November 1979 Comments from Bally's Sales Director, Jack Nieman

[ballyalley]

I posted this to the Bally Yahoo group today, but I'm cross-posting it here. Hmm... is this even considered cross-posting? I'm afraid that the Yahoo group will disappear now that Yahoo has been sold, so I'm sorta-of/kinda transitioning postings to AtariAge. Here my original post:

 

I'm scanning in letters from the Bob Fabris Collection. One letter caught my eye. There are some great comments in a November 11, 1979 written to Bob Fabris from John Hurst. I've OCRed the part of the letter that is interesting and have put it here. Enjoy! Any comments...?

Adam

The following are John Hurst's comments:

On Nov. 6, I received a phone call from Mr. Jack Nieman, Director of Sales, Bally Mfg. Co., in response to a letter that I had written on the 25th of Oct. It was the second letter I had sent since I never received an answer to my first one dated 4 Aug. The gist of the telephone conversation that I had with Mr. Nieman was as follows:

1. Bally never advertised that there would be a keyboard add-on available.

2. Bally is not happy with the amount of units purchased. (30,000)

3. A decision will be made in January if the keyboard will be made.

4. To make the keyboard feasible, 100,000 Arcade units would have to be sold, so that the percentage of keyboard sales would be high enough to warrant production.

5. If the keyboard is not produced, the specifications, plans, and other info would be supplied to the ARCADIANS, for our use.

6. Software for the Bally, except for the game cartridges, is not being produced because the retail price would be higher than what the ARCADIANS can get it from the newsletter, or club members selling it through the newsletter.

7. Bally is still waiting for FCC specs, that will be needed if the Add-On is produced.

8. Only 50% of the United States is being covered by Bally as far as distribution is concerned.

As you can see, there are no new answers, the same old ones, along with a lot of excuses. So, although I appreciated the phone call, I really didn't find out much useful new information.

 

[Zonie]

Ouch...