Reply 80 of 85, by snorg
Here is my take on the failure of the Amiga in North America:
When I was in highschool, my friends and I had a motley collection of hardware, but we all had PCs, so it was easy for us to share programs with each other. Only one of my friends had an Amiga, and while I would say his out of the box experience was much better, it wasn't an easy machine to upgrade (compared to the extensive PC organ bank where you could go to a brick and mortar store, computer trade show, or Computer Shopper and find something for your PC). He also had to buy nearly everything out of magazines, as our local software store had a tiny Amiga section (about what the PC section has turned to today, amidst a sea of PS3 and Xbox games, heh).
The fact that you could start out with a mid-range 286 (or even XT) as a freshman in highschool with about $500-$700 in parts (some used, some not) and that you could upgrade to a 486 later down the road was a pretty big deal. Until 3d came around, if you researched stuff and bought carefully, you could really stretch out your investment. When huge changes came like PCI, 3d graphics, etc it was harder to migrate older hardware. I remember migrating an old 30MB MFM drive to a system with a low-end 486 until I could afford a bigger HD, and then using stacker on it to wring out just a bit more room. And back when it was hard to spend less than $300 on an HD for something around 120MB.
So, lack of software (warez or legit) combined with difficulty upgrading (and less of a used parts market, at least in the US) along with (more importantly) Commodore's ineptitude contributed to its demise.