A History of Commodore’s 8-bit Computers
I think one could build a business course entirely from the history of CBM. There are so many interesting mistakes and successes.<p>The C64 is a classic case of a company not falling prey to the innovators&#x27; dilemma. They built the C64 when they already had one of the most successful computers on the market in the VIC-20. Tramiel had shown an uncanny knack for spotting evolution in the market on multiple previous occasions and leapt from one profitable business to another, leveraging the success of the earlier to fund the latter.<p>And, then, the faltering began. Instead of once again shooting for a big hairy audacious goal (64k for $595, in the case of the C64), they cut corners and delivered less power for more money (C16 and Plus&#x2F;4, both massive market failures, because people aren&#x27;t idiots). The article doesn&#x27;t cover it, but the Plus&#x2F;4 was extremely weak for games, compared to the C64. Despite having support for more colors, it didn&#x27;t have hardware sprites and sound was a regression to the old bleep bloops of lesser computers, compared to C64&#x27;s beautiful and powerful (for the time) 3 voice synthesizer chip (designed by the dude who went on to found Ensoniq, a leading sampler&#x2F;synth company of the 80s).<p>The SX64 is less clear cut of a mistake...it was a beautiful machine, built well, and competitive with other portables of the time. Not sure why it did so poorly. I guess the business market wasn&#x27;t into the Commodore brand by that time, and it was the only market that could afford it. I remember seeing &quot;Name Brand Computer!&quot; closeout special ads in the various computer mags at the time, and it was clearly an SX64...I remember wanting one, too, but couldn&#x27;t afford it even at the drastically reduced prices. I still don&#x27;t know how to interpret it in the history of CBM. Marketing failure? Poor market fit? Just too expensive?<p>It took them years to bring out a C64 upgrade in the C128, which was a modest success. I think part of the reason it wasn&#x27;t a bigger success was its high cost (both for CBM to build and consumers to buy). The Z80 chip was a boondoggle bolted onto the side of the design that nobody used. Again, failure to achieve any meaningful hold in the business world meant there was no C&#x2F;PM usage on C128 to speak of, and it was wasted effort and cost to try to tackle it.<p>The dedicated game machines are also a failure blip on the radar, and I think it&#x27;s clear why: They reduced the utility of the thing, delivering less value, at a slightly lower price point; trying to boost margins at the expense of customers was a mistake they&#x27;d make over and over. The cost-cutting instinct at CBM was strong, but not in the direction it needed to go...people want more value for less money. They never want less value for less money. I don&#x27;t know how to express this truism, and I don&#x27;t remember where I&#x27;ve read studies about it, but people don&#x27;t readily accept downgrades like this, and Commodore introduced these kinds of downgrades <i>constantly</i>, and it&#x27;s an explanation for almost every one of their big failures, and when they went against that grain (and delivered more value for similar money, they had big hits).<p>Other later examples...the Amiga 500 was effectively an Amiga 1000 for half the price. Sure, smaller case, but it was just as capable of a computer. And, it was the most successful Amiga model, by far. Had CBM <i>always</i> followed this model of delivering more for less, without pursuing all the stupid side projects that were clearly bound for failure, they would still be around today (though Gould may have even been able to kill that successful of a company).<p>Even as a kid, I could see that the C16 and Plus&#x2F;4 were bound to fail. They were utter shit for games, and games were the primary reason families were choosing C64 over other low cost options. Likewise, one could see that the C128 was going to struggle because it cost a lot to produce and had features that weren&#x27;t going to be used (I never saw any C&#x2F;PM software for C128, and I was using a C128 and then C128D until I got an Amiga in 1991...I was a hardcore user), and yet they kept shipping out that goofy hybrid concept for all those years (that&#x27;s why the C64 kept going longer than the C128...it was simply cheaper to make and cheaper to buy, and still provided pretty similar value to the 128, because so little software for 128 existed).<p>Likewise, Amiga got the chopshop treatment on a few occasions, where they tried to make gaming versions and home entertainment versions. Always too little value, given competitors of the time, including compared to the Amiga itself. All trying to goose margins, without delivering more value.