1983 the Spectrum would've sold at around the price range that Intellivisions were in the US, and a little cheaper than the Colecovision, the Coco was much more expensive in the US than the Spectrum would've been and was pretty much worse in all aspects.

That's totally a matter of perspective, but tech was more expensive in Europe by a good marging, and ALL of that stuff was expensive by modern standards, especially if you look at 1977-1982 console and game prices.

Yeah the stuff was expensive back then, but I don't feel that this changes the main point, after all the years of the videogame industry has had to mature the average prices have all naturally settled around that level, it just so happened that the Spectrum and Colecovision were launched in that price range at that time which possibly facilitated them prospering (the Colecovision only initially though, as sales tailed off after 6 months odd). The PS3 still sold decently when it was released, but it was when it dropped closer to that same bracket that it started to be more successful with mainstream buyers.

[kool kitty89]

I've not run into a mention of the price dropping to $100 until much later, in fact the dealers were reportedly still buying C64s in for $100 from Commodore in the mid 80s. Also the machine is doing pretty well in 1983 at a price of $200-$230, nobody is successfully competing with them anymore by that stage so I see no reason for such a substantial drop that early on (C64's cost $135 for Commodore to manufacture in the early years so the price range you're talking about would lose them loads of money for no reason at all)

You're right on this point, I was remembering that wrong... the C64 wasn't below $199 retail until after 1983 and not to $100 until the late 80s. (possibly coinciding with the C64C, though maybe back in '85)

However, I'm still not sure even a bare-bones Speccy could have been cheap enough to substantially attract users away from the competition. Given the $80 price for the super low-end Timex 1500 (ZX81 with 16k in a Speccy48k-like case) in 1983, I doubt that at similar margins, a direct Speccy48k adaptation would have been below $150. (and it seems that was to be the 1983 launch price) And while the price per RAM/performance would be pretty good, it wouldn't have software to match at launch and there was all the systems being dropped at roughly $100 prices by late 1983 as it was... many of which may have looked more attractive at the time regardless of future potential. (VIC-20, Atari 400, TI99, etc, though the 48k would have been very notable and I doubt 32k 400s were down that low -probably more like $150)
OTOH pushing the Speccy 16k probably could have covered their bases while the glut of cheap dumped hardware dissipated. (that would have been miles better than the Timex 1500)

If it did get notable sales and went on long enough for larger scale production to kick-in and manage greater cost efficiency, they could have stated outsourcing to Europe for more software on top of a limited US development base (obviously they'd have used directly compatible Speccy ROMs... no idea why they didn't in the first place) and almost certainly push for a Joystick+sound module by '84 along with a corresponding unit with built in joyports and AY8912 (assuming they hadn't pushed that back in '83), and they might have been able to stay notable on the market when the C64 really hit its stride in '84.

Like the C64 and Apple II, it likely would have faded from ~1986 onward (from the '84/85 peak), and you had consoles starting to take over developer interest more and 16-bit computers and PCs coming into their own followed by PCs starting to take over the computer game market by ~87/88 and pushing more and more. (but not to the point of competing with console level popularity until the mid 90s)

Interestingly Tandy was pretty much the first clone manufacturer to really push a low-cost relatively high-performance PC clone competitor with the Tandy 1000... basically what the PCJr should have been and the only real home-market PC on the market until the late 80s. (and the only PC compatible line with sound and graphics beyond CGA and PC speaker -aside from high-end EGA machines and those would not have been getting any games -and technically, EGA was no better for games than Tandy's 1984 graphics modes... at least for the 320x200x16 color mode most/all EGA games used -in fact it might have been better for games in some respects, and there were no PC sound cards until 1987 with the Adlib which got its first supported game in 1988)
Not as good as the ST, but avaiable a year earlier, PC compatible, very expndable, though a fair bit more expensive (much less so with the EX model released in '86), and far cheaper than the Amiga, let alone contemporary PCs, plus it had the Deskmate GUI. (early games focused more on the 160x200 graphics mode, so they tend to look more like C64 games than ST games... but my the mid/late 80s they were regularly using 320x200 -the color was more limited than the ST and performance depended on the CPU used...)

I've run into a lot of info on the Texas Instruments too, the price war was TI-994a vs VIC-20, the C64 had nothing to do with it, TI kept trying to match the VIC-20 price, the two went back and forth until they reached $130, which was the price at which the TI-99 was no longer making money, after this the VIC-20 dropped to $100 and was reportedly still making Commodore money, TI-99 stayed at $130 and was getting crucified so they dropped it to $100 and were losing $30 on every system sold, they were still losing to VIC-20 (which is the most weird element about the whole thing because a TI-99 at $100 in 1983 seems to be a damn good deal, though I guess we already mentioned the lack of software due to TI trying to control their software library which may have been a factor, and I've heard one mention that TI's peripherals were overpriced). Anyway by October sales are still not good, and TI quit selling the TI-99, shops start to discount even further to clear stock.

I'd gotten the impression it tied into the C64 as well... but in any case TI obviously made some hefty mistakes with the TI99/4 from the restricted 3rd party development to even putting it in the same class as the VIC when it was a good bit ahead of that and closer to the A400... but with a powerful CPU with other potential (computational abilities), but not so significant for the gaming side of things. They really should have boosted main RAM by '82 though, be it adding in full-speed RAM to replace the scratchpad, or (more likely) slower cheap RAM that could allow 32k of main RAM and push it into the C64's range. (the CPU would have to clock down or suffer wait states to access the slower RAM)

Though I suppose that's a big part of Commodore's diversionary tactics with the VIC and then pushing the C64 predominantly.

