I love reading articles like that, really makes you see how little things have changed in the 30+ years weve been gaming.

@ Sky Render

I think it's a combination of multiple factors, specifications (for those who tries to understand them), features and the most impressive games are important factors (else the premium wouldn't have outsold the arcade and the 60 GB wouldn't have outsold the 20 GB model, or gamers wouldn't upgrade their PCs to make a game look prettier/better running).

Also important are Games selection, Pricing, Brandname (/company image), Form Factor / Console Looks, Controls, Special Offers, Services, Localization efforts, etc.

I owned a Nintendo 64 for Mario 64, but I was disappointed by the games selection a few years down the road. Initially the N64 considerably outsold the PS1 taking equal timeframes if I remember correctly.

The original XBox was IMO bulky as well as ugly and the controller amazingly bulky. It was a consolized PC, I think some people may have thought: "I already own a more powerful PC". The PS2 seems to have had the best games selection, also many high profile exclusive games created by Sony Studios.

You seem to get hung up regularly on the exterior appearance of a system, even though it obviously has little to no impact on how well a system sells. Indeed, the color of the casing of a system appears to have more impact than the actual style of the casing (as there have been exactly two consoles whose default casing was not light-colored which dominated the market: the Atari 2600 (which started the exchangeable game cartridge media to begin with), and the PS2 (which basically won by default due to the utter lack of differentiation during that cycle of consoles)).

Aesthetics take a backseat to functionality, and functionality is primarily valued for how well a given task is done, not how many tasks can be done overall. This is why the games-only NES trounced the games-programming-and-business PCs of the era. Though there were some who appreciated the all-in-one aspect, most wanted a gaming-centric setup that didn't have all those other features (and the price tag that came with them), and that pandered to more specific values than those PCs did (like low load times, family-friendliness, and pick-up-and-play appeal).

MikeB said: @ jalsonmi I think you vastly overestimate the impact gaming had in the adoption of PCs over the Amiga. Not to vastly oversimplify, but as far as I understand it, the big thing came down to this: Windows. Apple invented such a thing with the Mac, MS stole it, PCs became a user friendly, every consumer device. Of course, it was he coupled with the fact that since MS was not owned by IBM, the OS wasn't proprietary, and could be put on every "IBM clone" (as I remember they were called) in the world back then. Windows became really popular after C= was gone out of business. With regard to Microsoft stealing the GUI basics from Apple, I don't quite agree. The mouse controlled pointer basics originated from the 60s and the Xerox Star desktop hit the market 3 years before Apple released their Apple Lisa. Here a screenshot from the first GUI OS: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Xerox_star_desktop.jpg What Microsoft did literally but indirectly steal was stealing CP/M from Digital Research Inc. A programmer copied all the basic ideas from this OS (he even copied parts of the source code) and this handicapped version of the OS called Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) he sold to Microsoft for 25K dollars, which then became MSDOS.

 

The second half is all fair enough and very good points. The first half---I would liek to see some numbers proof to show that Commodore was dominating the computer market to the extant you say it was during the DOS years and into the early Windows years. I'm willing to give you that it was Windows 3.1 that saw an enormous take-off and adoption, but I'm still pretty damn sure IBMs and IBM clones were the predominant computer even in the mid to late 80's. As someone else said, office computers were predominantly DOS based machines and that drove personal computer sales once that became more of a widespread thing. And while I understnad you come from it from a European point of view, I think you need to look at it in terms of the U.S. No offense, and I'm not one to be either overly pro-America or ethnocentric, but espeically in terms of the adoption of PCs, I think what was going on in the U.S. has to be considered more important than what was going on in Europe. If for no other reason than a lack of a need to export for the many many American companies that fueled the shift to PC (whether they be MS, Apple, IBM, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, or anyone else).

This is all besides my original point, which is that gaming had very little to do with the DOS/Windows based computer gaining dominance in the home computer market--or really, the creation of the home computer market as a real thing in the first place. The large majority of people first adopted computers as an improvement on their typewriters, not as a tool to play video games.

Ohhh the Amiga and the Atari trying to survive after the crash, they didn't know the ass-kicking they were about to receive, all because of two italian plumbers fighting a dragon-like monster to rescue a princess, and the mastermind behind this, Shigeru Miyamoto, started the Japan world domination of the video game industry...

@ jalsonmi

A maximum of 24% of PCs had the capability of running Windows the year Commodore bankrupted. That's assuming these PCs weren't upgraded with newer versions of Windows, from Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.11. Also many of those Windows enabled computers were actually bought for universities and businesses and not per se in people's homes. Also these systems required MSDOS and so both Windows and MSDOS based software was used on Windows capable systems.

In any case MSDOS was still dominant in 1994, this changed rapidly since the end of 1995 when Win32 was introduced.

Commodore ruled the market with its PET, Vic20, c64 computers from 1977 to 1984.

1983 - Solely all PC clones (mostly at businesses) vs c64 (mostly in homes), 39% vs 61%.
1984 - Solely all PC clones (mostly at businesses) vs c64 (mostly in homes), 44% vs 56%
1985 Total install base all PC clones (1981 to 1985) vs c64 (1982 to 1985), about 50% vs 50%. Just regarding the c64 alone, in addition for this period there were install bases for Atari 400/800s, Vic20s, ZX Spectrum, PETs, Apple II, Macintosh, Atari ST, TSR-80 and other systems.

From 1986 onwards all PC clones combined started to sell more new units per year than other sold systems combined on a yearly basis. It's impossible to know PC market share within people's homes vs usage at businesses/universities (Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 had become the standard).

@MikeB:

Thanks for the numbers. What you're saying, though, it pretty much what I was saying. Mid-80's on was where the DOS based computer completely took over the market. I don't dispute at all that Commodore had a hold on the market in the period you mention, but since your thread started by being about what was being said on internet BBs in 1985, I thought you were arguing Commodore still had a leg up in some way at that point, which they of course didn't. (There was also your comment on Doom's effect in 1993 in making PCs do better than Amigas) I'm not saying this stuff to criticize you, just to point out why I was arguing what I was arguing.

Anyway, I think it's a bit of a chicken/egg thing. PCs became the dominant gaming home computers because they were so widely adopted, rather than the other way around (that PCs started becoming widely adopted because of video games, especially Doom).

@ jalsonmi

I just stated Commodore and Atari were big names around that period 1985-1986. Note Commodore also introduced Commodore PCs since 1984, entering the PC clone market themselves (though far behind IBM, they were one of the leading PC brands). Commodore PC-1 ,PC 10, PC-10 II, PC 20, PC-30 and PC 70 (in the end it's funny to note how they themselves contributed towards digging their own grave).

With regard to home usage, the c64 and then the Amiga were dominant home computer gaming platforms. Testament of this is the sheer amount of games released for these platform from 1982 to 1993 compared to PC releases. But computer gaming was especially popular in Europe, for the US the bulk turned towards the NES.

PCs only became popular as a gaming platform 1993 onwards. Like I said earlier, I agree with you the release of Doom had a major impact on the PC gaming market in December 1993. Many people upgrading resulted in PCs becoming far more viable for gaming.

@ jalsonmi

Atari was also a big brand, they made the first successful arcade game Pong, they sold over 30 million Atari 2600 game systems since 1977, more than for example the Sega Mega Drive sold released over a decade later.

@MikeB: While C64 was a huge success, Amiga was a huge disappointment in sales. C64 sold 30 million while Amiga (all models included) only sold 6 million worldwide. Amiga only sold decently in Europe and even there it never sold even half as much as C64.