![]() In the end, economics, not obsolescence, sealed the C64's fate. Although demand for the C64 dropped off in the US by 1990, it continued to be popular in the UK and other European countries. ![]() By 1988, Commodore was selling 1.5 million C64s worldwide. The C64 would later rival the Spectrum in popularity in the latter half of the 1980s, eventually outliving the Spectrum, which was discontinued in December 1990.ĭespite a few attempts by Commodore to discontinue the C64 in favor of other, higher priced machines, constant demand made its discontinuation a hard task. The C64 debuted at £399 in early 1983, while the Spectrum cost £175. The Spectrum quickly became the market leader and Commodore had an uphill struggle against the Spectrum as it could not rely on undercutting the competition. In the UK, the Spectrum had been released a few months ahead of the C64, and was selling for less than half the price. In Europe, the primary competitors to the C64 were the British-built Sinclair ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro computer and the Amstrad CPC 464. The C64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demoscene|demo scene. Various C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible game console, to run these programs today. It is sometimes compared to the Ford Model-T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative mass-production.Īpproximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office productivity applications, and games. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost. Part of its success was because it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores. Sam Tramiel, a former Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years." computers, and Atari 8-bit family computers. ![]() For a substantial period of time (1983–1986), the C64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple Inc. It has also been affectionately nicknamed the "breadbox" and "bullnose" due to the shape and color of the first version of its casing.ĭuring the C64's lifetime, sales totaled between 12.5 and 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. It is commonly known as the C64 or C=64 (after the graphic logo on the case) and occasionally as the CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64. Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US $595.Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64KB (65,536 bytes) of memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time. The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982. This entry is copied from english Wikipedia
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