How much of a difference the 7800 would have if the XEGS didn't exist?

[DracIsBack]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

[guyjin]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

 

Given the current state of the American economy, I'd trust any forum member here to run a corporation more than any of our current ruling class.

[etschuetz]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

 

Yes, I may be doing a little post Atari Armchair CEO'ing, but that is the joy of it. Just sitting here and reflecting on what could have been done differently. Okay, so Jack and sons were stand up fella's and nice as all can be, but that doesn't make for good business. There is the famous quote of one of the Atari workers in a factory where Tramiel basically shut the place down without any advanced warning. Yup, swell guy. Really stand up and nice.

 

I also agree that Atari's foundation was a cracked and wobbly one from the start. Of course, they pioneered the video gaming industry, so what would you expect? You can't give market analysis on a market that doesn't exist. At the time of the 2600's heyday, I am sure Warner couldn't foresee the concept of a 5 year lifespan of a console. And, without a licensing structure like there is today, investing in new consoles and selling them meant being lucrative at the get go. Give Nintendo props there people. I will.

 

My armchair ceo hindsight is just wishful daydreaming. Idealism if you will. Besides maybe we are wrong about focusing on Jack Tramiel, and maybe should be more on the son Sam. He was doing most of the business through the 80's.

[atarian63]

I wonder why Atari fans need to blame somone for this stuff.

 

 

sTeVE

Because Atari fans (outside of a handful of us) are unwilling to admit that the Atari they conceive of in their imagination pretty much never existed.

 

 

The company was started by a tonic water salesman selling stolen technology. This shyster sold his company to a bunch of suits at a big, faceless corporation that manged to squeeze out maybe 5 years of big success (the entire golden age of Atari people here seem to think lasted 50 years) mixed in with a thousand bonehead moves. The company then almost went under until it was sold to a good business man who made it into a fortune 500 company just a couple years after it lost $500 million in early 80s dollars. That business man oversaw the company for longer than its founder or the big, giant, faceless company did. Somehow though, he is to be blamed for the company going under more than either the guy who rode stolen technology until he couldn't raise any more money or the big company that (through lack of understanding the market) nearly drove the product line into the ground.

 

The reasoning? He didn't understand that, once a new type of game became popular on a Japanese system with development from the people making Donkey Kong, the money losing market that almost sank the company and that no investor or retailer was interested in, would come back. No. He was too busy making piles of money on the booming computer market to look into the crystal ball everyone here apparently has their hands on. Why there aren't more millionaires on here is confusing to me. Surely you all invested in Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Research in Motion, and Apple before they boomed using your amazing powers of fortune telling. I mean, you can read market trends years before they happen apparently. You no doubt saw the rise of things like social media and search advertising years in advance. Because apparently the Tramiels were expected to do just that sort of thing.

I dunno, I have always thought Atari with all the great R&D products was far superior to say.. Apple in the day. The problem was the non computer/gamer type running Warner were great marketers,but lousy about making decisions for the products being produced by R&D. They were quite a large company.

Seems name calling on Bushnell is kind of not givingthe man his due. He did make video games a household item. Magnavox and Ralph couldn't get thier ideas of the ground. He also tied up the chip fab's to keep out competitors,quite a brilliant move. Too bad Warner's werent as bright. Maybe ther would not have been a Coleco or Intellivision(which is fine by me).

The Tramiels were a liquidator for old stick and an innovator for off the shelf components. Pretty Brilliant for such a short period of time. Too bad he did'nt look at Gaza or others. I do know that time was of the essence for the new Atari and that he did make good use of, every day of running it the warner way was closer to killing the new company. I think we all might have done the same if it was our own personal cash we were talking about.

[atarian63]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

 

Given the current state of the American economy, I'd trust any forum member here to run a corporation more than any of our current ruling class.

Oh yeah, soon you won't be able to repair your own items like refridge etc, they will be required to be "green" instead. Hope they don't come for my Atari's!

[Atarifever]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

 

Given the current state of the American economy, I'd trust any forum member here to run a corporation more than any of our current ruling class.

Oh yeah, soon you won't be able to repair your own items like refridge etc, they will be required to be "green" instead. Hope they don't come for my Atari's!

