Dan, I am from Spain but I can understand your videos, you speak very slowly and nice to make understand... I love it when ypu speak about the Amiga Commodore. I still have an Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200, but they are in the closet with a lot of original games. I was searching in internet about you because I can't stop watching your videos, you are a video-radio presenter, DJ, ghost writer... wow amazing. Sorry for my mistakes, I hope you can read this!!!
You've produced many great videos over the years, Dan, but without doubt this is the best by far. I always thought David Pleasance was a true gent, and this interview only confirms that. An absolute legend. It makes you wonder what could have been.
Absolutely amazing interview! Didn't quite know what to expect so it was really surprising and refreshing to hear such a frank and detailed description of the times and the goings on behind the scenes. Clearly the guy even now has passion about the company and the system so it adds even more to the "in hindsight" feeling I have about commodore and the decisions that let to its demise. Top marks Dan, excellent video, even had the disk drive chugging away in the background!
The amiga’s hardware scene is bigger than it ever was. The amount of stuff you can buy for them today is mind blowing. Ok software wise it’s nowhere near but as an owner of 4 Amigas it’s great to see the passion and creativity of the retro community going stronger than ever.
Thanks Dan for a great interview. Your questions drew out deep responses and gave me new insight into those last days. Can't wait for any others that you were able to get.
Great stuff Dan, a really insightful interview. I work in technology demand generation, dealing with similar organisations to the old Commodore, and it's refreshing to listen a guy who obviously knows his stuff and who took a pragmatic approach to moving his business forward. I have no doubt that if his consortium's takeover bid hadn't have been derailed, the Commodore story would have been be a very different one.
I have to thank the UK for sending me a Spectrum 48 back in 85. It started everything for me. And yeah, I had the CD32 with SX1 expansion. Post order from the uk, pre internet times. Good video.
37:25 Wow. 8O Overall, this was something else. Thanks so much for posting this. Hands down the most interesting interview of the old Commodore fame crew. Alongside Haynie's talks. I always thought highly of David Pleasance. Back then I figured he would work it out, had he a decent lineup of current hardware to sell and future hardware to market. Hearing his thoughts first-hand is really interesting!
Many thanks for this wonderful and insightful interview. We can really learn a lot from chaps like David. He comes across as being accomplished but humble and dare I say it a salesman with a conscience - a rare breed indeed :)
Absolutely stellar interview---it is a damn shame this fellow got undermined the way he did by folks that certainly didn't have the best interests in the people, the legacy up to then, or any real designs on the future in mind beyond leveraging a few bucks on the sly. You probably have all sort of other videos to come of the stripe considering just how many events there have been of late---but I'd have to reckon this is in the running for being hallmark content for this channel by far.
That was a great interview! I remember reading his comments in every issue of Amiga Format, and thought he sounded like an awesome guy, and watching this interview proves it. Thanks again
I took a casual interest in the interview as an A1200 user back in the day (040 add-on) and got sucked into it.. it was very interesting and enlightening. Very honest and direct interview. Good stuff.
This was the best video I have ever seen and a credit to you Dan ask a simple question and never interrupted the reply once so a huge thank you to you both as this was wonderful and a joy to watch and makes me proud to be part of the Amiga scene ,very best wishes to you both and more of this please, very best wishes Brian.
Putting aside all the "ifs" and "what's" and "why's?"... one thing you can say for sure is David pleasance's huge passion and dedication to the Amiga and its success. You could almost sense from the interview the genuine hurt he felt when the company finally went to the wall.
I was just doing a little research on what Medhi Ali has been up to since Commodore went belly-up..Ironically, he is a partner in some company which finances buy-outs of businesses. There is a line in his bio on the web-site which made me literally LOL : "His principal experience includes serving as the President of Commodore International, where he accomplished a major operational turnaround." So true, Medhi, so true....
Super interesting interview Dan. I must admit that I didn't know mr. Pleasance but it's amazing to hear some behind the scenes stuff from such an iconic company.
Was awesome to be at the event to meet so many Amigans, In and out of the industry. Was also a pleasure to meet Ravi and yourself Dan! Was a great interview, glad to have been there to see it behind the scenes. So looks like Mic didn't work after all bud?
Watching this great interview, with batman completely coincidentally loaded in WinUAE on my desktop in the corner, feeling so happy that I've recently repurchased a batman pack in box. Can't wait!!!! Just like 30 years ago.