I've run into a mention in one of my magazines that the Spectrum was to be launched in the US at a price of $150 (exactly the same as my earlier guestimate) then, in a later magazine they mention that the system won't be released after all, and that Timex will release a "super spectrum" instead. The Timex 2068 seems to be originally sold in the US in 1983 for ~$200

The 2000 or 2048 would have been the direct equivalent and it may have ended up ROM compatible as they weren't adding new features. (if the only change had been the enhanced graphics modes, that would have been nice... and the high-res monochome mode could have been taken advantage of for artifact colors)
But yeah, the changes they made pushed it into a range that lade it non-competitive... though it also went onto the market at a bad time with it already being flooded with a number of machines. (had they managed to push the speccy out by late '82 it could have been very significant)

Lastly, if the US market is how you say it is, the 16k 400 should be completely obliterating the C64, with the rebate deal in effect its going for like $100, and this is before the C64 is at its lowest point (for a good amount of time in 83' the A400 with rebate is 99$, whilst C64 with rebate is $279) taking into account inflation the 400 is hugely cheaper. Personally I think the A8 must've been either really poorly marketed, had bad distribution, or Atari's name in general was worth mud, none of these elements can be blamed on Commodore business practice at all, Commodore manufactured the C64 for $135, sold it to retail for $200 and then the shops charged what they wanted with many getting the money back off of the peripherals.

Atari screwed up their marketing... again had the 400 been pushed in place of the 5200... that really could have changed things, but that was the low-end and the mid/high-end of the consumer market is where the 800 and C64 were, but neither would have been the full mass market machines until prices really dropped by '83. (they 1200 really didn't help though and the 600 could have really changed things with a sleek form factor, PBI port, good keyboard, and 400 level price point or lower -cheaper to manufacture, and the PBI would have addressed the complaints about the 1200... so better all around for the low and higher-end/hobby sectors)
The 400 could/should have kicked the VIC-20's ass in sales, though I'm not sure how they directly compared (both were marketed to a similar demographic and both were readily available in department stores, but the 16k 400 -the 8k model discontinued in early '81- would have cost more than the VIC but still probably the best value on the market, had they addressed the keyboard by then, it really would have covered their bases -that wasn't tough to correct either so a fairly big oversight to not even offer a more expensive range of 400s). And actually it may have sold close to the VIC as it was... I'm not sure of the price difference (I know the 400 was down to ~$200 by late '82, not sure about '81), but I haven't seen really useful figures comparing both. (the VIC was significant for sure, but the much of the sales were from outside the US, unlike with Atari)

Yes but as soon as we move away from price the argument falls apart, if it wasn't the C64 price which was causing these systems to struggle then their downfalls were their own fault, or a direct cause of the crash, at the equivilent of over $700 for a C64 there was tons of space for reasonably priced machines like the A400 and Colecovision.

I already explained it was up to management and luck. Kassar ended up pushing the A8 range in the wrong direction as a closed-box consumer friendly machine with smart peripherals, that's what the 1200XL showed exactly what was NOT what the market demanded at the time (something apple later pushed and the ST to a fair extent as well in the sense of an appliance computer with limited expandability -part of why the ST didn't do that well in the US... not even a general pupose expansion port like the 400/800XL or VIC or Speccy for that matter) Had the 600 not been dropped in favor of the 1200 alone, they could have gotten lucky and covered all their bases, but that wasn't the case.

And even so Atari was not going to be able to match Commodore's prices with 64k machines at all... Commodore's vertical integration pushed that possibility out the window and Atari had to compete in other ways. (they could have focused on getting the chipset simpler in general, though the MMU complicated things further in that respect. The high-speed disk drive would have been a major selling point as well as 1st party software support, better OS, etc. (plus the 16k model attractive for cartridge users)
The 65XE really cut things back in general though and used a cheap keyboard, so that really might have competed with the C64 at the time. (but that was '85) The excellent keyboards (aside from the 400) was another plus of the Atari machines though.


Atari's management needed correcting back in mid '82... a shame they didn't get that for another year, and even then they had more bad luck as Morgan (who otherwise was a huge change for the better) put a hold on all operations in fall of 1983... meaning Atari fell behind in the crucial holiday season. (both in computers -with the new 800 and 600XL, but consoles as well, exacerbating issues of the crash). And when things were moving exceptionally for the better in early/mid 1984 Warner then broke up Atari and Atari Inc ceased to exist.
At that time Atari had tons of amazing projects on hand that ended up coming to nothing, as did Morgan's tireless works to turn Atari into a lean and mean company as Atari Inc died that summer. (Warner's fault, not Tramiel's) The 5200 was being carefully phased out, the 2600 Jr was in development, the 7800 had been test marketed with surprisingly positive response in spite of the crash and was planned to expand test marketing in the late summer and launch nationwide that fall. On top of that they had an Amiga based console protoype PCB readied that June for the chips to be dropped in, but Amiga defaulted on their contract and lied about not being able to complete the chips (then in negotiations to sell to Commodore)... and the sale to Tramiel went though about a day after the chips were to arrive. (the Amiga game system was to be out by that Christmas as well with the keyboard add-on following the next year per the contract and then the full computer a year later -ie in '87, when the A500 was released historically)

Had Atari not been sold, they'd have obviously sued Amiga but without the counter suit by Commodore (no ST), and Atari Inc had plenty of options for in-house fallbacks with the Amiga chipset off the table. (namely a variety of fully prototyped advanced 16-bit computer chipsets that had been shelved back in fall of '83 -and some were already being considered for adaptation to a game console as well as being reinstated as the main computer) The frozen projects and such would have been dealt with more completely after reorganization completed (with NATCO and such).

Of course, the sale of Atari's assets was the last straw in competing in the 8-bit market in the US (and arguably the same for the 16-bit market)... and the 1090 expansion system which was finally to add AppleII like expandability that year was also canceled.

The Spectrum was mainstream popular in Britain and Spain with gamers of all ages, taking into account inflation I severely doubt mainstream video game fans were buying the C64 in the US in 1983 at all, it was the hobbyists, the hardcore gaming fans, and the families feeling pressurised into getting a home computer because it was "the future" who were buying the system, the mainstreamers in the US stayed with their 2600s, and Intellivisions, and, if they were lucky Colecovisions. Mainstream and casual game fans do not happily pay out over $700 for a system to play games on, British people didn't care about expandability in the Spectrum because all they were using it for was playing Manic Miner and Jet Pac, Americans cared about expandability because in that period many more of them were actually using the C64 as a computer, realistically there is no other logical explanation, all in all for most people the Spectrum was never anything more than a glorified games console for playing the latest and best games, why would these people even consider expandability for a second?

