I think the
problem is your sample environment.
I think my sample is good - back then home computers were mostly
purchased by nerdy people who would likely go to an engineering school
(or send their kid there). Home computers were far from being the
ubiquitous piece of home electronics they are now.
But they would have brought something they could use. Few people by that
time would have been using a 64 in that capacity with, as you say, other
more capable computers being equally available. So, again, I think your
sample environment is ill-chosen.
Lest you say that they weren't using it in that capacity, see below.
The C64 still
sold 80,000
units in 1989, building on the already huge extant userbase.
80000 was a not much, even back then. Many of the cheap XT clone
companies were likely doing those numbers or better.
See my other message. That was supposed to be *Christmas* 1989.
Here's another nice reference:
http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html
Estimated sales for 1989 by their count was one to 1.5 million. Even by
1990, directly off the Commodore annual reports, they were still moving
at least 700,000 units.
His estimate for clones is somewhere around 17 million that year sold (1989),
with C64s thus representing somewhere around 6% of sales in the total market
that year. That's more than the Macs were doing, and fairly significant for
a seven-year old system that four years prior owned a third of the market in
sales that year alone. There were an enormous number still out there.
Engineering
was never its strong suit
even when it was an even larger market force earlier because it just didn't
have the display or computational chops. But it still was huge as a
general-purpose home computer.
Back then, no engineering school I know of had students do much or any
of the engineering on their home computers, so the power and display
argument is flawed.
I stand by my point as stated. Whether or not the school would have accepted
assignments done on the home system -- and bluntly, you just can't make a
blanket statement like that that NO school did -- you can't also reasonably
expect people would NOT have used them for that purpose, even if in a limited
sense. And if the school did allow them to use their personal systems even only
partially for their assignments, a possibility you state above, then the
power/display argument isn't flawed because the technical limitations would
have been rapidly apparent.
But even if it weren't true, it doesn't change the fact that the installed
base was still gargantuan. Even considering that most unit sales were to
people who moved on to something bigger, and even granting for argument that
by 1989 a lot of that conversion would have occurred, a small percentage of,
say, 12 or 13 million units out of the eventual sales of 17+ is still a very
large number. Companies like EA and Origin were still making ports of their
games for the 64 that late (see their contemporary ads; EA did so until 1990).
That doesn't sound like something a company that wants a profitable return
would do unless they believed the market was big enough to make it worth it.
Considering the 64 was Commodore's financial anchor almost until the day
the company self-destructed, I don't think counting it out as dying in 1989
is supported by any metric.
--
------------------------------------ personal:
http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems *
www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at
floodgap.com
-- I can't walk a mile in their shoes. They smell funny. ----------------------
