The Tramiels

[kool kitty89]

Well, I can answer the second part (this is all my humble opinion). For me, Atari represents the original 2600, and the 400/800 computers. Maybe that's because they were what I grew up with. After the 800 came out though, the innovation died, full stop. Not a single upgrade was done to the A8 chipset from 1979 through 1986. The 2600jr and XEGS were both repackaged ancient (even at the time) technology. The 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar were not developed by Atari - they were all done by outside vendors (GCC, Epyx, and Flare 1 respectively). To me, that is no different than Hasbro slapping the Atari name on someone else's products. What happened to the innovation that Atari showed in the mid to late 70s?!?

There was still innovation, but you're looking at it all wrong.

There's a ton of stuff that got screwed over by Warner's mismanagement in general including the A8 line, it's a complex issue with a lot of factors from marketing to internal management among other things.

Some of the advanced technology division's advanced projects (not anything on an enhanced A8 AFIK) may have been promising for a mass market product, others may have been too far ahead of their time or simply not suitable for a mass market product. (maybe useful as the starting point for further evolution to a truly marketable design)

 

A lot of that halted (shelved but not forgotten) when Morgan came in to fix Atari Inc's problems and from what I understand there was a ton of potential for Morgan's reorganized Atari Inc if Warner had just stuck with it. (not only the eventual sale/liquidation in mid '84 -extremely sloppy execution on Warner's part too- but ongoing management conflicts with Morgan prior to that)

 

Trammel Technologies may have been a more conservative company, but it was still pretty innovative in many respects, and after being renamed Atari Corp they did bring one of the most affordable and advanced home computers to the market, though things got somewhat funky thereafter in terms of evolving that design and much worse when Sam took over. (in spite of that being close to the peak for Atari Corp's revenue -iirc 1988/89 was close to their peak for net sales/profitability)

That's another topic though.

 

I will say that some of the most disappointing times in Atari Inc and Corp's histories would be when Warner decided to throw James Morgan's hard work down the drain (not only liquidating the company but managing the transition in such a sloppy manner that Atari Corp didn't get much if any benefit of what Morgan had been pushing with Atari Inc's organization -ie it wasn't really any better than it might have been if Warner sold AInc's holdings before Morgan had a chance to start reorganization) also a damn shame Kassar wasn't forced out some 6 months to a year sooner and Warner actually took some notice of the problems when they could still be dealt with before catastrophe and got Morgan (or someone similar) to start turning things around by late '82 or early '83.

 

The other disappointing historical event on Atari Corp's side seems to be when Jack stepped down and Sam took over with far less capable management ability, not only that but Mike Katz also left (planned to take a break from the industry iirc but got back in early with Sega just after the Genesis launched -and led up Sega's first really successful marketing campaign in North America), so not only losing business sense and management skills, but also the marketing and entertainment management skills that Katz had brought to Atari Corp in the late 80s. (I'm sure the brand name had a lot to do with it, but I can't see Atari Corp selling the 7800 or 2600 Jr nearly as well without the capable management of the entertainment division by Katz -or the creation of it for that matter, as Katz had that division created as a condition of his joining the company) I can only imagine what might have happened to the ST line or the Lynx (or potential 7800 successors, or the Jag if they still had nothing in the interim) had Jack and Mike stayed. (then again who knows what would have happened to Sega without Katz heading things up in late '89 and through 1990 before Kalinske took over -I think he transitioned in during late 1990 and early 1991, taking a PR position before replacing Katz as president)

 

 

 

 

 

Not a single upgrade was done to the A8 chipset from 1979 through 1986.

 

That's not true. That's just on released products, and that in no way states it wasn't being worked on. From '82-'84 they were working on a multitude of products/replacements as we've already released.

Quite true and who knows what might have been if Warner had managed thing better in the early 80s, or even after the fact if they'd let Morgan complete reorganization, or maybe even if they'd just managed the sale to TTL reasonably rather than the total lack of warning or preparation on AInc's end, let alone additional effort to promote a smooth transition.

 

However, among the projects at Atari Inc, were there any specifically aimed at enhancing the A8 chipset? (not just cost reduction like CGIA, but actual enhanced video modes -or higher resolution versions of existing modes- added features to GTIA or ANTIC, faster CPU, etc) I know there was the 1090XL module and plans for various units with integrated FDD, 3.5" drives, and possible IBM compatibility, but that's not the same as building on the fundamental chipset. (doubling the CPU speed and having double resolution modes of all of GTIA's graphics modes -more so with a full 16 color registers- would have been huge, maybe dual POKEYs too)

Then again, that would only have mattered if they's actually managed to maintain popularity of the platform. (Morgan's unlucky timing with the freeze in fall of '83 hurt that a lot, let alone the mess with the transition to ACorp -and the mistakes made with the 8-bit line prior to '83)

 

 

The 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar were not developed by Atari - they were all done by outside vendors (GCC, Epyx, and Flare 1 respectively). To me, that is no different than Hasbro slapping the Atari name on someone else's products

 

That's far far different than Hasbro slapping an Atari name on something. A company seeking outside designed technology is in no way as superficial as a company who simply owns a brand name IP slapping a name on a product to connect it with the older brand holders. GCC developing the 7800 under contract (a contract forced by Warner) for Atari Inc. fell in line with the direction a large tech company moving more in the consumer direction goes - they look for outside technologies to leverage besides their own. Atari Inc. even had a division whose sole job was to look for new upcoming companies and tech to invest in or aquire for Atari. Microsoft does it, Google does it, Apple does it. The 2600Jr was actually an Atari Inc. designed product, and simply the latest in line of the 2600 designed as a cost reduced console for the final positioning of the 2600 as a lower end console to their higher end ones. As for the Lynx and Jaguar, that's Atari Corporation - a different company with vastly different resources and no consumer product engineering group outside of computers to speak of. And the Jaguar was based off the Flare 2 - and I say based, as the Jaguar was designed from the Flare 2 with Atari's input and direction (just as the process the Panther was going through). That's far different than buying someone elses system and just slapping your name on it like they did with the Portfolio.

Yeah and it's not like almost all other companies didn't outsource parts of their hardware and/or software projects too (or entire projects), though some took longer than others. Hudson made the PCE and NEC bought the chipset, SGI designed the N64 chipset, Sony outsourced a fair amount of the PSX's design and more of the PS2's iirc, much of the GC and Dreamcast were outsourced, etc. (not even getting into computer hardware or software stuff)

 

 

 

 

You can do all the R&D you want in a cave. If you don't release it, it didn't happen.

 

Oh hogwash, we have all the materials that document it happening and all the corresponding materials and such. Some were to the point of going in to production with Warner cockblocking it at the last minute and others simply never got out until the crash. You can't state "well they never did anything else and just released the same old thing" as if they sat on their asses and did nothing during all that and then state "well it doesn't count because we never saw the finished product on this" when shown they didn't just sit on their asses. Take the ostritch head out of the hole in the ground, otherwise it sounds childish.

Yeah, it would be interesting to actually be able to review some of the AT division and see how much was viable on the mass market or just tech pipe dreams. (or others that might have been practical if cut down to a more realistic configuration -like some of the 16-bit chipsets with a much more reasonable amount of RAM and maybe some features cut out, or others still that weren't marketable but could have been a stepping stone to something really big)

 

 

 

I guess you have no idea what I'm saying. All that engineering is of some little anecdotal interest to a few of us geeks some 30 years later. I guess it's no big deal that no one was ever able to buy any of it as long as you know there was a prototype out there somewhere. Yeah, that makes the C=128 and Apple IIgs seem much less important.