And that's just it, the US mass gaming market really wasn't ever like that at all, you only had more hobby users, "serious" users (science, education, business), and only a very short period where low-end computers pushed ahead of game consoles.
That period only lasted from 1984 to 1986 when consoles took over rapidly again and not until gaming PCs being really big in the mid 90s did that even come close again.

Now, again, if the 400 had been pushed in place of the 5200, that could have jumpstarted things even earlier with a computer beind sold as a game console (which is what the 400 was intended as back in '79, a high-end game system with the 800 being the real computer), but that didn't happen. (once they had engineered a good lock-out system, they could go back to pushing consoles though... so actually that would have been perfect with the 7800 timed as it was and having lockout)

After spending the last few months looking into the Coco and its software I'm going to have to say that you've been backing the wrong horse there (sorry coco owners) everything you've said about the Apple II is pretty much true for the Coco on a smaller scale, the Coco was very much overpriced and underpowered the whole time it was on sale, not only that, but it lacks the impressive Apple II software library, and merit as a "professional system" that the Apple had, with its sturdy built computer, proper keyboard, and good business software etc. Also, at this stage I have run into far to many instances of criticism on the reliability of Coco tape loading for it to be ignored. The Coco really didn't have much of anything going for it at all.

I wasn't ever arguing that it was a good option as the market was... but only that it was the closest thing (in terms of low-cost design bracket) to the Speccy that existed in the US, granted it predated the Speccy as well.

Tandy was probably fairly stuck with the prices as they were at the time as they wouldn't really come down without higher production volumes, especially for the 32k models. (I haven't seen comprehensive price comparisons, but prices did continually drop from the 1980 introductory prices, and it was arguably a better value to the VIC-20 in 1981... the 1980 4k model was the first home computer in the US to retail for $300 or lower -the Atari 400 would have been the closest to that but was a good bit more expensive -albeit with double the RAM and comprehensive custom hardware, sort of like comparing the ST to the Amiga in 1985)

It could have been stripped down a bit more though... remove the cart slot, joystick ports, and serial port in favor of only an expansion port and tape interface like the speccy had. (they'd have needed to shift away from cart based games though and using 4k would have been a fair bit less practical... in any case probably pushing the 16k model a good bit more by '81 -and RAM prices dropped very fast in the early 80s... to the extent that the 32k models should have been down to $400 by late 1981 and the 16k models might have been able to match the VIC's price, and the 4k model was dropped fairly early as it was and the 32k model was later dropped as well in favor of only 16 and 64k models -and if cut back a bit, they probably could have even undercut the C64's price with the 64k models in 1982) But the question would still be whether they could compete with the C64 priced of 1982 onward. (if they had managed a significant market share and had pretty smooth production along with cut-backs compared to the original models, perhaps they could have stayed on course -probably with versions including the original peripheral configuration as well)
Trying to match the VIC's 1983 prices would have been rather pointless though and better to push a somewhat more expensive 16k model and the more C64 competitive 64k models than bother with things like the MC-10.


And also remember the Tandy was not as underpowered as the Apple II as it had the very powerful 6809 (don't let the low clock-speed fool you, the thing is pretty damn powerful)... and it was fairly expensive because of that. (a 6502 at double the speed would have been considerably cheaper, as would a 3.58 MHz Z80, let alone the slow 6502 in the Apple) They probably could have clocked it at the same speed as Apple and CBM did with their 6502s, but the .89 MHz would be directly divided from the common 3.58 MHz NTSC colorburst oscillator (very cheap and common crystal in use for TVs) and you'd either need a frequency divide and multiply circuit or a 7.16 MHz oscillator to manage the 1.02 MHz speed for the 1 MHz rated CPU. (plus faster RAM might have been needed -one good thing about the 6809 in spite of the cost was the high performance/clock allowing slow RAM to be used) Though perhaps they should have pushed that further on the Model 2 and not waited until '86 to boost it to 1.79 MHz. (they could have gone up to the 1.5 MHz rated 68A02 and used either 1/3 the 3.58 MHz signal at 1.19 MHz or 2/5 -or 1/5 of 7.16 MHz- at 1.43 MHz or using the 4.43 MHz PAL colorburst it could have been 1.48 MHz... or at very least bumped it up to 1.02 MHz)
There was also the high-speed poke command which overclocked the CPU to 1.79 MHz on the model 1, but that was limited to running programs from ROM, namely for double speed tape loading.

There are trade-offs in the video capabilities (rather interesting that many games on both tend to use orange/black/cyan/white) and in composite video the effective resolution of most games was slightly higher for the Apple. (140 vs 128 pixels across -unless you go to the semigraphics stuff) And the CoCo has a proper 6-bit resistor DAC. A shame there weren't interval timers for simple square wave production... actually had they used the 6532 (RIOT) instead of the PIA I/O chip, they'd have gotten a programmable timer along with the I/O functionality (and there's many usesful purposes for an interval timer in general, especially since RIOT has interrupt triggering)... actually RIOT adds 128 bytes of SRAM as well, and that could have allowed the high-speed POKE to work with that as well as ROM. (a lot of interesting possibilities there too) It probably would have been a little more expensive than the PIA, but it's the exact same size and supports similar functionality... but they wouldn't be getting it from Motorola. (Tandy got the VDG, CPU, and PIA from Motorola, but I think only MOS and various second sources were producing RIOT... it is of course the I/O and RAM chip used in the 2600)

In fact, the Dragon 32 clone in the UK was most certainly more competitive than the Coco was in the US, in the UK the Dragon 32 sold in what would've been around the same price bracket as the Coco in the US, but had improvements to it such as a real keyboard, and, I think better video output and printer port. Also, most of the best Coco games were actually imported to Britain and officially sold as Dragon games by companies like Microdeal, which added to the British made dragon games and ports (like Manic Miner and Chuckie Egg) to provide a bigger library of quality games.

