Two things happened:
* Americans had more money to spend than Britons, and weren't interested in TS1000 even with 2K of RAM compared to ZX81's 1K.
* Commodore. Specifically, Jack Tramiel so aggressively lowered VIC-20's price—forcing others to follow—that by the time MC-10 hit the market, VIC-20 was already at $99. So was TI 99/4A, preempting TI's own 99/2 import fighter.
Commodore even ended up preempting itself, with (after Tramiel's departure) Commodore 16 ending up selling for more than VIC-20 with zero software.
He wanted the Commodore 16 to replace the VIC-20 (both with graphics and sound in one chip to reduce costs) with a faster CPU, higher resolution graphics (could run PET/C64 40x25 educational apps), more color, and a better BASIC. He wanted the Plus/4 for small business owners who couldn't afford an IBM PC.
He left before the computers were completed and Commodore Marketing decided to position the Plus/4 as an upgrade from the Commodore 64 for $299. Due to being worse than the Commodore 64 and more expensive, it flopped in the market.
The Commodore 16 was $99 but the Commodore 64 was almost as inexpensive by then and had 64K of RAM, sprites, and lots of games. The VIC-20 would have been cancelled instead of letting it compete with the Commodore 16 until January 1985.
If the computers had been priced as Jack intended, they would have been more successful and the Commodore 16 might have even outsold the VIC-20.
Also, the Plus/4 ROM apps were terrible because someone decided to cut the ROM size, forcing the apps to but trimmed down and making them next to useless. If that hadn't happened, they would have been of more use to small businesses.
It occurs to me that it would be nifty to make a BASIC compiler for the Z-Machine.
simmons•6mo ago
I clearly had the wrong book for that computer. ;)
[1] https://www.retroprogrammez.fr/listings/aventure/cia/