No, but it does show the missed opportunities that were ruined by bad decisions or unfortunate circumstances (or both). Then again there's plenty of stuff that was released that also got screwed by bad decisions too, or shouldn't have been released as such at all. (you could argue the C128 should have been more focused on building directly on the C64 architecture -in both software and hardware- rather than tacking stuff on, or the Apple IIgs if there hadn't been the conflict with the Mac -or if they'd bothered to make earlier more modest enhancements to the Apple II, or that given the situation with the Mac it would have been more productive to put the work spent on the Apple II on the Mac's sound/graphics/OS instead)

 

Let me also add: I understand why the Tramiels didn't invest much in the 8-bits since only a new product like the ST would have been competitive enough, but Warner had already fumbled the ball and was trying to jack the 8-bits up to Apple II prices when the C=64 snapped them back into reality.

I think investing in the A8 from 1985 onward would have been somewhat moot given the mistakes made prior to that that put it in a poor position to compete in the US (let alone Europe where it could have had a longer term niche if established earlier), as such it made more sense to push modest enhancements and cost reduction to try to sell what they could. The mess from Warner's liquidation sort of ruined the last chance for the A8 to really compete strongly on the mass market (ie on the order of millions of units per year), but they'd screwed up more prior to that.

 

 

A bigger mistake on ACorp's part was how they went forward with the ST line both in terms of evolution and marketing. (the latter was limited by funding early on of course)

 

 

 

 

yeah but there's no way that the 7800's '86 release was quincidental.

 

That's exactly what it was, timing. He had intended on using the inhereted assets from Atari Consumer to help with the company finances the entire time. The negotiations for the 7800 went through May of '85 and then the 10 launch game were through August. He approached Katz then for restarting the 7800 as mentioned, he was on board in late October and they were ready to re-announce the 7800 at the January '86 CES and start shipping out the '84 backtstock then, which they did. This was all just explained.

 

jack saw a resurgent console market and wanted in.

 

Nope. As stated he was negotiating for the 7800 rights from August '84 on, already approaching Katz in August '85 after the rights were completed. It had *nothing* to do with a "resurgent market" or Nintendo, that's a myth. An oft repeated myth, but a myth nonetheless.

 

Didn't the increase in 2600 sales in mid/late 1995 also help spur Atari Corp to push harder for a 7800 and 2600Jr release? (did the Jr actually hit the market in late '85?)

I mean that would make a hell of a lot more sense than Nintendo's dismal 1985 test market. (spring of '86 was another story, but that was after the 7800 was released -maybe not nation wide, but on the market in the US)

 

 

 

 

I'm more of a Tramiel admirer than hater; I'm glad he saved Atari long enough to put out several good machines. Obviously, Nintendo's exclusive licensing and retail agreements were hurtful to Nintendo's competitors.

 

But let's not forget that the Tramiels always were - for lack of a more euphemistically-pleasant term - cheap bastards. This is evident in many ways at Atari. It's obvious in the XE keyboards and creaky-cheap cases. It's obvious in the 130XE and XF551 motherboards. It's obvious in the ST sound chip and single-sided drives. It's obvious in the re-releasing of tons of OLD games for the XEGS (and 7800) rather than paying precious money to develop new titles. Tramiel's ways have always been on the cheap. Sometimes that works well (C64) and sometimes it doesn't. There's NO WAY IN HELL Tramiels were going to finance new original software to compete with Super Mario Brothers; it's not even relevant whether or not the 7800 was comparable. If the 7800 had twice the ability of the NES, they still wouldn't have paid for such software development. In the end, "Cheap didn't sell" (quote from an old critical article). It sold to me; I love the Atari stuff a whole bunch. Still it's a point.

Being cheap is hardly a bad thing, that's a big part of what drove the C64 (or Spectrum for that matter in Europe ) to great success, though marketing's a big part of that too.

"Power without the Price" is certainly not something to scoff, only a shame they didn't keep pushing for that in some areas they should have.

And you could possibly argue that they rushed the ST design a bit too much and omitted some things that should have added negligibly to cost and not delayed release inordinately either. (horizontal -maybe vertical- scroll register in the SHIFTER, scrap the YM2149 and one of the ACIAs for a VIA or CIA and add a rudimentary DMA audio circuit -would have made sense given not only the Amiga, but the Mac had DMA sound) Or that they could/should have had higher end and faster CPU models (including desktop models) from the start as well as a general purpose expansion port. (for the latter, they probably should have dropped the cart port in favor of an expansion slot with a larger pinout)

Hell, you could argue they also should have gone CHEAPER with the ST too and offered cut-down models featuring only a minimum of peripheral ports and maybe lopping off the keypad (keeping the cursor keys and such though) and using the expansion port to add the more specialized peripheral ports. (maybe remove MIDI, ACSI, and the RS232 ports from such baseline models and have an external expansion box to add them, maybe even the parallel port -things the casual buyers mostly interested in gaming wouldn't really miss or would be willing to add later if they ever needed to) Having composite and RF out from the start could have been important too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

if the issue was acquiring the full rights to the 7800, couldn't jack have just released a different console in 85 based on the computer platform?

Which platform? The 8-bit line already had the 5200 and the ST series was far too expensive to make a console with.

Yeah, the ST probably wouldn't have been a really feasible until '88 or '87 at the earliest, and definitely would have needed the blitter (or at least hardware scrolling) and some sort of sound upgrade. There's a ton they could/should have rearranged or cut-out for a console derivative, not just a rebranded computer like the XEGS, but a true game system using the ST architecture as a starting point to reduce cost. Historically, plans for an ST based game console wouldn't have culminated in a release until '89 at the earliest (there were earlier attempts to push for it, but iirc it took a while to gain momentum). As such it probably would have involved something like taking the STe chipset and stripping most of the computer specific chips out. (like the YM2149, ACIAs, TOS ROMs, 6301, maybe the HDD/floppy DMA, floppy controller, etc and using a modified memory map including a much larger chunk of address space reserved for ROM, much less RAM -perhaps 256 kB, maybe 512 kB if they wanted to allow ROM to be slow and cheap along with storing most graphics and sound compressed and able to be loaded into RAM -and thus greatly reducing game cart production costs) Crazyace suggested that a hack involving doubling the SHIFTER video logic (to allow 2 independent 16 color planes -especially since the STe supported genlock already) might have been a useful hack to make the STe much more competitive with the 4th gen consoles.

But there were other options too, and this is getting way off topic.

 

 

 

No money to get the 7800 launched in 1984, huh? I guess that answers my question that I posted in my last note. Its ironic that if they had gotten it out, the money earned (probaly) would have wiped out most of that debt!

 

Makes you wonder what Warner would have done with Atari if Tramiel hadn't wanted to buy it or they didn't want to sell to him. Would they have closed the entire company?

Warner did close the entire company, they liquidated Atari Inc and left a corporate shell for a while for legal purposes. Atari Corp and Atari Games Corp were new companies. (ACorp was actually more or less TTL with a new name and infusion of AInc consumer properties)

Warner laid off all Atari Inc staff and pretty much shut down the company and moved over most of the coin-op vision to the new AGames Corp while TTL bought the consumer holdings.

