== The GX4000 ==
[[Image:Amstrad-GX4000-Console.jpg|right|thumb|300px|The Amstrad GX4000]]
By 1990 Amstrad had realised that the home market was heading towards the 16-bit machines, on one hand, and towards the new generation of game consoles like the Sega Master System or the Nintendo Entertainment System, on the other. Therefore, just as they created the 464 Plus and 6128 Plus to compete against the ST and the Amiga, they also created a stripped-down variant called the [[Plus|GX4000]].
The GX4000 was, in essence, an Amstrad 464+ motherboard in a new case, with no keyboard, cassette deck nor disc drive, and with most extension ports gone - save for the cartridge port and two joypads.
The GX4000 was officially announced along with the 464 plus and 6128 plus computers at the CNIT Centre in Paris in August 1990. The system was launched a month later in four countries: Britain, France, Spain, and Italy. It was priced at £99.99 in Britain and 990F in France; software was priced at £25 for most games. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_GX4000 Source] As expected, the GX4000 was a flop that could not break the stranglehold that Sega and Nintendo had on the market at the time. The Nintendo NES was a best seller and Sega released the Mega Drive in November 1990 in Europe. As a result, the GX4000 was soon to be found selling at ridiculously low prices - as little as £19.99 in the UK - as dealers tried to offload their stock. It was a shame, because if Amstrad had realised the market potential and produced this console a few years earlier, it could well have been a success.
As it was, the GX4000 joined the long list of failed attempts to repurpose computers as game consoles, alongside the Atari XEGS, the Commodore 64GS, the Amiga CDTV, the Amiga CD32, the FM Towns Marty and the Apple Pippin.