Last month, I wrote about Commodore coming under new ownership with its new CEO, Christian Simpson (a.k.a. Peri Fractic), in Will We See a Commodore 64-Bit? While I have no idea if we’ll see any 64-bit Commodore products any time soon, what we do know is Commodore has started pre-orders of its new Commodore 64 Ultimate computer.
This new computer is intended to bring the much beloved Commodore 64 of the 1980’s into the hands of those who grew up with the Commodore 64 as well as those that maybe have never even heard of Commodore. The revised C64 Ultimate follows Simpson’s goal of “honoring the past, innovating the future.”
While we’re starting to learn a bit more about the direction of the new Commodore, I will keep this post focused on the Commodore 64 Ultimate (don’t worry, I’ll write more about Commodore in future posts).
For now, here are 10 facts we know so far about the new Commodore 64 Ultimate:
- The Commodore 64 Ultimate, announced on 28 June 2025, will be the first product released by Commodore after coming under the leadership of YouTuber, Peri Fractic (a.k.a. Christian Simpson).
- The Commodore 64 Ultimate is available in three variations: BASIC Beige, Starlight Edition, and Founders Edition.
- Commodore pulled in about $2 million (USD) during the first week after pre-orders went on sell for the new Commodore 64 Ultimate.
- The Commodore 64 Ultimate will have a built-in menu for configuring various settings such as network (wired and Wi-Fi), LEDs, audio, SID customizations, printers, modem, etc.
- The Commodore 64 Ultimate is said to be “at least 99% compatible with all 80s/90s games, cartridges, and peripherals”. I imagine we’ll see lists of compatible games and software, as well as anything that isn’t compatible, being published shortly after the new C64 Ultimate starts shipping.
- GEOS (Graphic Environment Operating System) will be included with the Commodore 64 Ultimate.
- As of this writing, over 9,000 Commodore 64 Ultimate computers have been sold (pre-ordered).
- At the time of this writing, sales can be broken out by edition as roughly: 53% BASIC Beige, 27% Founders Edition, and 20% Starlight Edition.
- Commodore announced on 27 Aug 2025 that their current plan is to start shipping the Gold Founders Editions in early November (2025). That said, they also stated that “a number of our prototype and test parts are being held in U.S. Customs due to a policy change that will take effect on August 29”. Only time will tell when we actually start getting our hands on the new C64 Ultimate.
- Google’s Gemini apparently thinks the Commodore 64 Ultimate is part of an elaborate April Fool’s Day joke. See my previous post about this: https://x.com/BitsAndBytes42/status/1962219593294057676
For the curious, I have pre-ordered the Founders Edition. Have you pre-ordered a new C64 Ultimate? If so, which edition? If not, why not?
Until next time, happy computing!