 

As above, not only would it have been great (by most indications) if Warner had let Morgan complete the reorg of AInc, but even if they did sell, they could have managed it a hell of a lot better than the mess they made in mid 1984.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, I'll check this out. Hey not to get too off topic, but would the tramiels never entered if atari distributed the NES/famicon?

 

I really don't think it would have been a factor, you could literally fill in the blank with 7800, NES, or any other 8-bit late gen console, and it would have been the same effect on the actual causes of Atari Inc.'s demise - nothing. Regardless, when they approached Atari and were in negotiations with them they had yet to even finish or release the Famicom in Japan. They were extremely small fish in the consumer electronics industry outside of Japan. A lot of people apply hindsite to what the NES became in '87 onwards vs. what it actually was before.

Not to mention, if AInc HAD stayed in negotiations with Nintendo (let alone entered a contract), the whole thing could have turned into a bigger/more conflicted mess during/after the split.

 

Hell, I wonder if the Tramiels ever considered pushing the 5200 (or something like the XEGS) instead of bothering with the 7800 dispute... the fact that the 5200 had already been discontinued officially (I think) and 7800 had been test marketed and publicized (as well as had a small stock of production units and parts for more), that probably would have pushed more for the 7800 to stay. (had the 7800 not yet entered production and the 5200 still been officially active, that might have changed things -especially with the cost reduced 5200 models and improved joysticks -buttons still needed work- let alone the potential of CGIA to further reduce cost -though that never went into production on A8s either, so maybe it never made production quality and ACorp couldn't complete it for whatever reason -they did complete the JAN ASIC for use in the later 2600 Jrs though)

Edited January 13, 2011 by kool kitty89

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

Every company misses release dates for titles at some point, I'm not sure what that has to do with the above. Doing a search, I see nothing in the press that states this as an ongoing problem or a reason for the 7800's eventual 3rd placement. I do however see the actual titles being released being mentioned as an issue when compared against the titles available on the other consoles.

 

Out of curiosity have you done a time line of when the actual titles were released? Month/Year? Keep in mind that Christmas is the time to have new titles on the shelf. Also, how much advertising dollars was the 7800 backed with? You can't sell something unless parents know it is there.

 

My opinion on the 7800 -

 

It was late to market and missed a golden opportunity as to when it should have been released.

It didn't have the hot titles.

Even of it did have the hot titles, Atari most likely wouldn't have got them out on time anyways.

There was never a REAL marketing push behind the machine.

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

You're saying you paid for the federal court documents that contain the actual signed contract with full terms and payment conditions that were honored with the initial payment? Or are you simply going by the exploratory non-disclosure agreement contract up on Curt's site with your "analysis". I would think the latter, because the material you originlly posted was nowhere from any of the actual documents (in fact again it's from the commonly regurgitated hearsay) while the material you're questioning was taken verbatim from the contracts, other legal documents, and the court testimony all contained in the Federal records we paid for.

 

 

Ugh! Now I actually have some interest in this as it appears to be an interesting story. I am going to pull up the documents.

[toptenmaterial]

We all know about Atari's rough transition from Warner to Jack in '84 or so, but when did Atari Corp die (1996?) and what happened? Also, in terms of "were the tramiels good or bad for atari" is there is distintion to be made between the jack and sam era? and did the jaguar kill atari corp?

[JohnBuell]

We all know about Atari's rough transition from Warner to Jack in '84 or so, but when did Atari Corp die (1996?) and what happened? Also, in terms of "were the tramiels good or bad for atari" is there is distintion to be made between the jack and sam era? and did the jaguar kill atari corp?

 

Everything BUT Jaguar was killed/stopped. Atari eventually did a "reverse merger" with JTS, which manufactured hard drives. There's a good summary at the end of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT_Storage

[kool kitty89]

Every company misses release dates for titles at some point, I'm not sure what that has to do with the above. Doing a search, I see nothing in the press that states this as an ongoing problem or a reason for the 7800's eventual 3rd placement. I do however see the actual titles being released being mentioned as an issue when compared against the titles available on the other consoles.

3rd placement? You mean on the late 80s north American video game market? 3rd behind the NES and 2600, but ahead of the Master System?

I haven't seen solid sales figures on the 2600 or SMS in that period, but I've gotten the impression that the 2600 sold significantly better than the 7800 in that period, and given the actual market share figures, Atari was substantially higher (often more than 2:1) than Sega on the US market, though that doesn't mean the 7800 was ahead of the SMS in hardware sales (software is another story and the SMS had a lot more games to sell). There's no solid sales figures for the SMS, but I'm positive the often cited 2 million US figure is wrong given the 7800 sales, presumed 2600 sales (ie at least as much as the 7800, probably significantly more), Atari vs Sega market share from '86 up to '89, and the fact that Master Systems seem to be a good bit more common in the US than 7800s. (the latter is purely anecdotal)

 

So we really don't know whether the 7800 was ahead or behind the Master System in hardware sales, at least not from any the resources I've been able to find, but it certainly could have been the case. (and it does seem fairly likely given other indicators that the SMS sold at least 4 million in the US market)

 

 

 

 

 

My opinion on the 7800 -

 

It was late to market and missed a golden opportunity as to when it should have been released.

It didn't have the hot titles.

Even of it did have the hot titles, Atari most likely wouldn't have got them out on time anyways.

There was never a REAL marketing push behind the machine.

And who's fault was that?

Warner for f*cking things up by not only cutting and running, but doing so in such a rash and disorganized manner that it make for a horrible mess... Even if they HAD still made the split, if they'd been prudent about notifying Atari Inc management weeks (or months) in advance of any final contract and actually put an effort into managing a reasonably stable transition, things might not have been too bad compared to sticking with Morgan's very promising revamp of Atari Inc itself.

 

Of course, things like the Amiga deal getting screwed over didn't help either (and the very fact that Atari Inc accepted the "refund" is an indication that things were still rather disorganized at AInc, even if Morgan was making some good strides in correcting that -they never, ever should have accepted that money, especially as it didn't mesh with the original contract as an option). In any case, had AInc stayed, they'd almost certainly have sued Amiga/CBM and possible won even more favorably than Atari Corp had... plus they had in-house alternatives to the Micky (Lorraine based console) plans too with the various advenced techology division stuff. (wgungfu mentioned that the rainbow chipset may have been considered for a console)

Though it's pretty clear they wouldn't have had that ready by Christmas as planned. (plans were to have the 7800 and Micky console out by fall/winter of 1984, with the 2600 Jr as the budget system, 7800 as the new high-end but affordable system, and the Micky system -whatever it would be named- as the really high-end unit with plans to add limited computer functionality in 1985 -keyboard and up to 128k RAM- and full unlimited computer expansion in 1986 per the Amiga contract)

 

Given how Amiga cheated them out of the chipset like that, it probably would have been better if they'd never funded them at all and pushed ahead with in-house projects instead. (obviously focusing on the chipset(s) that were the most feasible on the consumer market in terms of cost and functionality)

 

 

For that matter, from Atari Corp's perspective, you could argue that they could have been better off dropping the 7800 entirely and pushing the 5200 more (especially with the cost reduced versions and improved controllers), though complications like AInc already shifting away from the 5200 and 7800 publicity and production already started were mitigating factors for that.

