Tracking Where Gamers Go (Platform to Platform)

[Diomedes1976]

Well ,in Europe the situation is a bit different .Neither the Atari VCS or the other of that generation made a splash here .We played with our 8 bit computers and then the 16 bit ones .The NES was introduced later and as it was weaker that most of those and its games were expensive (computer games costed between 1/10 and 1/3 of the console games ) it didnt do too well .The Master System had some more luck as it had some arcade ports everyone wanted ,but that was still a minoritary market .The console dominance in Europe started with the Sega Megadrive ,the Genesis for you americans .The Genesis and the Super Nes had phenomenal success (way worse that the actual Playstation range but very impressive numbers for the time ) . Most of the really veteran players started then with the 8 bits computers .We had a slew of those ,but the really successful were ;Commodore C64 ,Amstrad CPC ,Sinclair Spectrum ,and MSX (made by Sony between others ) .Next to those we saw the rise of the 16 bit computers ,the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga ,that lived througout all the 80s since released and were dominant until the 91 or even 92 .Then the PC really pushed them out of the market .The PC had seen constant upgrades since it hit the market and while nobody noticed that as they were machines "only to work " the upgrades of the sound and graphic cards finally surpassed the graphic power of the Amiga and ST .By the 91 the 8 bit computers were almost dead ,they still saw some ports and their magazines survived more or less but were in its last legs ,they tried some technical upgrade as the Amstrad CPC+ series or the Sam Coupe(a 16 bit Spectrum ) but those failed miserably and those once mighty plattforms dissappeared .The Amiga and ST had become the big guys but were seeing increased competition ,the PC with its hard drives ,VGA cards and sound cards and the constant evolving of its proccessors were just posing a too fast evolution for closed formats as those ones ,and the new consoles as the Megadrive and the Super Nes were superior in the action games ,the only genre were the 16 bits were still superior to the PC .Finally Commodore and Atari reacted and tried to equal the hardware progression of the PC and offer something to stop the japanese console from stealing customers ,Commodore released the Amiga 1200 ,a 32 bit computer that was the first true hardware evolution of the Amiga range ,and the CD32 ,a gaming console also 32 bit based on the 1200 arquitechture that with cheap price and all the CD-based Amiga 1200 games was supposed to have enough software to keep the action fans satisfied and far from the inferior Megadrive and Super Nes .Atari did the same thing and counterattaked the double menace of the PC and the consoles with the Falcon 030 computer ,a 32 bit computer with retrocompatibility with the ST-STE models and that was a engineering model ,in the consoles field they released the Jaguar ,the first 64 bit console .Both Commodore and Amiga were wiped out of computer and console fields .The only place the Amiga 1200 and the Commodore brand managed to resist some time was the UK ,the CD32 was wiped out of the water by the Saturn and the Playstation .For Atari things were even worse ,the Falcon 030 was only released in US in some cities and bombed big time ,while the Jaguar was destroyed due to the lack of support of japan developers and the decission of Atari of making it a cartridge only machine ...they later tried to solve this with a CD add-on but it was too little too late and the Saturn and Playstation were selling like 100 times the amounts of Jaguars ...this was the end of the historic Atari as we knew it and they had to shut door .Its game development section kept going and from the evolution of that branch the name survived and was later bought by Infogrames . The logical evolution for the gamer here would be 8 bits computer (Spectrum ,Amstrad CPC ,Commodore 64 ,MSX ) 16 bits computers (Atari ST ,Amiga ) 16 bit consoles (Megadrive ,Super Nes ,Sega Mega CD ) 32 bit consoles (Playstation ,Saturn ,N64 ) 128 bit consoles (Playstation 2 ,Dreamcast ,Xbox ,Cube ) Some users passed directly from the 8 bit computers to the 16 bit consoles ,others made a transition through the 8 bits consoles or 16 bit computer .Most 16 bit computer users didnt buy 8 bit consoles as they had more expensive software and were worse in graphics and sound ,and many of those also passed on the 16 bit consoles that were something superior but not to a degree of changing your plattform .So here i would put 6 scenarios 8 bits computer -8 bit console -16 bit console -32 bit console -128 bit console 8 bit computer -16 bit computer -16 bit console-32 bit console -128 bit console 8 bit computer-16 bit computer-32 bit console 8 bit computer-16 bit console-32 bit console-128 bits console 16 bit computer-16 bit console-32 bit console -128 bits console 16 bit computer-32 bit console -128 bits console