Quick Sam Tramiel anecdote

[Shredder11]

Yep I remember during the late 80s and early 90s regularly looking at PCs, and my jaw dropping in amazement at how bad they were when compared with even the 8-bits! It was not until the mid 1990s when the Pentium CPU came out and Windows 95, that I began to take PCs seriously and by then I was actually impressed. Even then I could only do offline editing of audio because sequencing was still a pipedream, whereas the Falcon 030 could already do this and more, at a cheaper price. Also by the mid 1990s gaming was almost exclusively done on the PlayStation, although I myself had completely stopped gaming.

 

Regarding Windows and general PC backwards compatibility with modern advances; I recently installed Windows 98SE on a circa 2002 Pentium III PC and although it did install, my software and internet experience was pretty awful compared to the last time I used it daily in 2004.

[Bryan]

I started getting worried as soon as I saw DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D (386/486 era).

[Retro Rogue]

Do we know that no one else would have bought the company?

 

They were trying to sell it since January of '84, nobody would buy it because of all the debt issues and valuation. Selling it off in pieces turned out to be the only recourse that worked.

 

Certainly Atari was hit from two sides. First, Warner had no idea how much money they were spending and on what.

 

Of course they did. Warner was the one who drove most of their spending and reporst/forcasts for their own profits, Atari Inc. had a dual management.

 

As soon as things turned south, they started hemorrhaging...bad. Then, Atari was taken over by some of the most unscrupulous businessmen around at the time. It may have been the only way, but it sure wasn't ideal.

 

Atari was never taken over. It was split, with the Consumer division going under Tramel Technology Ltd. which itself was then renamed Atari Corporation. What was left as Atari Inc. (and still referred to as Atari Inc. legally) was still retained by warner, which then spun off the arcade part of what was retained as Atari Games and pieced up anything further left. Atari Inc. and Atari Corporation actually both existed at the same time for a period.

[Willsy]

The Tramiels are THE most hated men in the history of the gaming and computing industry, especially by the old time Atari fans who still to this day believe they destroyed Atari from the inside out.

 

Get over it. These days, it's all about hating on Bobby Kotick.

 

Agree. Don't know if any of you have read Commodore: On the Edge (or whatever it's called) but the employees at Commodore all seemed to love him like a father.

 

Apparantly he was one scary mo-fo if you got on the wrong side of him, but he did not hold grudges. He was also very loyal to his engineers.

 

What is interesting is, as scary as he was, all the engineers seemed to have a respect for him. He (Jack) hated the marketing "bullshitters" so that went down very well with the engineers. He also exerted *total* control over Commodore, signing every check personally. If a supplier was late delivering parts to the factory, Jack would teach them a lesson by leaving the check in the bottom drawer for a month!

[carmel_andrews]

Perhaps Sam tramiel was doing a tap/shoe dance on the table...or he got a bit of nail in the shoe

 

Or he was starting a new shoe movement, the same one that that guy who threw shoes at GwB

[atarian63]

Practically nothing of note hardware-wise was developed and released after the 400/800 by Atari under Warner. All of it was based on existing products and the hard work had already been done.

 

 

You obviously never saw any of the more interesting products being developed in the Atari Labs division, then. Thought controlled video games? Yowzers!

 

Why do you think I used bold in that sentence? Something sitting on an engineer's shelf is worthless until people can actually buy and use it.

Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products.

[Retro Rogue]

Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products.

 

And many items were in production or even testing, only to be cancelled at the whim of Warner.

[OldAtarian]

Practically nothing of note hardware-wise was developed and released after the 400/800 by Atari under Warner. All of it was based on existing products and the hard work had already been done.

 

 

You obviously never saw any of the more interesting products being developed in the Atari Labs division, then. Thought controlled video games? Yowzers!

 

Why do you think I used bold in that sentence? Something sitting on an engineer's shelf is worthless until people can actually buy and use it.

Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products.

 

I really wanted to see the 1090 expansion box, CP/M module and a friggin 3.5" floppy drive. Even Commodore had one of those.

[carmel_andrews]

I think the problem with warner's approach to things was that it made sence to spend money developing technology or products but didn't have the money to do the 'follow through' because by the time the 'follow through' came, Atari were in trouble and simply didn't have the finances to properly commit to that technology or product (apparently warner's film units were run the same way)

 

I guess it is debatsble whether tramiel did good things or bad things at atari, the bad things mainly related to how he dealt with retailers/dealers (but i guess that was a throwback to his days at cbm and atari's attitude with dealers/retailers from the warners period) and also how he dealt with developers/publishers ,this is specifically a tramiel issue, since he basically tried pulling the same stunts at atari as he did when he was with commodore, which didn't help atari's case since atari's presence in the US had largely been diminished and most publishers/developers just were'nt interested in the atari format (beit computers or gaming systems)...I believe the tramiel way of doing business was 'changing the goalposts' as far as retailer/dealer or publisher/developer contracts were cvoncerned...