 

The delay of the 7800's release was almost 100% due to Warner's crappy management of the sale/split/liquidation of Atari Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all know about Atari's rough transition from Warner to Jack in '84 or so, but when did Atari Corp die (1996?) and what happened? Also, in terms of "were the tramiels good or bad for atari" is there is distintion to be made between the jack and sam era? and did the jaguar kill atari corp?

It wasn't so much a transition from Warner to jack as it was a transition of part to Jack (the consumer properties owned solely by Atari Inc), laying off of all staff (with TTL/Atari Corp and Atari Games to hire some of them), and a big chunk of other stuff left in limbo as it was owned by Warner or Warner+Atari Inc and thus not automatically part of the consumer properties Tramiel acquired. (even if some things were assumed to be so, like the 7800)

 

But as to the decline of Atari Corp, from what I understand, after the peak of the 7800 and ST towards the end of the 80s (7800 peaked in '87/88, not sure about the ST -differed in US and Europe too I think), there were a number of factors dragging things down.

To some extent the ST line was hindered by marketing (inherently limited by funding early on, less so by '88) but also by somewhat funky evolution of the line and some hickups in initial design features that probably could have been added with minimal cost/engineering time (one of the most critical being horizontal scrolling on the SHIFTER -vertical smooth scrolling would be nice too, but that's not as important for many games and easier to do in software anyway, then there's the fact the MEGA line wasn't out until '87 when they should have had desktops from the start, no faster CPU models, etc), but regardless of that things were managed fairly well (and the above arguments are fairly subjective anyway) up to 1989 when several critical things happened:

 

1. Jack formally retired and Sam completed transitioning in as president of the company. (he seems to have been far less capable than his father at running the company, wgungfu has stated something to this effect before)

 

2. Michael Katz (head of the entertainment division responsible for pushing the 7800 and Jr as well as they did with such limited funds) left Atari at the end of '88 or early '89 (not sure) to take a break from the industry, so they lost another critical part of Atari Corp with him, and just before the Lynx was coming to market too. (he ended up cutting his vacation short to join Sega just after the launch of the Genesis and ended up laying the foundation of its critical success with their directly competitive "genesis does" ad campaign and work to push celebrity marketing tie-ins as well as pushing for broader development support in the west -and deftly handling EA's threat to go unlicensed with their reverse engineered dev tools by offering an exclusively favorable licensing agreement and moving their contract for Joe Montana football over from the problematic Mediagenic -who was supposed to have the game out for christmas '89 but had still not started when they later checked in 1990- and thus building a strong foundation with EA in the face of the indignation SoJ expressed at EA's attempt at unlicensed releases) Katz later left Sega due to some internal conflicts with Japanese management and was replaced by Tom Kaliske.

(also interesting to note that among the later Entertainment division managers at Atari Corp was Bernie Stolar -there in 1992 iirc though only for a few months- who later went on to Sony and managed the Playstation's launch before leaving -due to some conflicts iirc- and joining Sega in 1996 -became president towards the end of '96 or early '97- though is often claimed to have made some very unfortunate decisions regarding the Saturn -though not so much for setting up the launch of the Dreamcast)

 

 

So anyway, under Sam, Atari Corp seems to have entered a downward spiral which progressed to the point of being the multi-product, multi-division company of the late 80s down to a one shot company with the Jaguar alone in 1993 (not sure if the Lynx had been discontinued at the end of '93 or not) and then liquidation of the company in 1996. Though they did get a bit lucky at then end with the Jaguar hype paying off enough to allow the completion of some substantial lawsuits that won Atari Corp a good chunk of money and assets (namely the Sega suit), though the Jag itself never ended up outstripping net R&D and distribution/marketing costs as well as Atari Corp themselves seeming to be less than adept at making the most of the funds that they did have. (apparently there were chronic shortages of Jags in parts of Europe where Atari had a stronger brand name, not sure of the overall extent though, but that seems pretty significant -the UK could have been among their strongest niches if they played it right)

 

I think it got to the point that when Atari cut off the computer division in '92/93 and pushed for pretty much the Jaguar alone (I think), they also cut out the separate entertainment division and Sam himself became the head of that as well, I think. (I haven't seen any reference to a president of the entertainment division after Stolar left in '92)

Atari Corp was in pretty bad shape by early '93, in debt, without any strong marketable product, and with the sole saving grace being how well the Jag hype worked and the winnings of litigation that facilitated. (after which they started eating into those winnings by '95 -even in '94 I'm not sure the Jag broke even, but that was the most successful year) And as such, after Sam's heart attack in '1995, jack stepped back in and put things in order for liquidation (reverse merger with JTS) and left things on a positive note for the Tramiels, financially.

 

You could argue about making some different hardware configuration changes to the Jag to make it more marketable (due to facilitating faster and cleaner development), or that the Tramiels could have dug into private savings to boost Atari Corp funds and make for a stronger launch of the system, but given the problems they faced and Sam's management (even assuming the cash would have perked up management a bit), I can't say that would have been a very sound move.

 

It really makes you wonder what Jack might have done differently had he stayed. (let alone if they had someone as strong as Katz managing entertainment -or maybe even roping Katz back in after he left Sega, though I'm not sure if he even stayed in the industry after that and I'm not sure he would have wanted to)

But Jack and Katz definitely seemed to be the best of Atari Corp management (in their respective positions) through the company's 7/8 year life span.

 

 

 

 

 

There's also the incident of Atari Corp being offered the mega Drive back in 1988, something Katz heavily favored but Jack and Dave Rosen couldn't come to an agreement on (namely that Jack wanted control over European distribution too -which made some sense given Atari Corp's strong EU presence- and Rosen was only offering US -or North American- distribution). Also bear in mind that the MD was not a clear winner, like the Famicom in 1983 it had yet to be tested and even by '89 in Japan it was fairly unimpressive in terms of sales (it ended up in a distant 3rd that generation, but not terribly bad given how fierce NEC and Nintendo were), and not only that but also remember that Atari Corp had a much stronger market share than Sega of America as well as plans for their own 16-bit consoles. (ST derivatives, then the Panther -not sure if the Lynx hardware was ever considered for adaptation to a home console-, then ended up scrapping Panther for the Jaguar some 3 years off from when the panther was canceled in 1990, so that ended up being moot, but that was hardly clear in 1988 and those later decisions on the ST console and Panther were made after Jack and Katz were gone anyway)

Edited January 14, 2011 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

Oh, and here's the quote from Marty/wgungfu I was thinking of

on Sam's impact:

 

And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore.

 

Truthfully, Leonard didn't have much to do with the daily operations, he was more involved with the products themselves. And I'm not sure that Sam would have been able to change things if he didn't have the heart attack. Every since he had taken over, the company itself was on a downward spiral. When Jack turned the company over to him, he had mananged to bring the company out of the red and in to the black - shedding all the debt they took on from Warner in the purchase. That was his dream after all, to be able to hand something solid over to his sons and retire. Sam managed to take it from a multi-division multi-product company to a single product company by the time Jack came back in. If they would have fought to the last $$$, there would have been nothing left of a legacy for his kids, hence the reverse merger to get out while they still could. Truthfully, I would rather have had Jack not retire back in the late 80's and have him stick around for the oncoming Wintel onslaught to see how he would have dealt with that. I can't picture just turning tail and closing down the computer division like that.