I don't think the video was any better because of hardware differences... remember PAL has a higher resolution color carrier and thus artifacts a good deal less than NTSC, so that was likely the primary issue. (artifact colors would likelwise be useless because of that, and games designed to use them in NTSC would look bad in PAL video or RGB -a fair chunk of CoCo and some CGA games did that, and most Apple II games relied on it) Those problems could have carried on to the Speccy as well... though NTSC specific games could have taken advantage of any such artifacting and used it to their advantage. (if nothing else, dithering would blend better and most/all colors would look a bit different -like how one of the reds in the CV/MSX looks brown)

And the 1983 modle II more or less solved the keyboard issue (late modle 1s actually) and also made the unit a fair bit more compact. Technically they were still using a fairly cheap dome switch keyboard with better key caps like the Atari XE and ST keyboards did while the model III added a full-travel mechanical keyboard. (or dome switch with spring mechanisms like most modern keyboard use -higher quality full mechanical keyboards were abandoned entirely by the early 90s)


But, yes... software support was the issue, and in spite of the CoCo being the first really consumer priced home computer, it didn't catch on fast enough to garner support competitive with later competition (or the older Apple II).

I wonder if Tandy was restrictive at all about 3rd party software support... though I wouldn't have thought that given the context of the original TRS-80. (TI seems a quite odd case)

OTOH you could argue Tandy should have kept expanding on the original TRS-80 range for the low-end and expanded on it in place of the CoCo (perhaps even in a similar form factor to the coco) and/or put more into their rather powerful higher-end Model II line.
Or the fact that Motorola backed out of completing the successor to the VDG and Tandy was left to later introduce the GIME chip in the CoCo III. (with graphics roughly on par with the Atari ST, but less CPU resource to drive it and still only the DAC... though they probably could have tacked-on a small/cheap SN76489 or even model IIs from '84 onward, especially as they were using them in all Tandy 1000s -the CoCo II really should have gotten the CPU boost of the CoCo III and the III should have pushed for a Hitachi 6309 at 3.58 MHz... even if the machine was $300, that would have been a pretty damn good value in '86 with a 128k computer -expandable to 512k) As it was, the CoCo III shouldn't have been too far behind the Apple IIGS in graphics capabilities (mainly limited by the smaller palette), but should would obviously be weaker. (though it was less than 1/5 the price and had the rather nice OS9 as well)

Regardless of any of that Tandy pressed on with the older machines, but also pushed into an ever expanding PC clone market with the release of the Tandy 1000 in 1984 at an extremely competitive price point. So by the time the CoCo III was out, they;d likely have already been shifting focus considerably.




But from a hypothetical POV, what really might have met the Speccy's market for the US was a really low-end optimized Apple II clone by '81/82. A pretty bare-bones machine (with pretty fast tape loading speeds at 4x that of CBM and 2x that of Atari -but slower than the CoCo or Spectrum) which was simple enough to clone and had significant popularity established but was not being aimed at the low-end. Most clones aimed at a similar mid/high-end market as the Apple II, and the closest to a low-cost unit was the Laser 128 from 1984, but that was too late and still $700. (a good deal cheaper than the Apple IIC it was copying though) They needed a machine that cut out the internal expandability in favor of a simple edge connector for an external expansion unit and simple RAM modules and a consolidated board with minimal RF shielding and RF out (especially if coinciding with the looser FCC Class B standard) and an acceptably usable chicklet keyboard.

The boost over the CoCo was an even cheaper architecture (generally -especially the CPU), and an established software and userbase to build on.
Hell, had that side of things really caught on with Apple II clones exploding like PC clones did in the mid-80s, that could have been very significant for the entire market.

3. In its price range the Spectrum wasn't really underpowered at all, in the US systems like the 2600 were still extremely popular in 1982, and by 1983 the Spectrum would've sold at around the price range that Intellivisions were in the US, and a little cheaper than the Colecovision, the Coco was much more expensive in the US than the Spectrum would've been and was pretty much worse in all aspects.

It was underpowered in terms of graphics compared to the C64, but for the price, yeah, not really... and not at all compared to the Apple II.
But as I mentioned, its success would depend on marketing into the niche (including tactful distribution) as well as localizing EU software to supplement limited US support. (the C64 would have had a 1 year head start in development and it took 2 years for that to really hit its stride in software, so the Speccy would have to accelerate things if it was going to be attractive into 1984)

And again, my CoCo comments were more in the hypothetical sense comparing the actual hardware cost to the Speccy... and it's hardware capabilities matched the Speccy's fairly well (again, CPU speed doesn't correlate to performance and the comparison has a fair bit of trade-offs in general).

Yeah the stuff was expensive back then, but I don't feel that this changes the main point, after all the years of the videogame industry has had to mature the average prices have all naturally settled around that level, it just so happened that the Spectrum and Colecovision were launched in that price range at that time which possibly facilitated them prospering (the Colecovision only initially though, as sales tailed off after 6 months odd). The PS3 still sold decently when it was released, but it was when it dropped closer to that same bracket that it started to be more successful with mainstream buyers.

The Colecovision launched at $200 US in 1982... (ie $450 in today's money) and even with the major drops in price in '83 it would be well over $300) and those were razor thin console prices. (they did have cost overhead from buying from TI though -something that likely would have dropped dramatically in 1984 with TI dropping the 99/4) Granted that's not including the prices of systems being dumped with the crash in late 1983 though '84.
Coleco might have had a chance at a low-end computer with the Adam had it been a simplified, bare-bones console form factor without the funky proprietary stuff and bugs, but even then it would have been hindered by TI supplying the chips, at least until '84.

[Thenewguy]

However, I'm still not sure even a bare-bones Speccy could have been cheap enough to substantially attract users away from the competition.

Its hard to tell, I think that the TS1000 probably hurt Timex's reputation a bit in the US, so they may have had an uphill struggle anyway. Had they actually done something notable with the TS-1000 and capitalised on the early US success and momentum in 1982 they may have been better off, but I don't think there's much you can realistically do without the 16k RAM pack anyway, and a lot of Americans probably only bought the system for its cheapness in the first place and may not have been interested in buying add-ons like people did over here.

Other than that you have systems like the TI-994A, and A400 which are extremely well priced and are still not actually selling anyway, but then there are many possible reasons that we can't really consolidate,

1. Were Americans starting to get fed up with cartridges too?
2. Were the peripherals for the TI-994A hugely expensive?
3. Did the lack of software support for the TI-99 hold it back?
4. Was poor marketing a big factor?

