[JanSolo]

The home-computer wars of the 1990s have always confused me. There's seems to be a kind of tribal-allegiance that computer-buyers participated in when they became computer-owners. I've never understood why it had to be PC vs Amiga or Nintendo vs Sega or whatever. My best guess is that a lot of the buyers were young kids who did'nt have the maturity yet to see the world in a more flexible way. I was certainly guilty of that back when I was a teen.

[timbit42]

It was because there was a lot of difference between the systems then, unlike today where they are all the same technology with a different sticker on the front of the case.

If you cared about games, the system you bought would be completely different than if you cared about business.

In the 8-bit era, if you wanted business you got a CP/M system with 80x24 text. If you wanted games, you got an Atari 800 or Commodore 64 with colors, hardware scrolling and sprites.

In the 16-bit era, there was the IBM PC for business, the Mac for people who wanted ease of use, the Amiga for games, 4096 color graphics and stereo sound, and the Atari ST (512 colors, mono sound) if you couldn't afford an Amiga. That said, they could all do games but obviously some were better than others, and they could all do business, but the perception was that game systems weren't good at business so business apps weren't made available.

[chuckadams]

What you said, but add that it was all brand spanking new to most people at the time. Novelty creates excitement, excitement creates cult brands.

[jeffnappi]

Many things were platform specific at that time. You didn't have major game titles or business applications widely available across platforms. Folks who used PCs/Apple/etc at work/school were more likely to buy similar for the family at home etc.

In my family I get the impression we chose our home computers based on merit/value. That meant starting with the commodore 128 in the mid 80s and led to my brother buying an Amiga 1000 [with his hard earned teenage burger king min wage $] in 1987.

In the 90s the advent of Windows 3.1 running on cheap PC clones left Commodore in the dust. The value for the money shifted to PC, even if it was inferior at first.

It was really sad that Amiga did not continue to innovate - the hardware was astonishing which can be seen by looking at the demo scene output and games front he time relative to what was possible on other platforms.

[mmcgaha]

I think it was mostly because $1000 items were a bit harder to come by back then so kids would do a lot of reading and day dreaming before getting enough cash to pull the trigger. By the time they could actually afford a computer/monitor/printer/software they had talked themselves into how great the product was.

[weaksauce]

computers were expensive and so was the software you ran on it. it was an investment and switching was starting from zero.