Posted By
Chicken
on 2016-02-15
12:46:31
 |  Re: Commodore 16 price at 1986
This "Failed technology" stuff (on the SCACOM site) is so annoying. I've read something similar in almost every article about the C16 and plus/4 since the 80s.
I'm not doubting that at first, the 264 family was a marketing failure – maybe even a disaster. However, when the price dropped, the machines did sell. That's a fact. And Commodore produced even more machines and not just sold what they had in stock. Sure, in many markets the C16 and plus/4 were underdogs. Nevertheless, there are certain markets where they were quite popular.
The machines (and their success) were always compared to the C64('s success). No machine can stand that comparison. It would be much fairer to compare numbers of machines sold to other homecomputers of that time. For instance the C16 and plus/4 were more popular in Germany Sinclair Spectrums.
I have only met one guy who owned a Spectrum in Germany and in every place I've lived/studied/worked I met some ppl who owned a C16 or a plus/4. Probably, even the Amstrad (Schneider) CPCs had less "success" here, leave alone real flops like the Tatung Einstein etc.
I'm not sure about the numbers on the SCACOM site. There's no source mentioned. I posted some numbers on this site ages ago that were published by Commodore in the 80s. I might search for those later on. I've seen too many wrong estimates which could be proven wrong by published numbers.
Somebody also mentioned a special deal with the Hungarian Ministry of Education (or whatever it's called), which made the plus/4 a common school computer in Hungary. Just search the forum, it was mentioned here before.
Btw, when the plus/4 was introduced here, the official price tag was around 1400 DM. I remember the TEST-Heft which reviewed some "homecomputers". The plus/4 did well, though, the grades were slightly better for the CPC 464. Of course, almost nobody bought the plus/4 for that price. But things changed a lot later on … Especially, when ALDI marketed the plus/4.
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