 

 

And also please don't take my above rambling as complete fact, it's just more of a compiled impression of what I've gleaned from the subject (and some of by own commentary). I may have gotten some of the points off a little compared to what Curt and Marty know.

 

 

 

Oh, and another interestign crossover of Atari And Sega:

I think Joe Miller (and engineer at Atari Inc involved with their DOS compatible A8 derived project -the 1650XLD- among others) moved on to become Sega of America's chief engineer (at STI) unless that's a different Joe Miller. (I'm sure Curt or Marty would know)

Edited January 14, 2011 by kool kitty89

[SpaceDice2010]

What Atari should have done is never sold out to Jack. Seriously. A turn around was happening at Atari. Someone can find excuse after excuse as to why Atari failed. The 7800 was delayed because of this and that. It didn't have the hot games because of this and that. Then we move to the Jaguar. What was the reason that failed? Once again it was the fact that hot games didn't hit the market. Who was to blame for that? Atari.

[kool kitty89]

What Atari should have done is never sold out to Jack. Seriously. A turn around was happening at Atari. Someone can find excuse after excuse as to why Atari failed. The 7800 was delayed because of this and that. It didn't have the hot games because of this and that. Then we move to the Jaguar. What was the reason that failed? Once again it was the fact that hot games didn't hit the market. Who was to blame for that? Atari.

Atari didn't sell, Warner did, they panicked and jumped the gun when Morgan was making good strides at turning things around.

 

However, as I said above, they didn't sell the company, they liquidated its assets and sold off parts of those (the consumer properties) to TTL (which then became Atari Corp) while laying off 100% of Atari staff. (Warner then hired much of the arcade staff to the new Atari Games Corp and Tramiel began interviews on hiring for Atari Corp -in addition to retaining the existing TTL staff)

 

The really bad part isn't even the sale or liquidation, but the absolutely horribly way Warner handled it... and the timing on top of all that. Warner made no notification of a possible sale to any Atari Inc staff (even Morgan) until literally minutes before the final documents were being signed and they brought Morgan in to finalize everything. On top of that the deal went through over 4th of July vacation, so you had staff coming back from a long weekend with no idea what the hell was going on and not understanding that the company they'd worked for effectively no longer existed and that Warner had laid off everyone.

 

With a reasonably prudent, organized, and proactive transitional plan, Warner probably could have avoided the mess that resulted in mid 1984 (and lingers for months). Sure, some things would still have been changed or lost due to the split, but it could have been far less harmful than it was. (if they really wanted to maintain reasonable stability, they probably should have not only notified upper management of a possible sale weeks/months in advance, but set up a more gradual transition to Atari Corp, depending on what Tramiel would agree to -ideally it seems like it would have been very good for Morgan to stay on in management, perhaps under Tramiel, at least until things got smoothed out)

[Retro Rogue]

However, as I said above, they didn't sell the company, they liquidated its assets and sold off parts of those (the consumer properties) to TTL (which then became Atari Corp)

 

Consumer Division. That included the IP, manufacturing, distribution, and Consumer related buildings.

 

 

while laying off 100% of Atari staff. (Warner then hired much of the arcade staff to the new Atari Games Corp and Tramiel began interviews on hiring for Atari Corp -in addition to retaining the existing TTL staff)

 

No, AFAIK the Coin people were never touched. They simply took everyone involved in the Coin portion of Atari Inc. and spun them off as Atari Games Corp.

 

The really bad part isn't even the sale or liquidation, but the absolutely horribly way Warner handled it... and the timing on top of all that. Warner made no notification of a possible sale to any Atari Inc staff (even Morgan) until literally minutes before the final documents were being signed and they brought Morgan in to finalize everything. On top of that the deal went through over 4th of July vacation, so you had staff coming back from a long weekend with no idea what the hell was going on and not understanding that the company they'd worked for effectively no longer existed and that Warner had laid off everyone.

 

Yes, not to mention putting the have a job/don't have a job on Jack's head because it was either you're going to the new Atari Corporation or you're looking for employment elsewhere. Which when I talked to Leonard he stated how they all felt horrible about it going in. Knowing they were going to have to do that with a bulk of the Atari Inc. people.

 

And most of the people didn't have a clue after that July 4th weekend that they were laid off because of how Warner handled it - no announcement to the employees, no nothing. They thought they were returning to work at Atari Inc. busines as usual with no idea the buildings, assets, etc. now belonged to TTL. Warner just let everything sit there and put it in Jack's lap for a transition, simply handing over the keys. Literally everything - employees, buildings, ongoing contracts, etc., etc. Which is why Jack and company had to spend the entire rest of the month of July going over what they all inherited, and who they were going to hire over. (Jack and company literally had people helping tally everthing down to the last refrigerator). People came in after that weekend only to find complete anarchy and people being called in to interviews. And now as far as they knew, Jack had taken over Atari Inc. and was now their boss because of the way Warner handled it. The first few days until Jack started locking down all the consumer buildings (including warehouses) were madness, people were driving up and loading up U-Hauls and vans full of stuff. Likewise a number of people started wiping out their directories on the mainframe.

 

 

With a reasonably prudent, organized, and proactive transitional plan, Warner probably could have avoided the mess that resulted in mid 1984 (and lingers for months). Sure, some things would still have been changed or lost due to the split, but it could have been far less harmful than it was. (if they really wanted to maintain reasonable stability, they probably should have not only notified upper management of a possible sale weeks/months in advance, but set up a more gradual transition to Atari Corp, depending on what Tramiel would agree to -ideally it seems like it would have been very good for Morgan to stay on in management, perhaps under Tramiel, at least until things got smoothed out)

 

Ideally there should have been some form of normal transition - where all assets are mapped out, employees are explained the situation so they have time to start looking for jobs elsewhere, and a clear explination of how the Inc. assets are being split. As it was because of how Warner did it, Atari Corp and Atari Games were in litigation for years after arguing who owned what patents and such.

[high voltage]

Just reading Byte issue Feb 84 (from Thumbnugget here on AA):

Macintosh was done on the cheap, so everyone's done it way back (cheap that is).

Edited January 15, 2011 by high voltage

[toptenmaterial]

Just reading Byte issue Feb 84 (from Thumbnugget here on AA):

Macintosh was done on the cheap, so everyone's done it way back (cheap that is).

that's not always a bad thing. nintendo has always made use of cheap hardware. look at the original 1989 game boy, there was a glut in monochrome screens for calculators on the market, so there you go. the lynx on the other hand had a high resolution color screen (i played one about four years ago and still though it looked great) but was eclipsed by the game boy, as was the game gear and whatever else was out there. the famicom was originally planned to be a 16-bit console (according to Shepp's "Game Over", I could be wrong) but the 8-bit processor was chosen because it was much cheaper and readily available. today, the wii is not quite as powerful as it's contemporaries the 360 and ps3 (not to mention gaming pc's) but it still leads the market. you can infer what you want. sorry to get off topic, but i've been reading alot about tramiel cheapness so i thought this might add some perspective.

[SpaceDice2010]

Just reading Byte issue Feb 84 (from Thumbnugget here on AA):

Macintosh was done on the cheap, so everyone's done it way back (cheap that is).