 

The other issuwe was, Atari never fully recovered from the game crash of the early 80's, they simply kept loosing market share (in the US at least) even tramiel must have admitted that He wasn't going to save Atari, he's job was to 'try and staunch the bleeding' he staunched the bleeding but didn't stop it, but he did make some sort of success with Atari in that he did with Atari what he did with commodore and took Atari out of the US market initially and did a better job 'internationalising' Atari then what warner's did (especially in the UK/European markets) and internationalising atari at least gave it some capital to finance future product developemnt (since most of the products that Atari did under tramiel were 'bought in products and technologies')

 

Due to the different dynamics that Atari posed for trameil, tramiel immediately realised that certain aspects of his 'religion' (or business philosophy) just wasn't condusive/compatible with the Atari situation like vertical integration, setting up atari as an offshore company (like he did at commodore) and there were numerous other apsexcts of his religion that just could'nt be practiced anymore, the only ones that were practiced was how he worked contracts and getting his sons into senior posts within the company and also sell/make it cheap but make a profit

[atarian63]

Practically nothing of note hardware-wise was developed and released after the 400/800 by Atari under Warner. All of it was based on existing products and the hard work had already been done.

 

 

You obviously never saw any of the more interesting products being developed in the Atari Labs division, then. Thought controlled video games? Yowzers!

 

Why do you think I used bold in that sentence? Something sitting on an engineer's shelf is worthless until people can actually buy and use it.

Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products.

 

I really wanted to see the 1090 expansion box, CP/M module and a friggin 3.5" floppy drive. Even Commodore had one of those.

For what it's worth, the commodore 3.5" drive came along too late and did not sell well ( at least for us).

[atarian63]

Many items could have been easily produced if they had just had the guts and foresight to take the chance. People were chomping at the bit for more/new Atari products.

 

And many items were in production or even testing, only to be cancelled at the whim of Warner.

Yeah Marty, it just kills me! So many great things could have been..Maybe I would not be selling dull pc's today.

[2600Lives]

Apparantly he was one scary mo-fo if you got on the wrong side of him, but he did not hold grudges.

 

Actually, I talked to a guy that worked with Jack at Commodore a couple of years ago. He did the conversion of Satan's Hollow for the C-64, and knew Jack personally. He said he would hold a grudge till hell froze over, over the slightest thing (apparently he sunk a lot of projects at Commodore just to get back at certain individuals). Again, take it for what it's worth. I personally don't give a flying shit about him one way or the other, I just mentioned that he is a hated individual, so there's really nothing to get over, since I don't care in the least. I do think, though, that if he has the Swordquest items, they should be put into a museum. Those are some of the most impressive pieces of gaming history ever made.

[OldAtarian]

Apparantly he was one scary mo-fo if you got on the wrong side of him, but he did not hold grudges.

 

Actually, I talked to a guy that worked with Jack at Commodore a couple of years ago. He did the conversion of Satan's Hollow for the C-64, and knew Jack personally. He said he would hold a grudge till hell froze over, over the slightest thing (apparently he sunk a lot of projects at Commodore just to get back at certain individuals). Again, take it for what it's worth. I personally don't give a flying shit about him one way or the other, I just mentioned that he is a hated individual, so there's really nothing to get over, since I don't care in the least. I do think, though, that if he has the Swordquest items, they should be put into a museum. Those are some of the most impressive pieces of gaming history ever made.

 

 

Actually, we should all act like we just don't care about the Swordquest items. Things have value only because people become fanatical about having them. If nobody cares, then JT can't profit in any way from those items because nobody will buy them.

[Retro Rogue]

I do think, though, that if he has the Swordquest items, they should be put into a museum. Those are some of the most impressive pieces of gaming history ever made.

 

 

Actually, we should all act like we just don't care about the Swordquest items. Things have value only because people become fanatical about having them. If nobody cares, then JT can't profit in any way from those items because nobody will buy them.

 

*sigh* as stated previously he doesn't have them. The man still has a lien on his house over a suit brought by former stock holders over the whole Atari Corp./JTS reverse merger for christ sake. And other ongoing suits ofer goingsons during that whole JTS period. Items like that would have been some of the first put up. When the '84 split occured, they most likely wound up at still at Warner (since the contest was Warner brokered) or back at the Franklin "mint".

