> It just wasn’t possible to compete with the price cuts and CPU performance gains that came with volume and scaling.
Commodore could if it tried, sadly Commodore was all about milking it. They were buying 68000 CPUs from Motorola at something ridiculous like $2 in mid eighties! Very slim margin over manufacturing cost thanks to good negotiations (owning foundry means you know how much it really cost to make chips, multiple 3rd party sources available). By 1991 Commodore was selling $100 BOM A500 for $300 retail. Amiga was printing money just like C64 before it, all with close to zero R&D cost. And then suddenly it stopped in 1992 https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/commo...
1992 was the year of market being flooded with cheap 386/VGA clones running Win3.1 thanks to Intel lost AMD Am386 lawsuit forcing wide price
drops at the low end. i386SX-25 went from Q1 1990 $184 to Q4 1992 $59, AM386DX-40 Q2 1991 $231 to Q1 1993 $51. Brand name 386@40 + cache, 4MB ram, 170MB HDD, dual floppy, SVGA + Monitor, Win 3.1, keyboard + mouse systems were ~$1500 while 386SX mom&pop builds started below $1000.
Turns out there are limits to how long you can sell same low end computer by just dropping price. C64 lasted impressive !12! years with majority of sales between 1983-1990, $600 down to $150 (afair at the end manufacturing cost was something silly like $30). Amiga 6 years with no upgrades $1000 to $300 + 2 more bumbling with fail half upgrades until bankruptcy.
Btw in 1990 68000 CPUs were finally $3 closing in on crazy Commodore negotiated price from 1985. Enabled SEGA to sell Genesis at $100-150 retail.
Prices according to "Semiconductor procurement worldwide" 1991-1993 by Dataquest.
Yep. Coincidentally I got my first 386 clone in 1992, and eventually started playing around with early Linux distros. I still had my Amiga, but it was obvious the writing was on the wall when you could get a decent 386SX for the price of an A1200.
Commodore could if it tried, sadly Commodore was all about milking it. They were buying 68000 CPUs from Motorola at something ridiculous like $2 in mid eighties! Very slim margin over manufacturing cost thanks to good negotiations (owning foundry means you know how much it really cost to make chips, multiple 3rd party sources available). By 1991 Commodore was selling $100 BOM A500 for $300 retail. Amiga was printing money just like C64 before it, all with close to zero R&D cost. And then suddenly it stopped in 1992 https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/commo...
1992 was the year of market being flooded with cheap 386/VGA clones running Win3.1 thanks to Intel lost AMD Am386 lawsuit forcing wide price drops at the low end. i386SX-25 went from Q1 1990 $184 to Q4 1992 $59, AM386DX-40 Q2 1991 $231 to Q1 1993 $51. Brand name 386@40 + cache, 4MB ram, 170MB HDD, dual floppy, SVGA + Monitor, Win 3.1, keyboard + mouse systems were ~$1500 while 386SX mom&pop builds started below $1000.
Turns out there are limits to how long you can sell same low end computer by just dropping price. C64 lasted impressive !12! years with majority of sales between 1983-1990, $600 down to $150 (afair at the end manufacturing cost was something silly like $30). Amiga 6 years with no upgrades $1000 to $300 + 2 more bumbling with fail half upgrades until bankruptcy.
Btw in 1990 68000 CPUs were finally $3 closing in on crazy Commodore negotiated price from 1985. Enabled SEGA to sell Genesis at $100-150 retail.
Prices according to "Semiconductor procurement worldwide" 1991-1993 by Dataquest.