Oh my god this is an amazing video I shared it so many times, thank you Dan Wood and thank you David. In school my first computer was a commodore pet then I bought a Commodore 64 but by the time the Amiga came out Commodores practically dead in North America and it was hard to find their stuff in Canada. The one computer I always wanted but never had it was the Amiga. Fantastic video with some real insight to Commodores most successful division thank you very much guys.
very captivating interview i remember monthly buying all the amiga formats,amiga powers,cu amigas etc and the cover stories were all about David Pleasance and Escom at the time.I had got to the point in mid 90`s where i was buying every new computer console on release from my little independent at the time and as much as i loved my amiga 500 which i was late coming into btw around 1991 my parents bought it me when i was 15 i had just started a part time job and all my money went on new games and then pirated floppies in the end, but i longed for something new from commodore as nothing else out there did it for me such as mega cd etc although i bought one.The 1200 was was around the corner i always wanted one but could never justify due to all the bad takeover news etc.Then i got news of this cd32 which was a 1200 but a game console now this was just what i wanted and couldnt resist regardless of the company collapsing ,so i bought this along with every game that got released and all the bits and bobs so i could eventually turn this into a computer but eventually my heart sank as i saw in magazines of all these games that were in production at the time and yet each month the magazines run have the same demos on each time nothing new. Untiil eventually magazines got closed down,none of these promised games came and i was just left with a few 1200 ports of games with cd sound .Makes me wonder if he would have thought about the consumer after all going back to the commodore plus 4 selling them in the uk to unsuspecting parents should he have bought the Commodore Amiga brand?,I dont know anyway i personally have purchased many more dead consoles over the years until i hit lucky with a playstation but even so im not sure if its my age or what but nothing makes me want to play more than an amiga .....ps sorry about my punctuation i just can never be arsed with it
I love this video for 3 reasons. 1. It's the most enjoyable interview I've seen with DP so far, great job Dan. 2. The fact that the power cable drops out of the monitor when David said the word "polarity" in regards to the unsaleable imported monitors. 3. That you will possibly never use a microphone as a prop ever again, but well done on going the distance Dan! lol
It was such an amazing era. We've all stood in Dixons, Rumbelows etc or browsed the pages of the catalogues looking at the machines. It was so exciting. Always wanted an Amiga but had the CPC464 which was great also.
great interview skills (letting the man talk, as someone below mentioned, without constantly interrupting him :) ) with what seems a real gentleman of business. Thanks David for your contribution to what was so many people's formative years with a Commodore and the path it set them on.
love the interview, but felt sad to see that interviews related with Commodore are not done in a Grand public way like a TED interview and be watched by hundred of thousands.
What an absolute gentleman and mountain of wisdom. Yes, it did deliver dreams. When I was a teenager I wanted to be a computer engineer because of the Amiga.
Ah David - thank you for giving this great interview to Dan! Certainly your batman pack gave my parents confidence in buying a product which wasn't just a games machine, but also for productivity and learning, they would not have done so otherwise!. The Amiga gave me my future career certainly! Although young at the time, Commodores direction made no sense and when the Amiga died out lots of unanswered questions. Everything really does come out in the fullness of time. You and Commodore UK came so so close to changing the world we have today, unlucky. Great times and memories.
Wow. It's rare to hear anything like this from David P. I always wondered about his take on things and listening to Dave Hanie's side in comparison to this; they more or less match up. It's such a shame what happened. I met Mr. P once at the Novotel in Hammersmith at the mere age of 14 when they were giving away a gold (sprayed and badged up limited edition) Amiga 500+ It was also the same place 'Walker' was debut and Scala was there demonstrating some video toaster stuff .... good times and wild memories
This is very insightful - Pleasance is a great guy - he is not just blowing his own trumpet - he Cleary knew what he was doing and Commodore should have appointed him as international MD !
A simply brilliant interview. Pleasance is without a doubt a very talented and experienced businessman and anyone who lays blame on him for involvement in Commodore's demise (and plenty have) need a headcheck. His plans to take the company forward had they raised the funds are unorthodox and would have carried the company in a slightly different direction but make complete sense from a business standpoint, as does the concept of delivering AAA systems under new name. In 1993, AAA was nothing short of completely groundbreaking and revolutionary -- even if it had not made market until 1995, the specs took a steaming dump on even the most decked out and souped up Intel-based systems of the day. I still have the fax that was sent out by Commodore Australia to all of the user groups announcing their closure. Good times.
Now there's a blast from the past! I met Dave a number of times when I used to work on Amiga Format - he was a genuinely nice guy who's hands were tied by the idiots in Commodore HQ in the States. Talking of the Batman pack, I remember when the Batman game was in development. Myself and a group of journos got to visit Ocean's offices to get an exclusive preview of the game. Good times :-)
I guess when your desperate for $$$... your crazy enough to do anything... I mean Escomm didn't exactly last long neither. Money sure talks. but in this case, in the wrong way
Really revealing interview. Enjoyed it. Thanks. As the commenter below me said, you, very haunting that monitor blew out at precisely the moment that statement was said.
