[Coco] coco 2 vs coco 3

[Bill Loguidice]

There were at least a dozen Commodore 64-centric magazines in the US alone,
several of which featured plenty of BASIC and Machine Language listings,
not to mention all of the generic magazines like Family Computing. I really
don't think the C-64 is the best example for your argument because it did
everything on a scale that no other computer could touch thanks to that
insane user base (and particularly when its successor, the C-128/C-128D/DCR
was considered a "failure," despite selling more than nearly any other
8-bit computer SERIES all by itself).

Also, to be fair, the CoCo wasn't particularly great at game playing, so
naturally fewer people would buy it to play games when most of the action
for better part of the 80s was happening on the C-64 and Apple II sides. I
think a far better comparison is with the Atari 8-bit computer series,
since that at least had roughly equivalent lifetime user bases with the
CoCo series.

-Bill

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
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===================================================

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 5:04 PM, Nick Marentes <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>
wrote:

> On 30/09/2014 6:26 AM, Bill Loguidice wrote:
>
>> To be fair to the user bases of the Atari 8-bit and C-64, I don't think we
>> can so easily generalize what users did or didn't do with their computers.
>> With the Atari 8-bit, you're talking a couple of million users (which may
>> or may not have been roughly the same number of CoCo users), but with the
>> C-64, you're talking anywhere from 12 - 30 million users (I've never been
>> able to definitively nail down the numbers to my satisfaction, but it's
>> definitely in that range; that's not even counting the 5+ million C-128
>> series computers that were sold), which is exponentially more than the
>> combined Atari 8-bit and CoCo user bases. With those kinds of numbers,
>> even
>> with the most conservative estimates, you would still have huge numbers of
>> people "more interested in learning how to use the computer," likely far
>> more than the CoCo's total user base. Just like it's not good for others
>> to
>> generalize about the CoCo platform, it's not good to do the same for other
>> platforms without clear evidence. Even today, in practical terms, you have
>> far more people doing far more non-game stuff with those other two
>> platforms, though of course they also have the benefit of lots of new
>> games
>> as well (just like in the old days).
>>
>> ===================================================
>> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
>> <http://www.armchairarcade.com>
>> ===================================================
>>
>>
>
> It's more about percentages than the actual number. Yes, there were way
> more C64 users than CoCo but what was the percentage of game players versus
> the programmers?
>
> This is evident in the magazines for each make. There was more emphasis in
> BASIC programs within these magazines in the CoCo universe.
>
> Also, the CoCo's BASIC was far more powerful and easier for novices to
> actually get in to.
>
> Percentage wise, far less C64 users got past the multitude of PEEK's and
> POKE's while CoCo uses had commands to creates lines, circles, fills and
> music in easy to understand English commands. The great BASIC manuals that
> came with each CoCo also helped to encourage that culture.
>
> I'm not saying there wasn't programming on the C64, I'm saying that it was
> a lower percentage when one considers the huge user base compared to the
> percentage of game players.
>
> The other side of it is that because the C64 had a bad BASIC but good
> graphics and sound hardware, this did encourage some pretty elite assembly
> language programmers.
>
> Again, it's down to the percentage of programmers versus the actual number
> who bought the system to play games.
>
> Nick
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
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