On this day 30 years ago, computer giant Commodore announced it was to enter voluntary bankruptcy and liquidation.
The news came after years of the Amiga market shrinking and following costly commercial flops such as the CDTV and Amiga CD32.
At the start of the year, Commodore International had reported a $8.2 million quarterly loss in the US, yet its operations in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom remained profitable.
There were hopes that the European part of the company might survive via a management buyout or a sale to an interested party, but no deal was forthcoming. Commodore UK itself would last until August 30th, 1995, before going under.
The company was founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. Its C64 personal computer was a massive success, enabling the firm to post sales of $49 million by the close of 1983.
Since 1994, the Commodore brand name has changed hands more than once, and AmigaOS is still in active development. We've also seen mini-consoles based on Commodore's products, including the A500 Mini and C64 Mini – and another Amiga-based system is coming this year.
Blaze has also released three C64 collections for its Evercade line of systems.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 4
it was a sad day for me, as an Amiga enthusiast. It meant a long, drawn out buyout that I feverously (then tediously read) over about a year in Amiga Format.
Gateway 2000 did nothing when they bought it and Escom at least tried, but again, nothing sizeable to even attempt to compete with the contemporary PC, that it had already lost ground to. And by that point, the market had shifted to the total exclusion of Amiga as a commercial gaming entity.
I am looking forward to the Amiga Maxi, or whatever the next retro machine is called, and I have some great memories and fondness of my Amiga days.
I was a sad time indeed. I had a friend that bought the CD32 just after it launched. He had some interesting ideas on how to use the tech for non-gaming uses (this was 90s mind you). Just sad to have seen it go back then.
But, looking back now, I do wonder if they really could have competed in the end against the standardization of the PC platform. The only context we have is the Mac, and even it went through an era of mirroring the PC platform. So, extrapolate the Amiga, and it would have had to follow a similar path like Mac. General off the shelf cpu, with dedicated chips (?) except with an actual focus on gaming. Ya, that's an interesting though experiment. Would the Amiga basically have been the Mac, where it supported creative development, except it actually supported gaming? Hmm. What would that have done to PC Master Race as the Amiga would have had an established audience that the PC would take a decade to build. Something to noodle over.
Sad times... I miss Zzap! 64. I never owned an Amiga (too expensive), but the C64 is probably my favourite ever home mirco, I still enjoy Platoon, Last Ninja, Batman the Movie, Stunt Car Racer, Bubble Bobble, International Karate, Dizzy... even the Ocean Loader is forever in my memory.
I grew up in a house that eventually had an original C-64, two C-64C's and a C-128. I used the C-128 until the mid-90's when I inherited an old 8088 that was replaced. Q-Link and GEOS contributed to many book reports and I probably spent way too much time on there gaming and creating text adventures in BASIC.
My dad's GILM Football is still out there on the net that he wrote for a friend and it somehow survived all these years. He also ran a basic BBS on the C-128 for a few years using a speedy commodore branded modem.
I still am amazed at all the things programmers did back then with such limited resources. I cannot help but feel that most software these days are just bloated.
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