Edited September 30, 2010 by wgungfu

[Goochman]

The whole JTS thing was a joke - not sure who thought merging with a disk drive company of questionable ability would fly well with the shareholders.

 

It prob would've been better to just let the company continue to sink - except IMHO the Tramiels wanted a way to save their money and exit.

[Rybags]

It was obviously just a means to minimise their losses, avoid tax, etc etc.

 

If they'd looked at where the market was going, they could easily have gotten on the multimedia bandwagon at just the right time.

 

They could quite easily had outflanked the likes of ATI, 3dFX and nVidia if they'd hired the expertise and just concentrated on the niche that they had already tried (and largely failed) to dominate with the ST/TT/Falcon.

[Retro Rogue]

The whole JTS thing was a joke - not sure who thought merging with a disk drive company of questionable ability would fly well with the shareholders.

 

Huh? The shareholders voted it through.

 

The issue of the lawsuits have to do with financial obligations that were supposed to have been met during the JTS years and some property issues.

[Goochman]

The whole JTS thing was a joke - not sure who thought merging with a disk drive company of questionable ability would fly well with the shareholders.

 

Huh? The shareholders voted it through.

 

The issue of the lawsuits have to do with financial obligations that were supposed to have been met during the JTS years and some property issues.

 

How much of the company did the Tramiels and their friends control (shareholder wise)?

[Rybags]

>50% obviously (combined)

 

By 1996 they had nothing to sell the public, so the whole episode over the following years was just a slow liquidation effort.

 

If taxation laws allowed everything to be sold off, take your money and run style, then they would have done that.

But to maximise what you get from the carcass, you actually need to slowly bleed a company dry, take advantage of depreciation concessions etc.

[CRV]

By 1996 they had nothing to sell the public, so the whole episode over the following years was just a slow liquidation effort.

 

Wasn't Atari Corp. supposed to be getting into PC games before the whole JTS thing?

[The_Laird]

They did start to and there are more prototypes that have surfaced since too.

[Rybags]

AtariSoft actually started under Warner and I'm fairly sure they did PC games fairly early on.

 

Supposedly it didn't last long into the Tramiel era though.

[Retro Rogue]

How much of the company did the Tramiels and their friends control (shareholder wise)?

 

According to press coverage of the time:

 

"Atari Chairman Jack Tramiel and his family now hold 42 percent of Atari stock".

 

"Atari shareholders will own 60 percent of the merged company".

 

 

Wasn't Atari Corp. supposed to be getting into PC games before the whole JTS thing?

 

Yes, Atari Interactive (not to be confused with the division of Hasbro under the same name, nor the current Atari Interactive which are three separate entities that happen to have wound up with the same names). You can read more about it at the entry on Wikipedia I created for them.

 

 

AtariSoft actually started under Warner and I'm fairly sure they did PC games fairly early on.

 

Supposedly it didn't last long into the Tramiel era though.

 

This wasn't AtariSoft, Atari Interactive was a new division started in late '95 and announced in early '96 to move Jaguar era titles to the PC. It lasted about a month after the formal announcement before being disbanded for the merger talks. I believe they only got Tempest 2000 and one other title out the door. Interplay wound up picking up the Tempest 2000 DOS publishing rights, so you have two variations on packaging.

[OldAtarian]

How much of the company did the Tramiels and their friends control (shareholder wise)?

 

According to press coverage of the time:

 

"Atari Chairman Jack Tramiel and his family now hold 42 percent of Atari stock".

 

"Atari shareholders will own 60 percent of the merged company".

 

 

Wasn't Atari Corp. supposed to be getting into PC games before the whole JTS thing?

 

Yes, Atari Interactive (not to be confused with the division of Hasbro under the same name, nor the current Atari Interactive which are three separate entities that happen to have wound up with the same names). You can read more about it at the entry on Wikipedia I created for them.

 

 

AtariSoft actually started under Warner and I'm fairly sure they did PC games fairly early on.

 

Supposedly it didn't last long into the Tramiel era though.

 

This wasn't AtariSoft, Atari Interactive was a new division started in late '95 and announced in early '96 to move Jaguar era titles to the PC. It lasted about a month after the formal announcement before being disbanded for the merger talks. I believe they only got Tempest 2000 and one other title out the door. Interplay wound up picking up the Tempest 2000 DOS publishing rights, so you have two variations on packaging.

 

Look at this version for the Nuon

 

[Retro Rogue]

Look at this version for the Nuon

 

 

That's Tempest 3000, different game. And a bunch of the people at VM Labs were actually ex-Atari Corp. people.