Ataris are green, so they'd pass. They use zero energy when turned off. Current consoles all burn energy when turned off. Plus, using them instead of trashing them keeps them out of landfills 20-30+ years after they were created, which is a pretty good example of reducing waste. Then Al and others recycle cart shells. So the Atari reduces energy use, are often rebought by collectors to be reused, and everything from cart shells to old controllers are recycled by the homebrew/moding communities. Ataris by today's standards are very green consoles.

Edited July 1, 2009 by Atarifever

[atarian63]

Blimey it is Tramiel bashing season here isn't it?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

 

That's the thing about discussion forums. They attract a wide range of Armchair CEOs who take breaks from running their own multi-million and multi-billion businesses to give thoughts on how the Tramiels should have run theirs.

 

Given the current state of the American economy, I'd trust any forum member here to run a corporation more than any of our current ruling class.

Oh yeah, soon you won't be able to repair your own items like refridge etc, they will be required to be "green" instead. Hope they don't come for my Atari's!

Ataris are green, so they'd pass. They use zero energy when turned off. Current consoles all burn energy when turned off. Plus, using them instead of trashing them keeps them out of landfills 20-30+ years after they were created, which is a pretty good example of reducing waste. Then Al and others recycle cart shells. So the Atari reduces energy use, are often rebought by collectors to be reused, and everything from cart shells to old controllers are recycled by the homebrew/moding communities. Ataris by today's standards are very green consoles.

Yes, I see your point, I certainly don't throw away any Atari stuff. Great thing about collectables huh?!

[guyjin]

Ataris are green, so they'd pass. They use zero energy when turned off.

 

Not necessarily. Any wall wart (which, AFAIK, all ataris use) is going to use some energy so long as it's plugged into a live socket - and as they age and break down, the problem only gets worse.

What I like to do, especially since I have a bunch of consoles plugged in at once (all but one of which use wall warts) is to connect them all to power strips/squids, and when I go to bed at night/leave the house, reach under and flip the one switch that rules them all.

[Jetboot Jack]

Slight correction - old wall warts are always burning off a little energy as heat, even when not connected to a powered on device - more modern digital ones consume ZERO energy when they are unhooked from their devices or those devices are turned off - those fly weight NOKIA cell phone chargers are good example...

 

sTeVE

Edited July 2, 2009 by Jetboot Jack

[carmel_andrews]

JBJ....Re: Why Atari users need to blame someone for atari's failings

 

Possibly because they were disgusted or saddened the way atari was being managed or run at the time

 

remembering ofcourse that it was the success that nintendo had with the test marketing of the NES in new york and the US launch of the sega Mark III (SMS) that literally forced the tramiels to bringing out the 7800 out of mothballs

 

Also that tramiel had on a number of occasions stated after he acquiring atari from warners that Atari was a 'computer' company...and that it was a known fact that he wasnt interested in atari's games systems (referring to them as 'polution'), the 2600/5200 only just survived because atari needed money to fund the continued development of the ST (i.e getting rid of existing inventories and not putting new systems into production) and that tramiel had neither the time, inclination or the energy so getting a totally new gaming platform (the 7800) of the ground (as it would have taken resources away from the ST, as well as funding)

 

If nintendo had failed with the test marketing of the nes in new york....would we even be talking about a 7800 gaming system (i think not)

Edited July 4, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[oky2000]

There should be a 0 for choices for more games. XEGS was just made to sell existing 8bit inventory. It would not have diverted much if any resources from software development. The XE games were mostly repackaged carts of disk games. It probably made more money available for Atari because it would help move old inventory and development would cost have been mostly cosmetic. Therefore, it would have been relatively cheap.

 

An interesting point. To add to the mix though let's take Rescue on Fractalus. The game was being coded for the 7800 in parallel to being converted to the XEGS...if the XEGS didn't exist the RoF would have made it onto the 7800 and become a must have title. So in some cases it would have helped.

 

Another thing is the XEGS was launched after the 7800 yes? This would have alarmed developers who would have lost trust in Atari as they now had TWO 8bit incompatible consoles out there. This both split the company's resources to market either and also split development resource for new games. I think the 7800 would have done much better if Atari had made a massive effort with the 7800 and not split the console market.

