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Official sales had the C64 outselling the Spectrum 3 to 1 'worldwide' but that ignores licened clones like the Timex and, basically, the entire Eastern European
by Marazan 8y ago
Official sales had the C64 outselling the Spectrum 3 to 1 'worldwide' but that ignores licened clones like the Timex and, basically, the entire Eastern European computer scene based on cloned ZX Spectrums.
- vidarh 8y agoTimex only claims to have sold about 600k units, so while not insignificant, it didn't really move the needle that much. For the Eastern European markets it really varies greatly by country. Commodore dumped hundreds of thousands of C16/C116 and Plus/4's in the Eastern European markets in '86 onwards for example (largely because they'd totally flopped) - especially in Hungary where many Plus/4's ended up in schools for example, and a substantial proportion of software (quite likely a majority of titles) for those machines came out of Eastern Europe. This was a point where most of the Spectrum clones didn't even exist yet. The Spectrum clones longevity in Eastern Europe with new models appearing well into the 90's was remarkable, though, and certainly served to bridge a gap when Western computer company had largely ditched their lowest end 8-bit machines.