Conference hydra::amiga_v1

296.0. "Compute! doesn't" by TLE::RMEYERS (Randy Meyers) Tue Feb 03 1987 05:29

The following is a short article from the Jan/Feb '87 issue of INFO
magazine.  The tone in the article is a bit shrill, and it contains
some slanderous comments about the Tramiels, but it contains the
history of the rumor started by Compute! magazine that the ST was out
selling the Amiga 10 to 1.  I found it humorous, I hope you do, too.


                            FOOT IN MOUTH

Robert Lock, the Editor-in-Chief of Compute!, recently found himself
in the embarrassing position of having actually believed the inflated
figures that Atari fed him concerning the sales of the Atari ST.  When
they issued their public stock offering this fall, Atari was required
by law to file the true and accurate figures with the Securities &
Exchange Commission, figures which were considerably below those that
lock reported.  In August Compute!, Lock had asserted in his Editor's
Notes that "the ST (has) an installed base of roughly ten time that of
the Amiga.  Not a very stirring record (for the Amiga)."  Compute!
then found themselves desperately trying to defend their position
against an onslaught of reader protest.  In October, Lock said "None
of (our) concern over the lessened acceleration of Amiga Sales
compared to those of the Atari ST reflects a lack of respect for the
computer."  By December, Lock and Compute! had had the opportunity to
see the SEC figures for themselves, and still they were defensive of
their previous stand:  "Perhaps earlier estimates we had received
included machines still in the pipeline, or perhaps Atari was simply
hopeful.  In any event, the Atari ST at that time was outselling the
Amiga, although not by the magnitude we then suspected...  Maybe we'll
have to resort to passive vagueness for future comparisons."  It would
have been much more courageous to merely admit:  "Hey, we bought what
Tramiel told us hook, line, and sinker, gang!  Sorry about that!  Boy,
is there egg on our Face!"

By the way, the SEC figures indicated that 150,000 Atari STs had been
sold by June 30.  The best figures we can dig up would seem to
indicate that 100,000 Amigas sold by the same date.  And consider that
the ST had been available for six months longer, the Amiga had barely
begun to sell against the ST in Europe by then, and the Amiga is a
more expensive machine and so generates more income for Commodore per
sale, and the figures look pretty comparable to us.