In 1987 Commodore followed Atari's lead with the XE and made it's Commodore 64 computer into a game system. While it probably seemed like a good idea at the time there were a couple of major screw ups on Commodore's part. First off they didn't include a keyboard or Disc drive hook-ups which cut the available compatible C64 computer games down by like half. Second they didn't really save too much money in trying to scale down the system because all the components for things like a keyboard or disc drive were still included (there were just no holes in the case. I suppose you could make some...) Third a real C64 computer didn't really cost that much more, so why buy the scaled down machine that couldn't do as much as the real thing? So all these factors (plus the fact that 1987 is when Macs and the 1st generation of PCs started to hit) pretty much put the nail in the coffin for this machine. It was only sold in England and the Netherlands, and didn't sell very well mind you. The fact that it was such a bomb makes it that much more expensive nowadays. Go figure