The A-500 Plus had the shortest of lives. Just six months from the
day it was 'not' officially announced to its demise, equally not
formally published. The computer came and went and hardly anyone
had time to blink an eyes. I have tried to uncover some kind of
truth from the pages of magazines, but in my six month trawl I
found barely anything written or published about the computer.
The real issue was that by spring of 1992 Commodore had announced
the upcoming release of the Amiga 600 which looked as though it
was going to replace the 500 range which obviously included the
A-500 Plus. Worse, was that without any kind of official support
for the Plus the dealers were caught between the two stools of
clearing A-500 stock and or waiting for the new 600s to arrive.
At the time Amiga boxes were having 500s removed and replaced
with the 500 Plus machines, and from the adverts you can see
those A-500 machines being sold as stand alone computers.
Further issues at Commodore meant the delay of the re badged 690
or Amiga 570 and the poor sales of the CDTV. So desperate were
Commodore to ship the CDTV that they had promotions running to
hand in your old 500 with a large cash reduction on the CDTV. In
truth the whole six month period from around December 1991 would
leave any commentator confused, let alone the poor user.
Sadly by July 1992 both the Amiga 500 and Plus were dead in the
water and yet Commodore release the A570 for the 500. When asked
about the A670 for the 600 they were assured it was on the way.
So as an Amiga user what were you likely to do. The A600 was not
an A500, it was a replacement A500 Plus. The A600 just didn't
have the backup and flexibility of adaption that the 500 did.
Just look at the adverts for all the kit that used the side
expansion on the 500 and you will see that the gaming hackers
alone were going to jump ship.
The A-500 Plus came at a time when the Amiga community was booming
albeit on the back of some quite ageing kit. Sadly the Japanese
consoles were ready to pretty much decimate the pre 1990 era of
machines and Commodore appear to have panicked. Much of their
PLUS range of machines were either not ready or sadly already
out of date. The A-500 Plus is the only one that made it to the
production line.
In many ways the A600 would destroy a lot of confidence in the
platform as a gaming machine and just let in the Japanese consoles
in their droves. The CD32 was too late to save Commodore and the
A1200 which could have made a fist of taking on the competition
so dearly needed that CD-ROM plug in at launch, as did the A-600.
If only Commodore had released the A600 and A1200 with CD-ROM
and abandoned the A-570 and CDTV then maybe the A-500 community
would have shifted on block to the new platform.
One thing any manufacturer is wary of is channel swapping. Let
your costumers simple the goodies elsewhere and then you gotta hope
they come back. For Commodore it became a 'fait accompli' as they
couldn't ship the product cus they couldn't pay the suppliers,
manufacturers and the rest is history.
Like I say I have trawled the pages of all my Amiga magazines
for the period of the several months that the A-500 Plus was in
existence and found but a handful of articles on the computer.
Mostly the magazines were featuring the rumour mill and news on
the newer machines. It was apparent that the A-500 Plus did nothing
but shun its user base and so became a stop-gap and never taken
that seriously.
What is so sad for the A-500 Plus is that the makers fitted to it
a ticking time bomb in the form of the battery guaranteeing an
untimely death for unsuspecting users who chose to store their
neglected computer.
The story of the Amiga 500-Plus is a unhappy tale and one that only
a company like Commodore could reside over. It represents a company
lost in its own confusion caused by a lack of direction from its
controllers. An inability to focus on a goal and stick to it. But
mostly not understanding just what it was their community needed.
I would have suggested it was arrogance, but I fear the truth it
is more about a lack of continuity of joined up thinking from top
to bottom. I sense there were many driving Commodore at the time
that hadn't got the first clue what their engineers were doing
nor what their customer base were asking for. No doubt fighting
fires over cash flow is what they primarily did as the business
became an unwieldy giant of a mess.
So the Amiga 500 Plus came and went in a blink of an eye. But if
it were to be able to reflect on matters it would probably concur
that it was better out of it in truth. The die had been cast for
the downfall of Commodore and the A-500 just sidled off into the
dull distant world of computers that retired unloved having never
like ever been given the chance to realise their true potential.
So here are those pages. Make your own mind up. They were all I
could find that related to the launch and demise of the A-500 Plus.
I have included a number of associated articles relating to
other computers to give a flavour of what was going on.
