On the cusp of greatness

By July 1985, Commodore had everything going for it. The Amiga computer had been demonstrated in public to rave reviews, and everyone was excited at the potential of this great technology.

That's when the problems started.



The Commodore Plus/4



Commodore's primary woes were always about money, and 1985 was no exception. Sales of the Commodore 64 were still going strong, but the price wars had slashed the profits on the little computer. The company had invested millions of dollars creating new and bizarre 8-bit computers that competed directly against the venerable C-64, such as the wholly incompatible Plus/4, that had no chance in the marketplace. To make things worse, the company had to deal with lawsuits from its ousted founder, Jack Tramiel. Finally, Commodore had invested $24 million to purchase Amiga outright, but as the computer had not gone on sale yet, there was no return on this investment.

All these financial problems put a strain on the company's ability to get the Amiga ready to sell to the public. Without a lot of spare cash, it was difficult to rush the production of the computer. Further software delays pushed back the launch as well. The end result was that the Amiga did not go on sale until August of 1985.

This wouldn't have been a huge problem, had Commodore been able to gather enough resources to ship the machine in quantity. Instead, production delays meant that the computers trickled off the assembly lines, and by October there were only 50 Amiga 1000 units in existence, all used by Commodore for demos and internal software development.



Jack Tramiel's Atari ST



This delay was doubly crippling because Jack Tramiel had managed to rush the development of the Atari ST, using off-the-shelf chips and an operating system and GUI purchased from Digital Research. Tramiel was able to show the ST off at the January CES and started taking orders for the computer shortly thereafter. This sudden competition from Commodore's former CEO took everyone by surprise.

Missing Christmas

Amiga 1000 computers did not start to appear in quantity on retail shelves until mid-November 1985. This was too late to make a significant impact on the crucial holiday buying season. Most retailers make 40 percent or more of their yearly sales over the holidays, and Commodore had missed the boat.

To make matters worse, the company was not really clear about how it was going to sell the computer. The Commodore 64 had been sold at big retail chains like Sears and K-Mart, but marketing executives felt that the Amiga was better positioned as a serious business computer. Astoundingly, Commodore actually turned down Sears' offer to sell Amigas. Back in the 1980s, Sears was a major player in computer sales; I personally used to cherish parental shopping visits so that I could get my hands on the latest in computer technology. The Atari ST was sold there, but the Amiga was not.

Even these blunders might have been mitigated had Commodore come up with some truly amazing advertising campaigns to drum up interest in the new computer. The delays gave the company extra time to do this, but what Commodore came up with was so awful that it sickened many of its own employees.