Engineering wise, I think the 264 series as just fine and were better than the '64' series. Tho i agree it was not dramatic and was more incremental, it was an improvement for their 8bit line. The practical issue was lack of mainstream software support. I think they were one of the first real episodes of "well, its better hardware, but not fully compatible" and the fall out that happens when no one writes for/buys them due to that. ( Atari had that same issue, tho i forget which model line, ( xl? i don't remember now. been too long ). They were also better hardware than the previous generation, but were only like 90% compatible with previous, so they sort of got left out to dry )

They both also came out at a bad time, consumer market was moving away from 8 bit from what i remember.  Sort of too little to late syndrome.

Mon May 18 2026 16:23:33 EDT from setho

The C16 and Plus 4 were both terrible machines. Never really fully baked.


The C128 was a great machine. Probably their best outside of the Amiga line.....

And i could be wrong on commodore users moving to 16 bit.   Us Atari folk were..  and of course the PC and Apple communities were starting the migration...