> It's unfortunate that Commodore shipped BASIC 2.0 on the 64
There are many things that are unfortunate about the way the C64 was shipped. For Commodore, the entire point of the C64 was to slap it together and shove it out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible, to try and capitalize on the unexpected success of the VIC-20, which was itself slapped together when the VIC graphics chip didn't sell.
What's fascinating about the C64 is just how right that "slap it together and shove it out the door" strategy was.
Market price and timing were absolutely key to the C64's early success. All those bugs and missing features? The 3rd party developers would quickly take care of that.
The products that Commodore tried to make good, better than "shove it out the door" quality, like the Plus/4 and C128, were complete duds. Much better design, much better software, and irrelevant.
How was C128 not slapt together without any plan or adult supervision? You paid for 2 cpus and two graphic chips, one cpu only ran a reset routine?, and the second "graphic chip" had no graphic enhancements and required expensive monitor. Zero practical upgrades when running C64 software, no incentives to develop c128 native software. Price with floppy drive on par with Atari ST and 20% away from Amiga. As a bonus C128D was more expensive to manufacture than Amiga.
There are many things that are unfortunate about the way the C64 was shipped. For Commodore, the entire point of the C64 was to slap it together and shove it out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible, to try and capitalize on the unexpected success of the VIC-20, which was itself slapped together when the VIC graphics chip didn't sell.
What's fascinating about the C64 is just how right that "slap it together and shove it out the door" strategy was.
Market price and timing were absolutely key to the C64's early success. All those bugs and missing features? The 3rd party developers would quickly take care of that.
The products that Commodore tried to make good, better than "shove it out the door" quality, like the Plus/4 and C128, were complete duds. Much better design, much better software, and irrelevant.