There's also the factor that the market the Spectrum inhabited may not have been viable in the US at all, apparently the Japanese mainstreamers simply didn't like playing games on computers, stating that it was too complicated.

1. maybe the US was the same,

2. maybe the "idea" of consoles had become firmly entrenched by that stage in Americans, whilst in Europe it was more of a blank slate and people were still openminded to playing games on anything.

3. Maybe the market was possible, but the factors to make it happen just never actually came together.

4. Maybe it would've naturally happened, but the crash turned a lot of mainstreamers off gaming in general during the crucial period.

I don't think the video was any better because of hardware differences... remember PAL has a higher resolution color carrier and thus artifacts a good deal less than NTSC.

Yeah that's probably the biggest issue for the Coco hardware in respects to Europe I guess.

But, yes... software support was the issue, and in spite of the CoCo being the first really consumer priced home computer, it didn't catch on fast enough to garner support competitive with later competition (or the older Apple II).

I wonder if Tandy was restrictive at all about 3rd party software support... though I wouldn't have thought that given the context of the original TRS-80. (TI seems a quite odd case)

I don't think this is the case, unlike the TI-99, there are a lot of games for the Coco, its just that the major, talented developers seemed to go to the Apple and the Atari computers, which left Coco with a library of mainly ports and little else.

To be fair there are a half decent number of original Coco games, but then it did come out in 1980, giving it a lot more time to build a library before the C64/Spectrum arrived, and both of them almost certainly surpassed its game library within a year of being on the market.

But from a hypothetical POV, what really might have met the Speccy's market for the US was a really low-end optimized Apple II clone by '81/82.

Yes, totally agree, though I think it would've been better coming from Apple themselves than a clone company.

It was underpowered in terms of graphics compared to the C64, but for the price, yeah, not really... and not at all compared to the Apple II.

I think this is what people get too focussed on, the Spectrum really shouldn't be directly compared to just the C64 anyway, if you put all the machines of 1982/1983 into order of hardware power I'm sure the Spectrum would've come middle of the list at worst, so calling it underpowered is a bit much in my opinion, the NES didn't arrive in the US until 1985 (and that was a test market), the same year as the Amiga, so clearly that hardware could be considered very dated when looked at from the wrong perspective. Price and software are very important factors.

And again, my CoCo comments were more in the hypothetical sense comparing the actual hardware cost to the Speccy... and it's hardware capabilities matched the Speccy's fairly well

No, and this anti-Spectrum talk is getting fairly old now, I've played enough games on the Coco now to know that the two system are not comparable at all, 1st generation Spectrum games consistently kick the crap out of 3rd year Coco titles, I've seen very few instances when the Coco looks comparable (or better) than the Spectrum, and the only times this happens is with games using a 3/4 perspective, or with games which were simply well coded on Coco, and unoptimised for clash/badly coded on Spectrum (such as Donkey Kong)

Coco games tend to be only four (bad) onscreen colours or/and low resolution, just comparing arcade ports between the two in 1983 gives a favourable outcome to the Spectrum 90% of the time, and the win is usually a whitewash.

I am also surprised to hear that the Coco is notably more advanced than the Apple II, because this is not reflected in the games, the two systems usually look pretty comparable in my opinion, though I guess the Apple II would've had better software support pushing the hardware more so its not a very fair comparison.

[kool kitty89]

Other than that you have systems like the TI-994A, and A400 which are extremely well priced and are still not actually selling anyway, but then there are many possible reasons that we can't really consolidate,

1. Were Americans starting to get fed up with cartridges too?
2. Were the peripherals for the TI-994A hugely expensive?
3. Did the lack of software support for the TI-99 hold it back?
4. Was poor marketing a big factor?

I think marketing may have been one of the biggest factors and the fact that the computer market was growing relatively gradually (1983 seems to have been a big year for mass market computer growth in Japan, North America, and Europe in general). That and you had various sides to the market with the hobby, business, and home user and a bit of blurring in between. (the home market blurred with dedicated game consoles as well)

I doubt they were getting fed up with cartridges given how willing the public was to jump back into consoles by '86 and the fact that carts were getting significantly cheaper in general anyway -while simultaneously getting substantially larger. (never tape or disk cheap obviously -same for optical discs later, but dropping considerably along with consoles/computers in general) Many of the prices for consoles and games from the late 70s up to 1982 would seem pretty hefty by modern standards with inflation taken into account.

From what I understand (haven't seen good solid figures), the A400 was among the best selling home computers in the US prior to the explosion of the C64 and sold significantly better than the 800 in spite of its shortcomings.
And again, they probably could have positioned it as a game console specifically in place of the 5200 given the price point of the time. (as a dedicated game system, the weak keyboard didn't matter any more than it did on the Odyssey 2)

Had the video game market not destabilized like it did, the C64 likely wouldn't have exploded in popularity as such either, or would have at least not had the exclusive market share that it did. (the computer game market in '84/85 was significantly smaller than the console market in '82 or from '86 onward) It may have still been one of the most popular computers, but probably more like the MSX in Japan alongside the Famicom. (though Atari's computers would have done a lot better had management issues not cropped up along with additional unfortunate events like the several week hold on production in late '83 -that almost certainly also delayed the introduction of the 800XL in Europe, and then Atari Inc effectively ceasing to exist in mid 1984 with the consumer assets bought by TTL which then took on the name Atari Corp and caused yet another upset when Atari Inc was finally moving in the right direction under Morgan's leadership)

There's also the factor that the market the Spectrum inhabited may not have been viable in the US at all, apparently the Japanese mainstreamers simply didn't like playing games on computers, stating that it was too complicated.

For cart based games there was no difference really... and for self booting disk based games not any different either, but tapes took a little more work (especially with cases of more finicky drives/systems) let alone actually having to use OS commands to load a game. (or install it once HDD games appeared)
Most 8 adn early 16-bit computer games had self booting disks iirc, so that wouldn't have been an issue, though setting up a computer with separate disk drive was a little more complicated than a console.

With the Atari machines commonly using carts (and that facilitating games being fine with just 16k), that wouldn't have been an issue for the 400/600XL in any case. (especially since they were in the price range of contemporary high-end consoles)
Even the CoCo commonly used cart based games, though I don't think the Apple II did.

