Jack Tramiel

[Mister VCS]

Hi,

 

does anybody know what Jack Tramiel is doing

today (playing with Jaguars )?

[Tempest]

Good question. I imagine he's kicking back and living off all the money he plundered from Atari while running it into the ground.

 

Tempest

 

- I'm only bitter on the outside. Inside I'm filled with creamy nougat.

[Mindfield]

     To be honest, I don't think he was solely responsible for running it into the ground. Heck, as far as that goes, I think he's the least responsible. It's his sons, Gary, Leonard and Sam -- mostly Sam -- at whose feet I lay the final demise of Atari. Jack retired, after all, and handed the reigns over to these three stooges whose belief in advertising extended as far as spending 10% more on advertising than on the previous year's budget (which basically amounted to as close to nothing as makes no odds). Jack basically remained behind the scenes, having little to do with the day to day operation of Atari.

 

     However, the Tramiels merely hammered the nails in Atari's coffin. The man who built the coffin is Ray Kassar. His autocratic rule of Atari during the Warner reign, while inadvertantly spawning the creation the likes of Activision and as a result, myriad other third party software houses, nevertheless crushed Atari's spirit. His despotic policies and the poor working conditions in which the employees laboured were so stifling that they were strangling the life out of the very company he commanded. He firmly believed that the entire company revolved on his little finger, that Atari lived or died on his every word. I think that, had he been more fair in his treatment of his employees, and had been open to suggestions and realized that while he was the Big Cheese, there were thousands of people under him that did the real work of making Atari the great name that it was, then I think Atari may have been much better off in the long run.

     Sure, Ray's dictatorship forced many to leave, some of whom formed their own software company (Activision) and led the struggle to allow third party development. That in itself opened the floodgates for new and innovative designers to write games for the VCS. But, because of Atari's subsequent and complete lack of policy regarding third party development, it also resulted in a torrent of development houses so huge that the industry could ill support it, and in the end caused the Great Video Game Crash of '84.

 

     The Tramiels may have toppled Atari into its grave, but Kassar was the one who dug the plot.

 

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: Mindfield ]

[Tempest]

I was joking (somewhat). Even if he was making bad descisions the people who were blindly following him were just as much at fault. No one man is resposible for Atari's downfall, it was a combination of alot of different things. Although Jack certainly didn't help things.

 

Tempest

[Ze_ro]

I've always thought of it as such a tragedy what happened to Atari. Even up until the end, Atari still had some great ideas and a lot of innovation going around. The Jaguar may have been a little underpowered for the market it was thrown into, but with the right backing, it could have done a lot more. Hell, the Lynx should have killed the Gameboy in the market. Had Atari managed things a little better, I wonder how different the video game industry would be today.

 

On the other side of the story... Commodore started faltering after the Tramiels left too. I wonder if the Tramiels could have saved both companies if they had just stayed put... perhaps we'd all be using Amiga's today instead of x86's.

 

Though this is a little beside the point: Was Atari's computer line a complete product of the Tramiels, or had Atari been planning the 400 before the company was sold? (My Atari expertise falls just short of the computers)

 

--Zero

[Tempest]

Are you talking about the Atari 400? That was developed and released in 1979, long before the Tramiel's took over

 

Tempest

[atari70s]

Hey who has his email adress or mailing adress id like to contact him to ask him a few questions.

[mos6507]

Atari could never be what it was after the crash if for no other reason than the split between coin-op and consumer.

 

That aside, the Tramiels missed opportunities and had such poor business practices that they alienated the entire industry and had trouble gaining shelf-space in mainstream outlets.

 

They also tried to remold the brand as something other than what it should have been. They wanted people to associate Atari with the ST, not the 8-bit, not the game consoles. So they also alienated their inherited userbase.

 

They jumped back into the console business almost begrudgingly, and wasted too much effort on the slapped-together ST.

 

They chose a path that kept the company alive but in a slow and steady decline rather than risking it all by _really_ rallying behind one of their products, like the Lynx which was a contender. Atari faithful were somehow under the delusion that Atari would never hit bottom, but it eventually did.

 

In the end they were surviving only due to successful lawsuits against other game companies... Pathetic.

[Ze_ro]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tempest:

Are you talking about the Atari 400? That was developed and released in 1979, long before the Tramiel's took over

---

 

Wow, I didn't think the 400 came out that early... but I should have realized that since the 5200 is based on the 8-bit computers, then that release date makes a lot of sense.

 

What was the release date of the ST?

 

--Zero

[Klove]

Jack is now retired.

 

He'e been known to fund raisers as well.

 

- Ken

[Tempest]

Nice to know he's doing some good in his retirement. I wonder if he'll be a guest speaker at one of the CGE expo's. I imagine he wouldn't be too popular though.

 

Actually this whole thread has got me thinking (and yes that's a dangerous thing), how much of Atari's downfall is really Jack's fault? I know almost every Atari fan bashes him and most blame him for single-handedly ruining Atari, but I can't believe it was him alone. He may not have been making the best decisions, but surely others were at fault as well.

 

Anyone have more information about Atari's final days?

 

Tempest

 

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: Tempest ]

[Mindfield]

Ze_ro: The ST was initially released in late 1984/early 1985, initially with the 130ST and 260ST in Europe, which quickly died as a result of a pitiful lack of sufficient RAM. (128k and 256k respectively; the 128k was barely enough to load the then-disk-based OS) Prior to that was the XE series (1983-84), before that, the XL series (1981-1982), and before that the 400/800 (1979-1980).

 

Glenn: The Tramiels always bothered me. On the one hand they had great ideas; even during their reign, originality and innovation were still hallmark, as it had always been with Atari. On the other, their business sense had a certain Dr. Seuss quality about it: One ad, two ads, three ads, four. Five ads, six ads, then no more. I will not spend greenbacks, no ma'am. I will not spend them, Sam I am. They had no guts. They tried to make too many things work with little more than word of mouth and press releases to announce them. That was their biggest mistake. Warner advertised quite a bit in the day; of ads during the Tramiel reign, there's precious little to be found.

 

Tempest: Frankly, although much can be laid at Jack's feet, I'm of the opinion that he only finished what Kassar and the Warner administration started, though they did it in a completely different fashion. Where Kassar's autocratic rule stifled and practically suffocated Atari to death internally, the Tramiels essentially alienated their dealer networks, installed user base, and the press by essentially making bad decisions. Atari refused to give dealers exclusivity rights, they were constantly announcing vapourware that never saw the light of day (though Warner did their share of that, too), and they were cheap and standoffish with members of the press. (They even went so far as to require review materials to be mailed back to them at their own expense) They burned so many bridges that when things started backfiring on them, they had nowhere left to retreat except down the gully...

Hell, when the Jaguar was released, they only spent $18 mil on advertising -- a drop in the bucket compared to the $200 million Nintendo spent on advertising the N64. In fact, were it not for the court settlement between Atari and Sega, which saw Sega pay Atari somewhere around $75 million over 3 years, Atari would probably have died even sooner.