Ask HN: Why didn't the C64 come with Simons' BASIC in the box from 1983 onward?

7 pointsby amichail5 hours ago4 comments

anotherlaban hour ago
There were multiple reasons.
Simons' BASIC was still interpreted. If you wanted graphics and performance, you used Assembler.
Many/most people were using a disk speed-up cartridge like Epyx's Fast Load. You could only use one cartridge at a time. If they placed Simons' BASIC in the C64 ROM, that could have made it less compatible with existing software.
They didn't want to pay the licensing cost for an application that only a minority of C64 owners would have wanted.
rwallace3 hours ago
Because they believed only a small fraction of customers would care a lot about a better Basic interpreter, whereas the vast majority would care about price. As for giving things away for free, Commodore was already engaged in a cutthroat price war with Texas Instruments that almost sank the company. They could not afford to give anything else away for free.
UncleSlacky4 hours ago
Wasn't it because Jack Tramiel was too cheap and just wanted to make use of his existing MS BASIC licence?
- amichail4 hours ago
  He would still have made use of the MS BASIC license, but the addition of the Simons' BASIC cartridge in the box from 1983 onward would have changed the lives of many hobby coders.
  - JojoFatsani31 minutes ago
    Cartridges cost money. They were running a business.
  - TMWNN3 hours ago
    That doesn't make UncleSlacky incorrect. Tramiel was obsessed with reducing COGS and thus retail price, and bulldozed down anything standing in his way.
    A more interesting possibility is the post-Tramiel Commodore including a ROM version of GEOS from 1986 onward, and selling it on cartridge form to existing customers.
    Other possibilities:
    * Launch Amiga 2000 and 500 in 1985 instead of 1000.
    * Eschew Amiga completely, in favor of the Commodore 900 with Coherent. Instead of Amiga silicon, ship with a "VIC-III" for graphics and two SIDs for stereo 6-channel sound.
zabzonk2 hours ago
> Commodore was already engaged in a cutthroat price war with Texas Instruments that almost sank the company.
Really? Selling what? The TI99 was never a serious competitor for anything.
- LocalH3 minutes ago
  It was in the early 80s. It got to the point where Commodore offered $100 trade-in value towards the C64 for a competitor's machine, and near the end the TI 99/4a was deeply discounted to $49.99. So people would literally go buy a new 99/4a, then trade it in to Commodore to get $100 off. Tramiel likely felt it was worth that loss of revenue to get competitors' machines out of the market and replace them with Commodore's.