The advent of GUI based systems simplified a lot of that too though... and the ST and Amiga would apply there (the ST more so in terms of user friendliness to "dumb" users) and windows 3.x did that a fair bit too, but Windows 95 was obviously a major step for mainstream PC gaming in North America. (you also had hardware acceleration opening up at the same time and computers finally matching or exceeding contemporary consoles in almost every performance aspect)

2. maybe the "idea" of consoles had become firmly entrenched by that stage in Americans, whilst in Europe it was more of a blank slate and people were still openminded to playing games on anything.

Consoles still were cheaper though, fundamentally at least, though the crash upset things and there were other factors. (ie cost effectiveness limits)
Had Commodore produced a game console directly derived from the C64 and sold it at cost it could have undercut most competition of similar performance by a good margin. (one thing all players lacked was a comprehensive lockout system though... which the 7800 was the first to address in '84, with that you could have licensing enforced for 3rd parties and allow a razor and blade market even without strong 1st party software)

The Commodore MAX machine wasn't far from that either: all they really needed to do was cut out the peripheral ports and keyboard and move the cart slot (and maybe joyports). 4k was fine for a console (and small enough to make SRAM attractive over DRAM by that time with the savings in external DRAM refresh/control/multiplexing logic), maybe even add a second SID or a simpler chip to add a bit to sound. (maybe just for SFX generation to free up all 3 SID channels)
Then again there would be a conflict of interests in CBM's own computers... but they DID try to push the C64GS years later. (far too late though and a rather flawed design)
They'd have the same advantages of vertical integration as others and should have easily undercut the Colecovision and 5200 (maybe not Intellivision and definitely not the simpler 2600).

3. Maybe the market was possible, but the factors to make it happen just never actually came together.

4. Maybe it would've naturally happened, but the crash turned a lot of mainstreamers off gaming in general during the crucial period.

The crash itself seems a bit odd in some ways and likely created a snowball effect that fed into itself: the market declined dramtically while computers were already becoming "the future" and even before the crash several console companies were pushing (often half-assed) into the computer market. (Atari didn't do it half assed and got in well before it looked like computers were displacing consoles, but Mattel and Coleco did it half assed -and Coleco might have even had a viable product had they handled it differently)

All the major console markers opted to pull out and push for computers and both Mattel and Coleco failed at that while Atari pushed ahead on both fronts but then Warner split the company up in mid '84 and that fell apart too.
So instead of the consoles getting pulled back to lower priority with a "wait and see" attitude to try and ride through the crash, they left the market entirely and screwed themselves in the computer market... except Atari who had different problems: had Morgan been left to complete the (quite promising) reformation of Atari they might have been able to jumpstart things sooner with the 7800 planned for launch in late 1984 (test market in spring and extended tests planned for late summer -but the split halted that and ongoing contention over the ownership of the 7800 lasted into early 1985 when Tramiel finally agreed to pay GCC for the development of the hardware and 10 games -after which he started trying to get Mike Katz onboard and succeeded by mid '85 and he immediately got to work readying the 7800 for launch -and discovering all the major arcade titles were already locked in licensing agreements with Nintendo thus opting to push for computer game ports using his experience at Epyx to aid in that -odd that they didn't get more EU developer support though)

2600 sales had already jumped back up in 1985 without pushing on Atari Corp's part, but simply the market rebounding.

Yeah that's probably the biggest issue for the Coco hardware in respects to Europe I guess.

Only for games using artifact colors, otherwise they should look better in PAL... unless the color palette itself is off in PAL as with some machines.

I don't think this is the case, unlike the TI-99, there are a lot of games for the Coco, its just that the major, talented developers seemed to go to the Apple and the Atari computers, which left Coco with a library of mainly ports and little else.

To be fair there are a half decent number of original Coco games, but then it did come out in 1980, giving it a lot more time to build a library before the C64/Spectrum arrived, and both of them almost certainly surpassed its game library within a year of being on the market.

That happened with the VIC-20 more or less as well it seems. And it was on the market loner, but the Speccy and C64 came out when the market was bigger and both had much better EU support. (compare the US only software for all the platforms and I think things look different)

There is one other major issue with the CoCo that was common to all Tandy machines: it was sold almost exclusively (or totally exclusively) at Radio Shack or through RS catalogs: not in other computer/electronics outlets, and not at department stores. So you had the hit and miss Radio Shack staff to sell it (sometimes competent, sometimes as clueless as department/discount store staff) but not the broad distribution of contemporaries. If the CoCo had been on shelves alongside the VIC and in computer stores as well, it may have been a different story. (and for the more serious computer market, getting OS9 sooner would have been extremely significant)

That almost certainly also limited the older TRS-80 line (especially the high-end model II which should have been in serious computer stores as well -and probably promoted more as a serious business machine rather than more specifically the small business market), and the same for their Tandy 1000 line of PCs.

Yes, totally agree, though I think it would've been better coming from Apple themselves than a clone company.

Or both: and apple could have been proactive and licensed the design and ROMs for royalties and sold the OS... and then tacked on additional licensed for later hardware updates. (especially something tough to clone like the IIGS)

I think this is what people get too focussed on, the Spectrum really shouldn't be directly compared to just the C64 anyway, if you put all the machines of 1982/1983 into order of hardware power I'm sure the Spectrum would've come middle of the list at worst, so calling it underpowered is a bit much in my opinion, the NES didn't arrive in the US until 1985 (and that was a test market), the same year as the Amiga, so clearly that hardware could be considered very dated when looked at from the wrong perspective. Price and software are very important factors.