 

Not sure what you mean "by done on the cheap", but the Macintosh was originally planned (not by Steve jobs) to be an under $500 computer. Apple at the time was developing the Lisa as a more expensive computer for the business market. It was only after Jobs got kicked out of the Lisa project that he took an interest in the Mac and helped shape it into what it became. I use the term "helped" with hesitation.

 

The final Mac was going to retail for $2000 but ended up at $2500 as Apple wanted to spend mega cash on an advertising blitz. So the extra $500 was used on advertising. Makes you wonder what it would have been like if Atari actually budgeted in a decent advertising budget in the price of their machines. Does anyone know what GPM Atari was aiming for?

[kool kitty89]

Yes, not to mention putting the have a job/don't have a job on Jack's head because it was either you're going to the new Atari Corporation or you're looking for employment elsewhere. Which when I talked to Leonard he stated how they all felt horrible about it going in. Knowing they were going to have to do that with a bulk of the Atari Inc. people.

Morgan himself was still leaning the company down out of necessity as well, right? So he'd have probably needed to end up pushing layoffs to some extent as well as reorganization continued through the latter 1/2 of 1984? (I assume some staff had already been laid off prior to that, and in any case it wouldn't have been a mess like after the Warner split -and priorities would have been somewhat different as games were the main plain and computers were still active too but other than the 8-bits the rest were still under review in terms of actually deciding to re-activate projects for new designs -and of course the MICKY plans, after the Amiga contract fell through they might have considered bringing back one of the in-house chipsets more strongly -you mentioned rainbow before off the cuff, so I'd assume if you were remembering right, that that chipset would probably have been among the lowest cost and most applicable for a consumer level computer or as a high-end game console if further cut-down -or a not so high-end console later on)

 

 

 

 

 

Ideally there should have been some form of normal transition - where all assets are mapped out, employees are explained the situation so they have time to start looking for jobs elsewhere, and a clear explination of how the Inc. assets are being split. As it was because of how Warner did it, Atari Corp and Atari Games were in litigation for years after arguing who owned what patents and such.

Not to mention other litigation brought against Atari Inc/Warner from AInc employees over the debacle (including over NATCO).

 

The AGames vs Corp thing was a real shame though, ruined the potential for a favorable working relationship between the two companies (for common good PR if nothign else given they shared a name -more or less as far as the general public was concerned), favorable licensing of Atari Games games on Atari Corp computers/consoles, favorable licensing fees (or maybe even free publishing) of Tengen onto Atair Corp consoles, perhaps favorable licensing/royalties for AGames/Tengen to publish AInc arcade games that ACorp owned the IP to (assuming the original contracts wasn't shifted to move some IP to AGames), among other possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

that's not always a bad thing. nintendo has always made use of cheap hardware. look at the original 1989 game boy, there was a glut in monochrome screens for calculators on the market, so there you go. the lynx on the other hand had a high resolution color screen (i played one about four years ago and still though it looked great) but was eclipsed by the game boy, as was the game gear and whatever else was out there. the famicom was originally planned to be a 16-bit console (according to Shepp's "Game Over", I could be wrong) but the 8-bit processor was chosen because it was much cheaper and readily available. today, the wii is not quite as powerful as it's contemporaries the 360 and ps3 (not to mention gaming pc's) but it still leads the market. you can infer what you want. sorry to get off topic, but i've been reading alot about tramiel cheapness so i thought this might add some perspective.

Not so much, Nintendo often focused on cost-effective and marketable designs, but not to the extreme, more towards a sane/practical extent. The NES was pretty powerful and costly in some respects, one of the most obvious being the dual bus design meaning every cart has at least 2 ROM chips inside and 2 separate 8-bit buses (also more pins on the cart slot) for separate audio/video. That did also allow some very good flexibility without excessive cost and allowed a rather small amount of onboard RAM. (video RAM was limited to use for sprite tables and tilemaps with all data pulled straight from ROM, opposed to the CV/SG-1000?Master system and later consoles which used dedicated video RAM or others like the A8/7800 with shared buses for everything -usually meaning performance trade-offs from bus contention in favor of added flexibility and low cost)

 

The Wii isn't moderately less powerful, it's substantially less powerful, it's jsut an overclocked GC with a new controller, full sized DVD drive, and some added work RAM (mainly for the added OS iirc). It's more or less a last-gen system and weaker in many respects than the Xbox.

However, Nintendo relied on a new gimmick instead and pushed into a market sector that had been getting increasingly neglected from the previous couple generations in spite of the massive expansion in the game market as a whole, and they did it with cheap hardware sold at profits not seen on consoles for several generations... they got away with it too, more than that they managed to hit the #1 place on the market after 2 consecutive generations of 2nd/3rd place status.

 

 

As for the GB, it wasn't just cost or bulk, it was sheer practicality of the critical battery life being several times longer than the competition, the compact size and cost (let alone massive market share on the console market) added to that. Then the fact that both the Lynx and GG dropped out of the market (GG went low profile under Majesco in the late 90s) without ever getting the revisions they should have in the mid 90s with more consolidated tech and color screens reaching the necessary quality to be usable without backlighting. (probably have higher-end lit and lower-end/long battery life/more compact unlit models) Especially since it wasn't until 1998 GBC that Nintendo even had color and not until the GBA they they really beat the GG or Lynx in overall graphics. (and sound over the lynx) Hell, they might have even managed decent color screens more towards the early 90s, but they'd be pretty low contrast (weaker than monochome), probably closer to 6-bit RGB if that. (so the large palettes would have been wasted on such units... though even the backlit models weren't pushing full 12-bit RGB -not a bad feature for later, higher quality units though, at least if either the GG or Lynx had persisted into the late 90s as such)

 

Not sure what the calculator thing was either... I don't think there was a glut of reasonably high-quality (in terms of refresh rate and contrast ratio) monochrome 160x144 pixel screens from calculators given how expensive graphing calculators were and how they screens were/are about 1/2 that resolution (usually 96x64 pixels for modern TI units).

They definitely made a good move on making a practical product that also wasn't TOO cheap... much lower on the refresh rate or contrast ratio and the GB would have been unplayable. (as it is it was boarderline for some)

Edited January 15, 2011 by kool kitty89

[DracIsBack]

What Atari should have done is never sold out to Jack. Seriously. A turn around was happening at Atari. Someone can find excuse after excuse as to why Atari failed. The 7800 was delayed because of this and that. It didn't have the hot games because of this and that. Then we move to the Jaguar. What was the reason that failed? Once again it was the fact that hot games didn't hit the market. Who was to blame for that? Atari.

 

It's easy to be an armchair CEO when one isn't living/working under the same conditions and has the benefit of complete hindsight ...

[SpaceDice2010]

What Atari should have done is never sold out to Jack. Seriously. A turn around was happening at Atari. Someone can find excuse after excuse as to why Atari failed. The 7800 was delayed because of this and that. It didn't have the hot games because of this and that. Then we move to the Jaguar. What was the reason that failed? Once again it was the fact that hot games didn't hit the market. Who was to blame for that? Atari.

 

It's easy to be an armchair CEO when one isn't living/working under the same conditions and has the benefit of complete hindsight ...