 

It's no different to when Commodore had for sale 4 completely different 8bit home computers, waste of time all people wanted was a C64 at a lower price, but they made a Commodore 16, a Plus/4 and an underwhelming and overpriced 128k Commodore 128 and 128D. Absolute madness and terrible business strategy. The consumer is easily confused and you dilute your customer base while massively reducing your available resource to sell any of your product lineup. Take a leaf out of Nintendo's/Sony's book...sell one machine and push it very hard on both aggressive pricing, market awareness and promotion to 3rd party developers....this is the golden rule for success in those times.

[etschuetz]

The consumer is easily confused and you dilute your customer base while massively reducing your available resource to sell any of your product lineup. Take a leaf out of Nintendo's/Sony's book...sell one machine and push it very hard on both aggressive pricing, market awareness and promotion to 3rd party developers....this is the golden rule for success in those times.

 

During the early days of the video game industry, many consumers didn't understand the construction of the hardware. And even worse, what was the difference between one 8-bit system to another 8-bit system. I remember growing up as a young child not understanding why they were so different, even though they were ALL 8-bit systems. I had no clue as to the fact that each system used different types of processors, each requiring their own programming language. On top of that, if the child is confused, what about the parents?

 

Atari really did put themselves in a rut with the whole 2600/7800/XEGS ordeal.

[kool kitty89]

During the early days of the video game industry, many consumers didn't understand the construction of the hardware. And even worse, what was the difference between one 8-bit system to another 8-bit system. I remember growing up as a young child not understanding why they were so different, even though they were ALL 8-bit systems. I had no clue as to the fact that each system used different types of processors, each requiring their own programming language. On top of that, if the child is confused, what about the parents?

 

Actually a good many share the same processors, the vast majority of 8-bit game systems use either a MOS 6502 (or derivative) or Zilog Z80 (or derivative), as well as a large portion of home computers, and after that the 68000 was very common in arcades and several home computers. (Though only one mainstreem console from the "16-bit era" used the 68000, the Sega Genesis -and Sega CD if you include that- the Jaguar featured one too, but that's an issue for a seperate topic)

 

The Atari 2600 had its 6507 at 1.19 MHz (a 6502 with address bus cut from 16 to 13-bits and no interrupts), the 5200, 7800, NES/Famicom all featured very similar 6502 derivatives at 1.79 MHz. (the NES's integrated sound hardware, and the 52/7800's 6502C added some onboard support hardware iirc) The PC Engine/TG-16 had a custom 65C02 with a 21-bit address bus that ran at a fast 7.16 MHz.

[kool kitty89]

Sorry, kind of lost the conclusion of my pervious statemet. The differences in consoles tend to be related to the overall hadware, particularly the video hardware, rather than the CPU.

[kool kitty89]

Regardless of the SPAM, this got me thinking about something else on the XEGS. There are refrences, like this: http://www.gameconsoles.com/atarixegshome.htm that put the XEGS at a $250 launch price, which seems pretty high for old hardware, even with the included accessories. (and certanly not be attractive compared to the NES)

I've also seen some stuff pointing to the XE computer (65 XE iirc) being ~$99 by 1987, which would make even less sense.

Including this 1987 video clip, which also mentions the XEGS (unnamed) nearing release.

[oky2000]

If Jack wasn't in such a great rush to start getting Atari back in the black things would also have been different I believe. He was not aware of the two 68000 based machines already in R&D and had let go off staff that knew how to do anything useful with the AMY chip for example.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but there wasn't so much R&D under Jack's ownership of Atari?

 

At the end of the day the XEGS was another fire fighting tactic to try and cut down the alarmingly high stock levels of A8 cartridges, and reactionary business strategies never work long term, they just keep the wolves from the door in the short term. Upshot is 2 failures = end of your company.

 

7800 should have been released by Atari Warner, and Jack should have got the Lynx out as soon as possible to give himself a clear 24 month lead over the crappy Gameboy (who at the time would only have had a limited reputation in the US/EURO marketplace.

 

Here's an interesting question, did the association of the actual name Atari with the video games crash actually hinder them? Clearly fear of the market post video games crash featured heavily in their reduced risk taking strategy...the ST was a solid bet really...a colour Mac specification machine in a gorgeous design for 1/3 of the price of the similar looking GUI Apple Mac 1.