COMMODORE

During the C64's lifetime, sales totaled between 12.5 and 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (19831986), the C64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple Inc. computers, and Atari 8-bit family computers. Sam Tramiel, a former Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years."
Part of its success was because it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost. It is sometimes compared to the Ford Model-T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative mass-production.
Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office productivity applications, and games. Various C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible game console, to run these programs today. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. The C64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists.
Since 28 March 2008, Commodore 64 games have been available to buy through Nintendo's Virtual Console service in Europe; the first games available were Uridium and International Karate. Later, on February 23, 2009, the Commodore 64 section was launched in North America with the first three titles, International Karate, The Last Ninja and Pitstop II. A C64 emulator application with classic games also appears on Apple Inc.'s App Store.
































