Amiga put itself out of business.

Now, let me explain.  I lived in Philadelphia when the Amiga was around.  Commodore was headquartered in West Chester, PA (just outside Philly).  The Amiga user group in Philly (PAUG) was probably one of the most influential and closely tied to Commodore and Amiga (some of the users worked for Commodore!).  So, we had firsthand information on everything that was going on, especially towards the end.

As seen at this Wiki, the company had two headquarters - one in West Chester, PA and the other in the Bahamas (offshore - can we say financial safety net?)

"Commodore's marketing efforts for the Amiga were less competitive and seemed half-hearted."

In a board meeting in the Bahamas, Gould and the board decided that they had to take the money and run - cutting and slashing major departments of the Amiga sector in the process.  The worst hit was the Marketing Dept.  I think that one or two employees remained afterwards. It was with that one solitary Amiga commercial that aired around Christmas near the end that Commodore pinned all of its hopes for a future - lame and late.

I back this astonishing detail with this (same Wiki):

"With market share eroding, Commodore embarked on a series of decisions that were heavily questioned by shareholders and the press, who sometimes accused management of only being interested in removing as much value from the company as possible before it finally disappeared. By 1994, only its operations in Germany and the United Kingdom were still profitable."

Hard to forget this having lived in the middle of it.  I too was disappointed to see the Amiga go.  At the time - and for some years following the end of the Amiga - the competition in Microsoft PCs and Apple Macs was still not comparable (MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 - yuck).  Now the AmigaOS exists in name only - with no real hardware support or advantage that it once had.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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