What an astonishing bloke. If only they'd listened to him, then Commodore would still be with us and giving Apple, Dell and Microsoft a run for their money. A true legend. Somebody please make him Sir David.
getting my first amiga 1200 when I was about 11 years old was one of the best times of my life! something so special about inserting floppy disks and loading up amiga exclusive games was a special feeling.I even swapped my brand new 1200 for my mates 600 because I wanted to play games like lotus 3 and first samurai! It really was a special time.I still have a A600 in my atic but I have the emulator on my pc and I have recently spent many evennings playing amiga classics rather than playing the latest titles on my high end gaming rig!
Great Interview..Ive just watched Bedroom to Billionaires for the Amiga so this was a nice accompaniment. Fascinating to hear some of the decisions that were made and that the UK was in fact a healthy business.
Thanks for the Great videos.. I have to upgraded to Amiga Forever 2016..... I have now got the Amiga bug back... Pity my mum threw away my Amiga 1200T with 060 blazzard card in 200 ;-(
+Paul Bennett I disagree in the stongest terms. The corperate backslapping knocks me sick and is exactly an example of the bullshit this asshole did when he should have been promoting and upgrading the amiga range. Lost count of the number of times he was in mags talking stupid bullshit about how he was gonna save the amiga brand and smiling his ass off when the the amiga was slowly dying due to this idiots incompitence. now we know what he was doing when he claimed to be working. Medhi ali was stupid but DP is just a complete wanker that killed the brand. and lied to his customers over and over. I was 12 years old when this idiot was there and *I* could have told you then how to fix the business and my opinion hasnt changed. Im not smart, hes an idiot who preached to his customer base instead of listening to them.
+Kreig I assume you know what happened? David pleasance was attempting to buy amiga and escom(or whoever it was) did a backhanded deal and well... we know the rest
yeah i watched it and i heard his bs. i also know that he sat on his hands largly and did nothing. the amiga wasnt dated when he tried to buy it. It was massivly outdated. because he did nothing for development for YEARS. hes a wanker boxshifter that should never have been put in charge of a technology company. listen to his idea for the brand (YEARS after he took charge) licence it, market it. Where is AGA-2? nope never existed until 2 years after it was relavent. even then its a pipe dream because no specs were ever released. i hate this guy. corprate fat cat. Amiga was an awesome dream by talented guys, this guy is a saleman boxshifting idiot. This guy would have just dragged out the amiga 1200s painful,painful death. like escom. except we would have hate amiga like we hate sega now. because cd32-miditv.
+Kreig The only difference between his idea for amiga nd sega nowadays is amiga (uk or otherwise) were never wise enough to fully back a mascot for a largly game machine. We dont get to see zool whored out to iphone devs like sonic. lol Gremlin were 1% smarter than commode uk.... go figure. :D
at least we can both agree, we are both passionate about the Amiga .Who knows , maybe someone will pull it back out of the bag. There are certainly enough enthusiasts about.
I started a job with a PC reseller in '96 and as I was walking in, a kid from my school was walking out as he'd taken a job with Escom. By the following Monday he was back. Apparently he got a call on the Friday evening to say Escom were going bust and to rescind his notice at work if he could...on to of that, the engineering company I'd come from had an Escom PC which blew the CPU. Last thing I did before leaving was to get it replaced under warranty. If it'd blown a week later, they wouldn't have honoured the warranty and the CPU cost about £250 in those days...
Wow that's a sad story, I'm sure after hearing this that David & Co. would have taking care of Commodore and Amiga much much better and the future would have looked different today. Amiga was and still is a amazing machine.
Fascinating insight, thanks! :) David seems to have been one of the few people in Commodore's management that had their head screwed on the right way, but even so, hearing him talk about quick-buck licensing deals makes my stomach go queasy. Isn't this the key reason we hate all these post-bankruptcy upstarts cashing in on the notoriety and cachet of the Commodore brand? The recent Commodore smartphone being the perfect example. I doubt diluting Commodore's hard-won reputation would have helped their long-term prospects. I'd also take issue with his comment about the A600 being inferior to the A500. For someone looking to buy an entry level Amiga who didn't already own one and didn't care about losing the keypad, it was the obvious choice. The A500 was enormous and came with that clunky TV modulator, and by this point miniaturization had progressed sufficiently enough to allow these 'flaws' to be fixed. You could argue that Commodore should have been looking forwards, not back, at this point, though I believe they already had that angle covered. While the A600 didn't advance the technology in any way, people who wanted the model that *did*, and had the extra cash to spend, could buy the A1200. There's nothing wrong with extending the life of a product while there's still a market for it. Consider the revamped VW Beetle and camper van, or the Mini for recent examples.
The A600 was more expensive to produce than the A500 and you gained nothing. That was his big issue. Had they been able to do it cheaper than the 500 then it would've been a winner as he could've sold it at a cheaper price.