 

That is true. But as an actual CEO of my own company I can say that I would never do what Warner did. Warner had way more resources than Tramiel did. If they thought for a second that Tramiel could turn Atari around they should have looked inside themselves and see what was preventing them from doing the same. Warner selling Atari was a haste decision imho. The fact that the president of Atari was not even aware of it breaks about every business rule I have ever learned. Sure, Warner was a publicly traded company and they had to look out for the share holders. Look at Apple. It was Amelio that basically said no to a deal with Sun when Apple was in trouble. Sure, he wanted the job of CEO. But he also felt that there was nothing that Apple couldn't do that they couldn't do if Sun bought them out. He was right. Even though Apple lost a ton of money under Amelio he still set the foundation for a strong company.

 

As far as my other two points. It's not rocket science that if you don't have product (games) on the shelf during holiday time you are in trouble. As I said, who cares if they didn't get the hot titles. Do a timeline month/year of the games that they were able to release. And the Jag was such a bitch to develop for. They knew that...

[kool kitty89]

That is true. But as an actual CEO of my own company I can say that I would never do what Warner did. Warner had way more resources than Tramiel did. If they thought for a second that Tramiel could turn Atari around they should have looked inside themselves and see what was preventing them from doing the same. Warner selling Atari was a haste decision imho. The fact that the president of Atari was not even aware of it breaks about every business rule I have ever learned. Sure, Warner was a publicly traded company and they had to look out for the share holders. Look at Apple. It was Amelio that basically said no to a deal with Sun when Apple was in trouble. Sure, he wanted the job of CEO. But he also felt that there was nothing that Apple couldn't do that they couldn't do if Sun bought them out. He was right. Even though Apple lost a ton of money under Amelio he still set the foundation for a strong company.

 

As far as my other two points. It's not rocket science that if you don't have product (games) on the shelf during holiday time you are in trouble. As I said, who cares if they didn't get the hot titles. Do a timeline month/year of the games that they were able to release. And the Jag was such a bitch to develop for. They knew that...

 

It wasn't so much Tramiel, but Warner in general over the handling of things... with a proper transition on Warner's end, even the 1984 launch of the 7800 might have gone through.

 

And as for having resources, yes more than Tramiel, but also remember that by that point, Atari had become the majority of Warner's revenue, so the crash and the massive debt was all the more extreme. (wouldn't have been the same as Morgan's plans, but not the mess that it turned out as either)

 

However, it was more about keeping a level head and either recognizing the progress Morgan was making and/or recognizing that they needed to handle a sale in an organized manner... especially since they'd still be holding a sizable stake in the new company. (both in stock and loans)

 

 

OTOH it was hardly the first time Warner had made bad decisions on the Atari front, let alone the first time the dual management and bureaucracy had screwed things up as such. (Morgan was trying had to cut through that, but Warner wasn't doing the best job facilitate that ...)

Edited January 15, 2011 by kool kitty89

[SpaceDice2010]

I think we are pretty much on the same page. If Atari was the majority of Warner's revenue it makes no sense to do what Warner did with Atari. Just no sense at all.

[Retro Rogue]

Morgan himself was still leaning the company down out of necessity as well, right?

 

Yes, there were mass layoffs at the beginning of June as part of Morgan's announced plans:

http://www.nytimes.c...ome-office.html

 

 

That is true. But as an actual CEO of my own company I can say that I would never do what Warner did.

 

Are you the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company? Are you answering to shareholders about over 50% profit loss, and 400 million in losses alone just that 2nd quarter of '84? Losses coming from your former chief source of profit, that had been on a downward spiral since December of '82? And did you just get done staving off a hostile takeover, to which you had to pay out big time to avoid?

 

I don't disagree with their decision to do something with Atari, I disagree with how it wound up being handled during the end of the process. The decision to sell wasn't done hurridly, they actually hired a firm to evaluate their (Warner's) situation in that January and they're the ones that recommended selling Atari and several other subsidiaries. Warner had been on an acquisition spree through the 70's and it was catching up with them. Per the firm's recommendation it had begun looking for possible buyers. I can't say that Morgan didn't know about it, because he didn't live in a bubble - the press knew Warner was in talks with Philips and others. That was however for the entire company, which conceivably would still allow Morgan to proceed as planned. What he was not aware of was the actual splitting of the company and the immediate sale of Consumer to Jack. He stated he had no idea of that until he walked in to the boardroom to sign the papers. Even Jack had been caught off guard for the whole thing. They had been in talks in May that fell through and then he gets a call the very end of June (days before they started the weekend long negotiations) asking if he's still interested.

 

Warner had way more resources than Tramiel did. If they thought for a second that Tramiel could turn Atari around they should have looked inside themselves and see what was preventing them from doing the same.

 

He didn't turn Atari around, Atari Inc. collapsed and was liquidated. He took the Consumer Division and folded it in to his company Tramel Technologies Ltd. (TTL) to form Atari Corporation. As part of the no money down deal he also took on Atari Inc.'s debt (which was chiefly from it's consumer operations), so Warner could get it off the books. Likewise as part of the deal, Warner took stock in the new company (not majority), just in case he managed to make things work with Atari Corporation. It was a win-win for them.

 

Warner selling Atari was a haste decision imho.

 

They didn't sell Atari. They sold a division because they couldn't get anyone to buy the entire thing on their terms. What they wound up doing was paring Atari Inc. down to the original Coin-Op format it was when they first entered talks to buying it, and then spun that off with Namco as Atari Games. The corporate entity Atari Inc. itself existed for about two years after for legal purposes (lawsuits, collection attempts, etc.)

 

The fact that the president of Atari was not even aware of it breaks about every business rule I have ever learned.

 

I certainly agree there, but it's unethical but not illegal. It wouldn't be the first or last time a parent company does things without consulting the CEO of a subsidiary.

 

Sure, Warner was a publicly traded company and they had to look out for the share holders. Look at Apple. It was Amelio that basically said no to a deal with Sun when Apple was in trouble. Sure, he wanted the job of CEO. But he also felt that there was nothing that Apple couldn't do that they couldn't do if Sun bought them out. He was right. Even though Apple lost a ton of money under Amelio he still set the foundation for a strong company.

 

You've got to be kidding. Amelio's reign was one of the worst in the history of the company and a point to it's complete lack of foundation. In fact the first thing Jobs had to do was completely reorganize Amelio's "foundation". And instead of an outside takeover, Amelio unknowingly set up for an inside one with the purchase of NeXT - and his own forced departure. That's pure boneheadness. Nothing done under Amelio's reign had impact on the future of Apple other than the purchase of NeXT which allowed his replacement to come in. He simply wanted access to a next generation OS, and instead got a next generation Apple via his replacement.

 

As far as my other two points. It's not rocket science that if you don't have product (games) on the shelf during holiday time you are in trouble.

 

Which they did. The only time I'm aware of shortage issues with the 7800 was during the initial stages of the relaunching (January '86 through that Summer) when they were relying primarily on '84 backstock until manufacturing operations started up again. During that time stores were selling out of all 7800 stock. It was completely resolved by September and the big Christmas season showdown.

 

As I said, who cares if they didn't get the hot titles.

 

Which is why you're probably not CEO of a video game console company.

Edited January 15, 2011 by wgungfu

[SpaceDice2010]

Has anyone ever done a time line month/year of when A7800 games were released?