And in terms of pure computing power (ie for non game purposes -or even specific games like wireframe/polyonal 3D -ie Elite or Starglider should be considerably faster on the Speccy) it was stronger than the C64, Apple II, or Electron by a good margin though less so compared to the A8 or BBC Micro. (and the CoCo's CPU was, again, pretty powerful in spite of its slow clock speed -and the actual clock speed wasn't much less than the C64 or Apple -if it puts anything in perspective, it had 10x the transistor count of the 6502 and about that much over the 6800 as well and ~25% more than the 8086 or more than 1/2 that of the 68000)
The release of OS-9 in 1980 exclusively for the 6809 would have been very significant, but it didn't come pack-in with any CoCos until the model III AFIK. (you could probably argue that Tandy might have been better off with a 1.79 MHz 6800 and saving a fair bit on cost while still getting all components from Motorola... maybe even enough to spring for a bit more sound hardware... or even kept to the Z80 of their older machines and made the CoCo backwards compatible with the model 1 monochrome modes as well as adding the VDG, a 2x clock mode for the Z80, and the simple DAC along with an improved OS)

No, and this anti-Spectrum talk is getting fairly old now, I've played enough games on the Coco now to know that the two system are not comparable at all, 1st generation Spectrum games consistently kick the crap out of 3rd year Coco titles, I've seen very few instances when the Coco looks comparable (or better) than the Spectrum, and the only times this happens is with games using a 3/4 perspective, or with games which were simply well coded on Coco, and unoptimised for clash/badly coded on Spectrum (such as Donkey Kong)

I was again, talking in the broad sense, not just for games, but general computer use (both limited to 32 column text of similar resolution for example), but for graphics there's a lot more trade-offs and the Speccy has and edge in resolution and use of color in many cases. (CoCo could meet the Speccy exactly in any 2-color/monochome games though, rather like the A8 or better than the A8 in some respects -I think some things like lack of bit manipulation instructions puts the 6502 at a disadvantage for software blitting in some cases, though that would depend on hardware scrolling being used and sprites among other things) And you could do simple color reloading effects as well. (raster bars and such)

However that would mainly be used in Europe unless Y/C (S-video) or RGB monitors were introduced in the US as composite/RF works rather poorly for the 256x192 mode and tends to simply result in artifact colors at ~128x192. (I'm not sure if there's a grayacale mode -ie no colorburst- but if there is, that would help a ton for 32 column text and allow high-res grayscale games as well)

And while many games might not have looked as good, most should have been at least acceptable on the system.
The CoCo III is another case altogether though and is more in the range of a low-end alternative to the ST (it needed a sound chip though), but it had a multitasking GUI OS even with OS-9. (something the ST didn't even have with the single-task TOS, though the Amiga had and Apple IIGS had -and MAC got in '86 as well) The model III was a huge leap, but too late (and still too little in some areas), though for about $200 and with 128k in the lowest configuration, the price wasn't bad at all for 1986. (had the video chip added simple X/Y scroll registers and a bare bones PSG -or simple integrated sound to the VDP ASIC- it could have even exceeded the ST for gaming capabilities -and scrolling would be useful for general computing as well; scrolling took a ton of resource on the ST compared to simpler "sprite" object blitting as you have to move every pixel on the screen -that's come up more than once on Atariage: a full blitter was not needed to address that either but a more modest upgrade to the SHIFTER that could probably have been done by '86)

Actually, using artifacts you could manage a pseudo 256 color 128x192 mode with the CoCo 3 as well.

Coco games tend to be only four (bad) onscreen colours or/and low resolution, just comparing arcade ports between the two in 1983 gives a favourable outcome to the Spectrum 90% of the time, and the win is usually a whitewash.

You can chose any 4 of the 9 colors for 128x192 or 2 colors for 256x192 (the latter most often for artifact colors not possible in the standard 9). (and palette swapping tricks)

The rest was up to programmers to optimize for on a game by game basis. (you also had early games using semigraphics -namely those catering to the 4k models, though even with 4k you'd have the 128x96 4-color mode available, but mainly limited to cart based games as that would use 3 of the 4 kB of RAM for the display)

I am also surprised to hear that the Coco is notably more advanced than the Apple II, because this is not reflected in the games, the two systems usually look pretty comparable in my opinion, though I guess the Apple II would've had better software support pushing the hardware more so its not a very fair comparison.

In graphics the 2 are pretty close with the Apple having an advantage in some respects (with composite blur it has an effective 140x192x6 colors to the CoCo's 128x192x4, but via RGB it's 280x192 with restricted colors per column in a rather odd arrangement) and I think the coco was a fair bit simpler to utilize the graphics with due to the somewhat odd color management on the Apple. (plus you can use any 4 of the CoCo's 9 colors vs a fixed 6 pseudo colors of the Apple unless you consider the super low-res pseudo graphics modes with 40x48 using the Apple's full 16 color palette or 64x48 of the CoCo using all 9 colors -or actually 10 colors since there's "text black" that gives a dark shade of the color selected for text as well as true black)
Of this palette: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coco2bvdg.png
Edit: Ah, there's an added limitation, you can only select colors from 1 of 2 4 color banks plus black.
http://hcvgm.org/VDG_Colours.html (green, yellow, blue, red; and buff, cyan, pink, orange with black available in either case, but even then some games seem to make odd color choices)

The CPU is where the CoCo is more powerful (substantially so), that and the potentially more flexible 6-bit DAC over a 1-bit toggle. (meaning you had more options than only PWM)
In fact, I think Williams' early 80s arcade boards were actually done using software rendering with a 6809 only slightly faster than the CoCo's. (1 MHz rather than .895 MHz, though it had an additional 6800 based MCU at .895 MHz to drive the audio via a DAC as was common among several arcade systems -ie a bare DAC plus MCU in Donkey Kong and such) They were also using higher resolution and higher color depth. (but that would mean more work for the CPU than in the CoCo with well over double the graphics data to move around, more like the CoCo 3 but that had a CPU nearly 2x as fast as the Williams boards used) There was no music and just 1 sfx channel for all those games though.

[tomaitheous]

more like the CoCo 3 but that had a CPU nearly 2x as fast as the Williams boards used

CoCo 2's had the same double speed cpu mode that CoCo 3's had. I just think it was official on the CoCo 3, where as a small number of early CoCo 2's couldn't run in double speed mode (I forget the reason why, too).

[kool kitty89]

CoCo 2's had the same double speed cpu mode that CoCo 3's had. I just think it was official on the CoCo 3, where as a small number of early CoCo 2's couldn't run in double speed mode (I forget the reason why, too).

