Nightmare for certain!!! :-D

They decided to go into the crowded clone business, and overpriced themselves! I looked at their computers and the cheap clones were always cheaper and C='s machines were more expensive than most of the name brand competition.

The next "problem" with your idea would be that after some years consoles have been usually replaced by newer models incomaptible with the older ones. So there would never have been a compatible AGA chipset, faster processors, basically new models still being able to run the old software. It would have been a great console for its time, but that would have been it. It wouldn't be a phenomenon like it is.

You are right about the CD32. That was about three years too late or from another point of view without the features needed to be successful at its time (in words: 3D graphics). The CDTV on the other hand was rather kind of early...

system possibilities aside: what would earn more money for commodore: computer where only income is from selling hardware or console where you ge money from both hardware and software?

ofcourse C= could survive selling computers too. Potential was much greater than what was used...

(Which is what Sony does with their PS line.)

Doubtful, the PS1 was an order of magnitude more powerful.

CPU
Motorola 68030 11 MIPS at 33 MHz, ~56 Mio/s (chipram) absolute max
MIPS R3000A 30~33 MIPS at 33 Mhz, ~132 Mio/s absolute max

Chipset
CD32 up to 256 colours, 4x8 bit sound (2x14bits with hack)
PS1 up to 24Millions colours, 24xADCMP(8bit logarithmic) on 16 bit DAC sound

Coprocessor
CD32 blitter (~7Mio/s), aikiko (?)
PS1 MDEC 80Mips (DCT & iDCT for mpeg video or jpeg), GPU 66Mips (180,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second)
To calculate the new coordinate of one point, you need 16 mul and 12 add with 4x4 transform matrix.
Even if mul was 1 cycle on 68030, you can roughthly calculate ~130.000 polygon coordinate (triangle), you did not even have power left for filling them.

According to the french wikipedia page on PS1, this book (http://www.amazon.fr/Les-chroniques-Player-Olivier-Richard/dp/2811602461) on page 212 tell that sony contact commodore for acquiring CD32 technology after the break up with nintendo, but it did not goes very far (and Sega Saturn will have play in circle around the AmigaPS1)

The Hombre project was much more promising to fight against the 3D console. 100mhz HP PA and a 100mhz GPU sharing the same bus.
In fact Natami will be a compatible Amiga more powerfull than the Hombre chipset.

For me, the spiritual successor of amiga at the time was the 3DO, designed by ex amiga "star technicians".

I don't understand your point about software and hardware sales. Take a look at Apple: They sell hardware AND software, very good software that is (I mean things like Final Cut, Logic etc.). Wouldn't you agree they sell computers and make money from the software? Yes, they don't sell ALL software for Apple... but they are going to. All software, even Adobe etc. will end up in an app shop, and Apple will earn money with EVERY programm sold for their hardware. I doubt Commodore would have gone another way, if they were still around like they were in 1990.

Also, even with your "optimisations" (128kb RAM, no floppy etc.) the hardware would have been incredibly expensive in the beginning. Maybe half of the initial price of the A1000, but that's still five to ten times what consoles used to cost at that time. Who would have paid that much for what's basically a toy? For a professional computer it would have been and actually was a reasonable price!

To get to the CD32 again: It easily could have been the best 2D console around with some tweaks like a 030 and some fast RAM. Unfortunately that time was the dawn of 3D consoles. They could have thrown some 3D chip into the design, but that would have raised the already pretty high production costs and the games would have been CD32 only, whereas most CD32 games produced run on an A1200 or 4000 too.

Correction:  WIthout texture mapping?  Maybe not.  (All Amiga chipsets have polygon acceleration all the way back to the A1000.)

What it could mainly have used is a faster blitter.  The AGA chipset had faster Copper, faster display DMA, and higher sampling rates for the Paula.  The blitter was unchanged since ECS.  Since it could write to the registers, it had to remain 16-bit but nobody thought about quadrupling the clock speed of the blitter.  There were other parts of the same chip also clocked faster than 14 MHz so it wouldn't have been too much of a bother.

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C= were only selling C64 that previous C= made and Amiga that Amiga Corp. made. They didn't invented nothing and canceled Ranger that could buy them place in graphics workstations... AGA was big fat joke. AAA looks nice but it existed only on paper as wish-list. In reality all they did was to add 2 bitplanes and widen palette and extend chip memory support. Kinda lame considering it took them 7 years to do that...
 
  and yes: I HATE Commodore as they didn't had any "cojones" at all. Jack Tramiel (original founder of Commodore) would do much better with Amiga technology imho...

Well I played King's Field and King's Field 2 (finished both), those were definitely games that pushed the PS to it's limits!

However, what was possibly my favourite game, Final Fantasy VII, seemed more 2D/3D. Thought that, and most other games could be done by powerful Amigas. And yes, AGA+68030 @25 MHz (2 megs chip/2 megs fast). HOWEVER, AGA should have been 7.16*3 = 21.48 MHz and 32 BIT!!!!!!

Vandal Hearts was one of my favourite games, and it though being "3D", being turn based play, could have been done by that Amiga EASILY.  would say that MOST PlayStation 1 games could have been done by such an Amiga. The key being "lots of RAM" and integrated graphics RAM.

I say that, even the PlayStation 2 can be walked all over by the NatAmi at 150MHz, why? BECAUSE OF RAM!!!! When a game is RAM resident, it is BRUTALLY fast. We also have ridiculously faster RAM than the PS2 and a whole lot more of it. Also, Amiga is A LOT easier to program than the PS2!!!!

We'll see when the NatAmi is finally available what is, is.

* pun intended

But as we said in france, with a lot of "if", you can put Paris in a bottle.

Reality wise, the real CD32 was underpower for the PS1/Saturn generation. And your expanded specs was not in the "board of owner mindset" of the time.

The Hombre chipset (specsheet only) was the commodore answer to this new power generation.
""If"" David Pleasance (Commodore UK) would have bought Commodore US (but they were too greedy), it would have invest in the Hombre Chipset, he understood very well what to do to keep Amiga in commercial success.
EXTERNAL LINK  It would have been a 5 and an half generation console in 1997, 2 to 3 times more powerfull than PS1/Saturn, nearly the same power of an N64 (1997), but half the power of the dreamcast (1999)

It could be refuted by actual computer programmers and technicians and such, but I still believe that what I say IS correct!

If I didn't I wouldn't be here.... No, wait, I still would be here as windows "operating system" (microsoft claim it is) is wretched garbage and Amiga is elegant has an indescribable beauty.

I wait for a NatAmi!