 

As I said, you can have the hottest titles in the world, but if you don't get them out in time for the holidays it doesn't matter. As I said, who cares if they didn't get the hot titles, they most likely would have missed release dates even if they did.

 

As an example look at the promised titles for 1987 (a critical year) and what was actually released before Christmas.

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

Which they did. The only time I'm aware of shortage issues with the 7800 was during the initial stages of the relaunching (January '86 through that Summer) when they were relying primarily on '84 backstock until manufacturing operations started up again. During that time stores were selling out of all 7800 stock. It was completely resolved by September and the big Christmas season showdown.

 

 

 

What new titles were on the store shelves for Christmas of 1987?

[atarian63]

However, as I said above, they didn't sell the company, they liquidated its assets and sold off parts of those (the consumer properties) to TTL (which then became Atari Corp)

 

Consumer Division. That included the IP, manufacturing, distribution, and Consumer related buildings.

 

 

while laying off 100% of Atari staff. (Warner then hired much of the arcade staff to the new Atari Games Corp and Tramiel began interviews on hiring for Atari Corp -in addition to retaining the existing TTL staff)

 

No, AFAIK the Coin people were never touched. They simply took everyone involved in the Coin portion of Atari Inc. and spun them off as Atari Games Corp.

 

The really bad part isn't even the sale or liquidation, but the absolutely horribly way Warner handled it... and the timing on top of all that. Warner made no notification of a possible sale to any Atari Inc staff (even Morgan) until literally minutes before the final documents were being signed and they brought Morgan in to finalize everything. On top of that the deal went through over 4th of July vacation, so you had staff coming back from a long weekend with no idea what the hell was going on and not understanding that the company they'd worked for effectively no longer existed and that Warner had laid off everyone.

 

Yes, not to mention putting the have a job/don't have a job on Jack's head because it was either you're going to the new Atari Corporation or you're looking for employment elsewhere. Which when I talked to Leonard he stated how they all felt horrible about it going in. Knowing they were going to have to do that with a bulk of the Atari Inc. people.

 

And most of the people didn't have a clue after that July 4th weekend that they were laid off because of how Warner handled it - no announcement to the employees, no nothing. They thought they were returning to work at Atari Inc. busines as usual with no idea the buildings, assets, etc. now belonged to TTL. Warner just let everything sit there and put it in Jack's lap for a transition, simply handing over the keys. Literally everything - employees, buildings, ongoing contracts, etc., etc. Which is why Jack and company had to spend the entire rest of the month of July going over what they all inherited, and who they were going to hire over. (Jack and company literally had people helping tally everthing down to the last refrigerator). People came in after that weekend only to find complete anarchy and people being called in to interviews. And now as far as they knew, Jack had taken over Atari Inc. and was now their boss because of the way Warner handled it. The first few days until Jack started locking down all the consumer buildings (including warehouses) were madness, people were driving up and loading up U-Hauls and vans full of stuff. Likewise a number of people started wiping out their directories on the mainframe.

 

 

With a reasonably prudent, organized, and proactive transitional plan, Warner probably could have avoided the mess that resulted in mid 1984 (and lingers for months). Sure, some things would still have been changed or lost due to the split, but it could have been far less harmful than it was. (if they really wanted to maintain reasonable stability, they probably should have not only notified upper management of a possible sale weeks/months in advance, but set up a more gradual transition to Atari Corp, depending on what Tramiel would agree to -ideally it seems like it would have been very good for Morgan to stay on in management, perhaps under Tramiel, at least until things got smoothed out)

 

Ideally there should have been some form of normal transition - where all assets are mapped out, employees are explained the situation so they have time to start looking for jobs elsewhere, and a clear explination of how the Inc. assets are being split. As it was because of how Warner did it, Atari Corp and Atari Games were in litigation for years after arguing who owned what patents and such.

What a mess! I have a new found respect for Jack, Amazing he was able to pull it off. Dealing with all that,putting in your own cash,most of it from what you mention. That really is puuting you money where you mouth is. A concept few other than business owners can relate to..Even sadder though that Warner was so inept and killed a great thing. Very sad indeed..

Atari should have been a permanant corporate Icon ,instead warnwer was too squemish to put it on the line.Typical of companies that have been taken over. Look what happened at Chrysler and others,great when there are assets and making money but run for the hills when the result of being mismanaged arrive..

[Retro Rogue]

Which they did. The only time I'm aware of shortage issues with the 7800 was during the initial stages of the relaunching (January '86 through that Summer) when they were relying primarily on '84 backstock until manufacturing operations started up again. During that time stores were selling out of all 7800 stock. It was completely resolved by September and the big Christmas season showdown.

 

 

 

What new titles were on the store shelves for Christmas of 1987?

 

 

Your exact statement I was responding to was "It's not rocket science that if you don't have product (games) on the shelf during holiday time you are in trouble". Your claim was no games on the shelves, not "no new titles", and as stated I'm not aware of any time after September of '86 when that happened.

 

As for 1987 in relation to new games, you had Choplifter, Hat Trick, Impossible Mission, Karateka, One-On-One Basketball, Summer Games, and Winter Games. These were all a result of the licensing Katz had started on during the Winter through Spring of '85-'86. I'm leaving off Ballblazer and R.O.F. as those were initially announced in '84.

 

In 1988 they added Ace of Aces, Barnyard Blaster, Cracke'd, Crossbow, Dark Chambers, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Fight Night, Mario Bros., Realsports Baseball, Super Huey, Touchdown Football, and Tower Toppler. That's not including the third party titles released as well under license by Atari Corp.

 

In 1989 they added Commando, Jinks, and Mean 18 Ultimate Golf. Once again not including the 3rd party titles licensed through Atari.

 

In 1990 they added Alien Brigade, Basketbrawl, Fatal Run, Ikari Warriors, Mat Mania Challenge, Meltdown, Midnight Mutants, Motor Psycho, and Scrapyard Dog.

 

In 1991 Sentinel was added and support for the 7800 had begun winding down, with all 8-bit console support officially discontinued by January 1st, 1992.

 

So I don't see a year after the relaunch where there where new titles were not added. All told, Jack sold 3,772,751 Atari 7800's and had $87,695,415.31 in total sales between 1986 and 1990 just in the US. You don't get those kinds of sales from not having product on the shelves.

Edited January 16, 2011 by wgungfu

[UNIXcoffee928]

Hi, wgungfu, I'm really into all the work that you're doing, uncovering all of these things about Atari history. I just saw Curt Vendel's video & wondered if he was still living in Staten Island. I presume that you work with him, from the context of your posts. I live about 30 minutes away, and would absolutely be inclined to help out, particularly with the organization of technical  documents, and the retrieval & documentation of data from the backups of the company's minicomputers. Please have him contact me, if he is still in the NY/NJ area. Thanks!

[SpaceDice2010]

 

 

 

 

What new titles were on the store shelves for Christmas of 1987?

 

As for 1987 in relation to new games, you had Choplifter, Hat Trick, Impossible Mission, Karateka, One-On-One Basketball, Summer Games, and Winter Games. These were all a result of the licensing Katz had started on during the Winter through Spring of '85-'86. I'm leaving off Ballblazer and R.O.F. as those were initially announced in '84.

 

 

 

But how many of them were really on store shelves by Christmas and not delayed until Feb/March of the following year?