I thought the CoCo 3 had a proper 2 MHz rated 6809 and DRAM clocked fast enough to allow it to run at that speed continuously.
The high-speed POKE of the Model 1 and Model 2 was overclocking a 1 MHz rated chip and would cause graphical garbage to be displayed as it would disable DRAM refresh. (it was thus mainly used for working in ROM -including a double speed FSK take decoding scheme and other BIOS/BASIC ROM commands and dropping to .89 MHz in DRAM -not sure if cart based games also allowed the CPU to work at that speed -in which case you'd have code and data being run at 2x speed but still DRAM accesses for framebuffer writes and such being at .89 MHz)

I believe the CoCo also lacked programmable interval timers (at least the I/II), so that would limit things too. (timed interrupts, using timers to generate square waves as the PC speaker did, etc -not sure if there were interval timers/interrupts tied to the vblank/hblank times though -but 15 kHz would be too fast for many things anyway unless it was triggered only once every few lines -for PCM or such you could do software timed loops instead and probably save time with clean code)

Edit: oh... you probably meant the CoCo II added the 2 MHz CPU and full 2x speed more (including RAM). I haven't seen that mentioned before, but it would have been very significant if true.
Ah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer

The 6809 in the CoCo 1 and 2 ran at 0.895 MHz; the CoCo 3 runs at that frequency by default, but is software controllable to run at twice that rate; OS-9 takes advantage of that capability. Some models of CoCo 1 and 2 were also capable of running at this higher speed, but this was not supported or guaranteed.

So it wasn't standardized until the CoCo 3. (ie CPU rating and/or RAM used wasn't capable of the 2x speed mode)


I also noticed that the master clock on NTSC units seems to be 14.3 MHz... so they could have easily used 1.02/2.04 MHz rather than .89/1.79 had they divided the clock by 14 or 7 rather than 16 or 8. (or 10 if they'd ever used a 1.5 MHz 6809, and it would have been 3.58 MHz had the 6309 CoCo 4 been released)


Edit:
I think I may have misinterpreted part of this:

Switching the SAM into 1.8 MHz operation gives the CPU the time ordinarily used by the VDG and refresh. As such, the display shows garbage; this mode was seldom used. However, an unusual mode available by the SAM is called the Address Dependent mode, where ROM reads (since they do not use the DRAM) occur at 1.8 MHz but regular RAM access occurs at .89 MHz. In effect, since the BASIC interpreter runs from ROM, putting the machine in this mode would nearly double the performance of a BASIC program while maintaining video display and DRAM refresh. Of course, this would throw off the software timing loops and I/O operations would be affected. Despite this, however, the "high speed POKE" was used by many CoCo BASIC programs even though it overclocked the hardware in the CoCo, which was only rated for 1 MHz operation.

I'd assumed they meant DRAM refresh as I mentioned above... but that really wouldn't make sense as without DRAM refresh the RAM itself would be useless to the CPU anyway, so it must mean screen display refresh and that the VDG and CPU use some interleaved accessing to the main bus. (so you'd need a faster bus and faster VDG accesses to allow that same interleaving at double the CPU speed...)





Oh, and the CoCo's multi-pack interface:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...?t=1&c=91&st=1


Is pretty much what I meant by an external expansion slot system in the context of a low-end apple II derivative (ie only 1 onboard expansion port and an external module to expand it further) and is also basically what Atari's 1090XL was going to do for the A8 line with 5 expansion slots in a sizable case to allow for some pretty large boards. (with the CoCo the expansion port doubled as the cart port of course -like the C64 and VIC, so you could have multiple games plugged in to switch with that module too)
Too bad Atari didn't have a few more provisions for expansion built into the original cart slot or the 1200XL coulde have used that for its expansion port. (and having it on the side makes it a fair bit easier than on the back or the top... or they could have done what the XE line later did with the enhanced cartridge interface -allowing a smaller connector with many fewer pins to be used in conjunction with the cart slot for similar functionality as the PBI)

[tomaitheous]

I don't remember the specifics, but it was called double speed mode BITD. I was 9 and only coded in BASIC, so I didn't have a real understanding of the hardware. But the POKE used to enable it on my CoCo 2 definitely made my BASIC programs run much faster and there was never graphic corruption. I just had to remember to put the cpu back into normal mode when loading/saving to the tape drive (Unless you remembered to load saved data in double speed mode).

[Thenewguy]

I doubt they were getting fed up with cartridges given how willing the public was to jump back into consoles by '86 and the fact that carts were getting significantly cheaper in general anyway, while simultaneously getting substantially larger.

Cartridges? don't you mean Game Paks? ........

The only reason people here were fed up with cartridges in the 1st place was that they were too pricey anyway though, obviously taking into account inflation and such NES cartridges were cheaper than Atari cartridges in the US, so the two aren't directly comparable, maybe Americans also wanted to move away from cartridges in the early 80s due to price, and by the time of the arrival of the NES the prices were more affordable and people fell back in love with the idea.

Most 8 adn early 16-bit computer games had self booting disks iirc

C64 doesn't, dunno about the rest.

odd that they didn't get more EU developer support though)

I've been thinking about the mid to late 80s British videogame market recently, I don't think we actually had a clear winning platform during this time (1982-1985 was obviously Spectrum) I think after 1985 the market fragmented into Amstrad/C64/Spectrum with fairly equal yearly sales for each, by the late 80s it fragmented again to Amstrad/Spectrum/C64/Amiga/Atari ST/Master System/NES (with the C64 being the most popular by a decent margin)

Because of this outcome, I think the developers were all effectively forced into making their games multi-platform for everything, and ended up biting off more than they could chew, with quality noticeably starting to suffer (or at the base level, they started doing games like the Dizzy series, which used a lowest common denominator ethos, as well as straight ports from ST to Amiga for example)

By the mid 80s onwards I really don't think the UK companies were in a position to add another system like the 7800 to what they were supporting, the 7800 was never really a big player here, and if anything I think more Master System software would've been a higher priority had they had the time and manpower (Nintendo's licensing policies effectively made the NES a no go area for UK developers, so NES support was out of the question for most companies)

Only for games using artifact colors, otherwise they should look better in PAL... unless the color palette itself is off in PAL as with some machines.

From what I've seen, US Coco software was predominately using the artifact colours trick (or at least the good games were).

BTW Were the Beepers in the Spectrum, Coco, and Apple II effectively the same?