From a book about commodore..
"In April 1982, Sinclair released an improved computer called the ZX Spectrum. Compared to the C64, the Spectrum had few technical advantages. It had a poor calculator style keyboard, beeper sound and only 8 colours. When Commodore released the C64 in the UK, it almost immediately overtook the Spectrum."
Now initially I thought this was a heap of crap, but have no figures to prove it one way or the other, anybody got any info on uk computer sale figures in the early 80's?
Now initially I thought this was a heap of crap, but have no figures to prove it one way or the other, anybody got any info on uk computer sale figures in the early 80's?
Post edited by Vanamonde on
Comments
Your initial suspicions are correct. :)
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
The spectrum sold between 4 and 5 million in the UK...
I believe the Commodore sold in the region of 16 million world-wide, but my memory might be failing there...
In any case, world-wide includes the States... I doubt the UK sales were much higher than 1-2 million - simply because it was twice the price as the Speccy.
Andrew
Well, the Spectrum had 15 colours, not 8; the keyboard was poor for word processing but great for playing games, and the ZX Spectrum outsold the C64 in Great Britain, plus the Speccy did far more to encourage programming than the C64, had better BASIC and faster loading, and the humble ol' Speccy also had arguably the most varied and original games software line up of any home computer ever.
Apart from that, though, the book is remarkably accurate. Which book is it?
Not that I'm knocking the C64. It was a great machine, but no way did it "overtake" the Spectrum in this country. Though come to think of it, I can't quote any sources for the "best selling computer in Great Britain" bit. I've just heard it in documentaries, and read it in WWW sites or whatever. It's just something I've heard so often that I've come to believe, which admittedly isn't too much of a guarantee of truth. What is true, though, is that judging both by the people I grew up with, and the people I've met in later life who have mentioned the home computers that they've owned, the Spectrum was by far the most popular/common home computer, at least with people I've known.
I've also heard it said that the C64 is the best selling home computer world-wide, if you take the ZX Spectrum models (48K, 48K+, 128K etc) seperately, but if you take the name Spectrum to include all Spectrum models, and the C64 name to include the C128 and the C64+ console whatsit, then the Spectrum is the best selling home computer world-wide. I don't know if that's true or not, or even if "all Spectrum models" in this context needs to include the Hobbit, the Pentagram, and other European Spectrum clones. Can anyone say for definate what the situation is here?
By the way, the term "Home computer" in this post doesn't include the PC - the PC did exist in the 1980s, but was far too expensive to be classed as a home computer in those days, and I wouldn't class it as one now, considering how much maintenance and attention they need. I could ramble on about how they shouldn't even be sold as consumer items (people buy them and expect them to give no more trouble than a TV or microwave oven, but PCs need a degree of skill and knowledge to maintain, that many people just don't want to learn, etc), but I just don't think a PC comes under home computer, it's a different (lower :roll: ) class of computer.
The guy has no idea what he's talking about in the UK, but worldwide I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that the C64 wasn't the biggest selling 8-bit micro. The American market *is* that large. That 16 million figure that pops around could very well be North American sales alone, which is why you sometimes see figures like 22 million or 30 million worldwide. But I'd happily argue the Spectrum in all its forms was #2 in worldwide sales :-)
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"In the United Kingdom, the primary competitors to the C64 were the British-built ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC. Released a few months ahead of the C64, and selling for almost half the price, the Spectrum quickly became the market leader. Commodore would have an uphill struggle against the Spectrum, it could no longer rely on undercutting the competition. The C64 debuted at £399 in early 1983, while the Spectrum cost £175. The C64 would later rival the Spectrum in popularity in the latter half of the 1980s, eventually outliving the Spectrum which was discontinued in December 1990."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64#Winning_the_market_war
Andrew
Wikipedia sounds about right. The Spectrum had the best balance between price and technology, the C64 didn't (at least in the UK market).
The book Vandamonde quotes from makes the huge mistake of thinking that technology alone sells computers or consoles. If that was the case people wouldn't have carried on buying C64s when they could have bought Amigas or Atari STs.
Some Commodore fans seem to conveniently forget that the C64 cost literally twice as much as the Spectrum, and that kind of price difference is enough to make most people forget about colour clash (especially kids and families on a budget who made up most of the computer games market).
I've heard C64 fans say the Spectrum was primitive because it didn't use disks (at least to begin with), but they too conveniently forget that in 1982 disk drives cost more than computers. Only professionals or hardcore hobbyists would have paid that much.