Wise words. Selling dreams indeed. I remember that concept very well from those times., and did a little work for them packs writing guides. Nice interview, shame the venue was noisy but you grab interviews when and how you can. CBM America had no plan. Yes.
Enjoyed that thanks! I never owned an Amiga (practically lived around a friend's house one summer holidays though to play Civilisation on his Amiga 500 all day every day for weeks).... Keep meaning to get one though to see what I really missed out on (I was a PC fan from the start) - shame we don't have thrift shops in the UK, so have to rely on eBay...
+Steve Cooper There are Retro gaming shops scattered about the country but they almost never have anything computer related. It's all consoles... I did see a 48K spectrum for sale in one in Norwich once. But yeah, Ebay is best.
Thanks for interview, found that really interesting. I was hoping Commodore would survive and the Amiga would compete but looking back now I don't think it would have. The best thing Commodore did was buy the Amiga but in 1994 the technology was barely improved from 1985. With the right hardware the CD32 could have completed with PlayStation, the Amiga had so many great games companies, they would have made a great start. Wipeout could have been on the cd32 had it been new hardware. I never understood the A600, surely the A500 must have been cheaper to produce after all those years, a A500 slim might have made more sense. instead of licencing toasters which would cheapen the brand, they should have licensed the OS to be used in set top boxes etc. From what David said the Amiga was going to become a PC clone, if that happened I feel it would lose its appeal unless the OS was improved.
What a great person David Pleasance seems to be and his plan for the buyout for Commodore made great sense and I believe it would have succeeded. Look at what Microsoft did in the early days, they licensed out DOS to IBM and kept the rights instead of selling it outright which was a great plan. Pity they didn't get to buyout Commodore, things could have been different and they could have been a Global giant in the Tech/Computer field.
Big thanks for this video! I got a lot of answers to things I have been wondering about. One thing that still intrigues me is what would have happened if Thomas Rattigan was allowed to work as CEO in Commodore? He basically saved the Company and put it on right track during the short time in the helm. Could he have continued in strengthening the Company and Amiga?
I remember his face and Kelly Sumner in Amiga Format! All that news of the buyout, but before the internet you had to wait until next months Amiga Format for further news! What a shame it didn't work out, Amiga infinity! Would see to see the case design or prototype.
Wow. just wow.. The Amiga was such a great computer. far beyond any mac or pc in its day. Unfortunately it was in the hands of the most terrible type people in the world... businessmen. CLowns with absolutely no skills whatsoever, people who had no direction in life, all looking to get over on the next guy. Even worst are the even more dunst individuals who hire them. This is the sad part about how this world works. people with skills and talent more than often taken advantage of by people who have none. somehow the dumb are in charge. the higher up the ladder the dumber people get. Its so rare to meet a businessman with wisdom and common sense. i applaud Mr. Pleasance. Its a shame he wasnt put in charge of it all.
I think it was a confluence of factors. Firstly, the Amiga was something new under the sun. It was essentially a product for creating a market that didn't exist yet (a multimedia machine for creatives). A Steve Jobs could have made it work, but Commodore didn't have the vision or expertise to see that, and were thinking in terms of either a games machine or a business machine, because those were the only niches they could visualize. Also, Jack Tramiel's legacy with dealers had been toxic and many of them didn't want to deal with Commodore post-1983. The Amiga was also slightly unlucky in terms of potential symbiotic technologies. Specifically, had CD-ROM drives been available (and affordable) just a few years earlier, the Amiga would have been THE machine to leverage the power of that tech. Similar story for the internet: the Amiga would have been the obvious computer to buy for throwing graphics and animations up on the screen. Finally, while the Brits and Europeans had an established culture of buying home computers to serve as multirole machines (games, serious applications, programming and hobbyist activities), the US didn't really have that culture by the second half of the 80s: the computer market had split into games consoles at home, and expensive "real computers" for business. So the Amiga was always destined to fit into the European mindset much more readily than to the North American, certainly at that time.
I have to say guys the push to put out the cd32 and A1200 in both US and UK packages was brilliant. In 1990 , his first year as UK head Chief That was a great year. The next year I got my A1200 in 1991.Then in 1995 I got the 1990 CD32 with a programmable rom chip which I still have with a mepg cartridge which was built before 1992. Yes, i have played Blue Rays ,and DVDs on it. It was a .humm dinger that i never got the ..upgrade to computer option with keyboard. Then again I already had my A1200 for 4 years.
Just love this interview and David seems the perfect guy to give a happy ending to Commodore's journey. What i've just heard from this interview was absolutely ridiculous i am so sad for the amount of stupidity that was going on at the time on the US headquarters and the blood sucking people who just didn't give a crap about the bussiness and what it stood for. How can a guy like Petro still be around after all that stupidity? Thank's a lot Dan for this testemony. I'm anxious to see other interviews with more Commodore guys.
