Popularity and Criticism
Although it was a significant upgrade, the A1200 did not sell as well as the earlier Amiga 500 and proved to be Commodore's last budget model before filing for bankruptcy in 1994. This was mainly because the A1200 failed to repeat the technological advantage over competitors like the first Amiga systems. The AGA chipset was something of a disappointment. Commodore had initially been working on a much improved version of the original Amiga chipset, codenamed "AAA", but when development fell behind they rushed out the less improved AGA found on A1200, A4000 and CD32 units. While AGA was not notably less capable than its competition, when compared to VGA and its emerging extensions, the Amiga no longer commanded the lead it had in earlier times. Additionally, the Amiga's custom chips cost more to produce than the increasingly ubiquitous commodity chips utilized in PCs, making the A1200 more expensive. Some industry commentators also felt the 68020 microprocessor was already too outdated and that the new system should have been fitted with a 68030 to be competitive.
The gaming market, which had been a major factor in the A500's popularity, was becoming ever more competitive with the emergence of more advanced and less expensive fourth generation console gaming systems, and multimedia-enabled IBM PC compatibles. As a result, fewer retailers carried the A1200, especially in North America. The A1200 also received bad press for being incompatible with a number of Amiga 500 game titles. Further criticism was directed at the A1200's power supply which was often inadequate in expanded systems, limiting upgrade options that had been popular with earlier Amiga models. Due to less sales and short life-time, much fewer games titles were produced for A1200 than for previous generation of Amiga computers.
While Commodore never released any official sales figures, Commodore Frankfurt gave a figure of 95,000 Amiga 1200 systems sold in Germany. Worldwide sales of A1200 should be less than 1 million units.
Read more about this topic: Amiga 1200
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