The problem with wikipedia is that articles are often written by the same people who wrote the aforementioned book, for example. And once these books have been around for a year or two they become references.
In the dying days of the 8-bits, sales probably did approach very similar numbers for all surviving 8-bits as numbers clambered to reach zero. With the Spectrum out of the market, one would have to concede that that C64 overtook the spectrum in sales :-) So in this respect the book above is no doubt correct, but it's a very misleading statement.
The difference between the ZX and C64 is that Amstrad had to generate all its ZX sales in the UK while Commodore could sell worldwide. The trickle of 8-bit sales in the UK alone was a lot less than the trickle of 8-bit sales garnered worldwide so it shouldn't be surprising that the C64 was the last 8-bit standing.
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If this guy was a Red Indian he would be called 'Talking Bollocks'
When the Commodore 64 was launched in the UK it cost about the same as a BBC (which was approx twice that of a Spectrum). The C64 was released after the Spectrum in the UK and also Sinclair allready had a large user base of ZX81 users for whom the Spectrum was the next obvious upgrade.
Lets not forget as well that in 1982 computers were still quite new and many parents couldn't or wouldn't spend almost ?400 on a computer that thier kids might not use and might not get decent software support. Price was a very important factor in choosing a computer in those days.
If this tosser was to get his facts straight the Commodore 64 only really started to establish itself once the price started to come down.
But it never ever overtook the Speccy in the UK.
And I tell you this, one of the main advantages of the Speccy was that it was a hell of a lot easier to learn than the c64. Speccy basic was almost but not quite as good as BBC basic.
As for the education sector of the market, only the BBC and the ZX Spectrum got a look in. Although the BBC was considerably more popular and commonplace in UK schools (for many reasons, some shady, some not) most schools did have some Speccy's somewhere. Hardly any schools had CBM64's
And although the C64 holds the guiness world record for number of units sold there is a suggestion that Commodres sales figures were exagerated.
All this guy actually proves is that you truly cannot believe everything you read in books.
It's an ambiguous statement. At no point is 'sales' ever mentioned.
Okay - the C64 'ALMOST' immediately overtook the Speccy (meaning it never did, almost immediately). But at what? A doorstop? Worst games machine (if it did overtake the speccy, eventually - as it implies). Worst games ever? Least popular? Most expensive? Most beige?
The statement is meaningless.
Almost imediately (edited for spelling).
The book claimed the C64 overtook the Spectrum in 1983, not 1990. And let's face it, by 1990 neither of them were doing particularly well compared to their glory days.
Okay, so it wasn't interesting.. :)
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Yeah, but they do tend to be balanced by the editors... It's not often an egregiously biased statement hangs around a long time on a reasonably popular article...
Andrew
They may act to moderate the tone but I find that the contents of many articles have no reference data to support them at all. For example, how likely is it, do you think, that the authors of that article had any data on market share in the mid to late '80s? Not likely, I reckon, because I haven't seen much of that kind of information in my 10 years+ of casually cruising the interweb, yet they have no problem making such claims.... I admit that the wording of that particular quote you gave is vague but it leaves the impression that the C64 was on par, sales-wise with the spectrum at least for a reasonably long portion of the 8-bit era, which I don't believe was the case.
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You're right Vanamonde, this is utter drivel. If you're going to write a book on any subject the first thing to do is make sure you know what you're talking about, and this author clearly hasn't done his research. Would you care to name and shame the author?
Most importantly of all, the Spectrum had by far the better CPU, which meant it was capable of pulling off a slightly wider range of games - though both machines had stronger and weaker genres. It had a better built-in BASIC, and I seem to recall faster tape loading and saving, though my memory's a bit iffy about the C64's baud rate so I could be wrong. I'm sure others here could add to the list of "technical advantages" the Spectrum had. It also had 15 colours, not 8.
The C64 was a fine machine in its own right, there really should be no need to talk a more successful (in the UK at least) competitor down.
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Thanks for that. I've just sent him an email to see what he has to say. After all, it's important to get the facts correct in publications like this or future generations will grow up thinking that the Spectrum was less important than it actually was.
Hope I wasn't too hard on him. :)
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keep us updated with his reply jonathan ;)
Frankly if he is that bigoted, criticism will just bounce off. Rarely do people go "oh sorry, I made a mistake".
Yeah, people don't like to "lose face". Politicians in the Cold War would rather have started global thermonuclear war with the other side before having to back down and "lose face". It's utterly retarded. If I'm wrong I just admit it and move on. It's better for everyone that way!
