Seeing how it was their low cost models like the 500 and 1200 that really brought in the dough it's pretty clear that the low cost machines ran at a revenue surplus rather than a deficit. Thus if they didn't have the money coming from them they would have had even less money to spend on the higher end models and let's not forget that enhancements made in them like the "fat" Agnus did filter over to the higher end models.
If only they would have spent the revenue surplus in Amiga development, no matter whether bread-and-butter models or big box! But for whatever reason they figured it'd be cool to invest a huge part of the Amiga-related income to compete in the business area and developed their own PCs, even though the Amiga clearly was what kept them alive.
You act as if piracy didn't happen on competing platforms when it very much did. Only difference is that businesses are more averse to piracy as they can get into much more trouble for it than individual users. Individual home users however widely pirated software no matter which platform they were on.
Huh? Where did you read
that into my text? What I said is that by focusing too much on marketing (and developing) the C64 and later the Amiga as gaming platform, Commodore eventually starved 3rd parties that would make money from "professional" hard- and software. As you rightly said, professional users usually tend to be less into pirated software because of the possible implications, so they would pay quite a huge part of the total income on a platform.
Also, "professional" software usually is more likely to use official API's, thus making development of the platform easier, if not possible in the first place.
At least back then, Games tended to avoid official API's for speed and memory reasons, so any development breaking compatibility would be much more hazardous for that sector than for "professional" software. And as the target customers back then were largely kids, you could not expect them to upgrade their computer every other year, thus cementing the smallest common denominator, which - in the case of the Amiga - was the stock A500. And the Amiga's design (both as a system and as keyboard computer for the A500/A1200) prevented to upgrade only parts (e.g. graphics chip / graphic card), which would have been much more feasible from a financial point of view.
As for what kind of software was available, nothing was going to beat the PC in office type software as IBM and compatibles more or less had a lock on that market as soon as IBM released the original PC back in 1981.
Exactly that's the problem! Why on earth did Mehdi Ali & Co decide to try to compete on that already lost battlefield and even use the money earned with the Amiga, thus starving Amiga R&D? Incomprehensible!
What killed the Amiga really was just corporate mismanagement on the part of Commodore. They started off with a really powerful machine, then sabotaged early efforts to do any major overhauls and when they finally got around to do them it was simply too little, too late. Just look at what happened to the Ranger and AAA chipsets.
That's more or less what I said (or at least wanted to say
). I just tried to point out the (possible) internal reasoning for that kind of behaviour. At some point on time the demise was probably inevitable:
- The installed machine base had reached a critical mass (gaming platform with certain standards) that would prevent development breaking backwards compatibility (a Rosetta-like trick would have been technologically impossible back then).
- No focus in the product portfolio: C64, C128, C16, C116, C264/Plus4, various Amigas and on top (IBM-compatible) PC. And they were so desperate they stuck to the outdated 8bit platform and even developed the C65, while the Amiga was already a hit!
- High subventions for the "me too" product PC (which didn't offer anything valuable over the competition), financed not by the product, but by the Amiga, which then lacked those resources. (Interestingly enough people complain that Apple is neglecting the Mac now in favor of the revenue-generating iOS devices instead of cross-financing - maybe they followed the C= downfall pretty closely).
Instead they should have consequently extended the Amiga platform and try to establish it as an alternative to the office PC, with the value-add that it could _also_ offer superb gaming and graphic and video features (seeing the omnipresence of graphical user interfaces today, the Amiga would have had a brilliant headstart there). That would have required to have "professional" software makers to properly support the platform widely (think of the AppStore's importance for the success of the iPhone). But those were scared off by not only the piracy, but also the image of the Amiga as pure gaming computer and the lack of support by Commodore for "professional" developers.