In the UK, the C64 wasn't all that great - in its price bracket you had the mighty BBC Micro, a FAR superior machine, better in almost every important respect. The Spectrum (as others pointed out) was less than half the cost. It's a testament to Sinclair's ability to engineer something that's good value for money - look at a Spectrum motherboard, and realise what value they managed to pack into that limited amount of hardware. That's one of the things that made the Spectrum so great - it wasn't a 'money is no object' engineering project like the C64, but squeeze absolutely as much value as possible out of as few components as possible. For the money a C64 cost, it should have been much better than it was - the Beeb demonstrates how to do it right in that price bracket.
I'd bet that a lot of their readership were outside the UK though. British computer magazines were relatively popular in the rest of Europe, but only if they covered the machines that the rest of Europe used (i.e. the C64 more than the Spectrum).
The C64 clearly had a much wider audience worldwide so (I'm guessing) its magazines would have been viable for longer than other 8-bit computer mags.
Yeah I remember seeing C64 mags up to a year before C= went kaput. The problem for me with spectrum mags were threefold:
1. The covers were invariably embarassing and started to look like a kids comic book.
2. It was hard to read an article in public with screenshots that bad.
3. The hobbyists had mostly departed for more interesting platforms ( Arch, Amiga, PC ) from the Spectrum whereas a lot of hobbyists stuck with the C64 for ages.
If Amstrad had released the Sam Coupe as a ZX branded system and put their marketing weight behind it they could have made that system a real success and had longer to develop a migration path that would work (unlike the PC200 ).
But they were cost cutting into a PC centric "vision" ( and ironically exited quickly out of that market too ) and were chasing markets rather than creating them.
Looks like you know nothing about the C64 with also those biased statements... Firstly the C64 was not a 'money is no object' project, the engineers were as frugal as the spectrum engineering team, but they worked for a semiconductor plant, so they could design custom chips unlike Sinclair. As for the Spectrum, they didn't have to squeeze, it is near the minimum you would need to make a computer, a CPU with a colour framebuffer. The ULA integrates some stuff that could have been done with some logic chips. They did however do a fantastic job on the Spectrum, but the level of integration isn't as amazing as you make out. If you made the C64 without those custom chips, it would have been a huge machine, so it shows just how much they squeezed into those chips.
The Beeb is a very nice computer, but you are comparing two different machines. The beeb was designed to be an education/hobbist machine, that is why it had also those "important" features you mention. If you are considering it as home games machine, then it doesn't have all those "important" features. Its only superior depending on the role you want the computer to perform. As a games machine, it sucks. Elite was the only good game on the beeb and the only one it is known for. The C64 is a much more even machine than the beeb, so it is in no way FAR superior. The C64's price dropped a lot, while the beebs did not drop anywhere as near, which makes the price bracket argument moot.
Without wanting this to degenerate into a flamewar (as the C64 was an okay machine, and we should have grown out of that kind of crap when we graduated from the playground) I'm curious as to where your sales figures for the C64 came from...
Based on personal experience, most of my friends had Spectrums in the early 80's, with one or two owning C64s...
Of course, that's not a representative sample, but the ZX Spectrum did sell between 4-5 million units in the UK, and although I know that the C64 did sell more overall in the world-wide arena, (with the uptake in the USA being pretty darn high), I'm not sure of any UK specific data...
In any case, (attempting to put bias aside), I'm pretty sure based on my memory and my own experience that the Spectrum was fairly dominant - at least until about 1985/6...
Andrew
It's odd, I knew three people who had Amstrad CPC 464s, and 2 who owned C64s and another 2 with Spectrum +2s, one of which sold me his +2! Anyway I would think the Spectrum was still dominant until about 1987-88. It was only until the C64 was priced much closer to the +2 that the C64 started catching up to the spectrum. Whether the C64 passed the spectrum in sales in the early 90's is anyone's guess. I doubt it, but I'm sure it would have been fairly close.
Any relation, per chance?
:D
Andrew
I've never owned a BBC, and only used one at school, so I can't comment re: BBC vs C64, but one thing I have to correct you on is where you say that the BBC is known only for Elite (at least as far as games go). This is not true at all, as the BBC is till remembered for classics like Revs, Repton Mania and the Sentinel. I know this from the number of times I've read about the BBC, or discussed the 8-bit days with ex-BBC owners.
Andrew