-Why did less commercial titles for Atari 8Bit?

[Drummerboy]

Hello,

I was wondering: Why did less commercial titles A8?. You know, games like California Games, Test Drive, and other was never released for Atari 8bit. I think the machine has enough power for run games like that.

What you think about?

 

Regards

 

 

 

[Keatah]

Too close to the "collapse".. Home gaming was transitioning from a creative environment to one of mechanized profit-making.

[+FujiSkunk]

I was wondering: Why did less commercial titles A8?. You know, games like California Games, Test Drive, and other was never released for Atari 8bit. I think the machine has enough power for run games like that.

 

Generally speaking, the Atari XL/XE line saw a lot less third-party support than other 8-bit computers in the late '80s. Even the Apple II has a nice big library of late '80s games, California Games and Test Drive included. Other folks probably have a better idea of why this happened, but to me it seems like a combination of things. Computers like the Apple II and the Commodore 64 did a better job hanging on to their audiences during the industry shake-out of the mid '80s, thanks to established reputations that extended beyond gaming. Also, by the time the XE models came out, Atari seemed less interested in third-party support compared to other companies, and they were still hyping cartridges at a time when publishing houses were more interested in putting computer games on disk (cheaper to manufacture, and with much more storage capacity).

 

None of these points by themselves seem reason enough for Atari computers to get the short-end of the stick, but put them all together, and include Atari's growing reputation of being "snake bit" thanks to its part in the industry crash and the relative failure of the Atari 7800, and it's easy to see why publishers would favor other computers. The good news is the Atari ST line fared somewhat better in the 16-bit market.

 

Too close to the "collapse".. Home gaming was transitioning from a creative environment to one of mechanized profit-making.

 

I don't think that adequately explains why other 8-bit computers succeeded during that time.

[+slx]

Might have to do with Atari showing less "promise" as a system at that point in time. Commodore and Apple both offered significantly evolved versions of their 8-bits with the 128 and IIGS while Atari had no significant evolution after the 600XL/800XL. The XEs were cheap but not something that would keep you sticking to the System if you were looking for more power. I don't know if a C128-type computer would have made me stick to the "8-bit" rather than move to the ST (promising more performance but less games than I had for the 800) in 1986 after 3 ½ years with the 800.

[Thorsten Günther]

I believe that was mainly due to the success of the Commodore 64 and the introduction of the Atari ST (and the Amiga 500 some years later) - software companies simply could sell many copies more to Commodore and ST users than they could to Atari 8 bit users. That Atari didn't continue publishing games didn't help either, though the introdction of the XEGS and the price war of the 800XE against the Commodore 64 bettered the situation somewhat, even to a point when English budget publishers (Mastertronic, Zeppelin, Firebird) started publishing for the A8 and even some major hits were (half-heartedly) converted - e.g. Arkanoid and Rampage (Shanghai is a different story, the A8 version was already completed by an Atari enthusiast when it was offered to Activision for publishing).

 

I don't believe that "more power" was an issue since the C64 was produced for several more years after the C128 was cancelled.

[+slx]

For me one of the main selling points for the ST was the superior display the SM124 offered for word processing, WYSIWYG (as well as being able to use larger files without splitting them). I admit it was also a "it's newer and more powerful so I need to have it" type of acquisition. I probably would have hung on to the 800 a bit longer if I had had to buy the ST with self-earned money....

[Goochman]

The Atari computer line was early hit as a 'pirate' community - EA was one of the biggest publishers and pretty much backed out of the 8bit line pretty early.

 

After that many others started to follow suit.

[TMR]

The Atari computer line was early hit as a 'pirate' community - EA was one of the biggest publishers and pretty much backed out of the 8bit line pretty early.

Piracy might be a problem, but it's never the sole reason for companies moving on; the C64 and Apple II communities weren't all halo-touting angels at that time either and cracking as we know it is pretty much felt to have originated between those two platforms, but most of the publishers stuck with both. It's something of a fallacy to say piracy kills machines really, the Amiga was said to have died because of piracy but, since those companies moved from those protected 3.5" floppies to pretty much unprotected, installable PC games, it's hard to take that claim seriously.

 

The lack of documentation in the early years probably hurt the A8 more than piracy did, Atari didn't allow the third party developers to properly get their teeth into the hardware which in turn meant there were less games overall and no company has made serious money moving into what at least appears to be a sluggish market.

 

i still can't entirely get my head around why there wasn't a massive influx of homebrew/indie developers around the time the commercial giants pulled out of the market though...

[Bill Loguidice]

Plain and simple, it was computer sales figures. If you look at the most reliable sales figures from the era (Jeremy Reimer's work), in its best years, (end of) 1981 and (end of) 1982, the Atari 8-bit line had more than 20% market share. After that, it dropped fast. The Apple II peaked at around 15% market share in both (end of) 1981 and (end of) 1984, but also had the benefit of being on the market much longer, being the choice of many of the best US programmers (i.e., being the platform first developed on), and also maintaining at least some percentage of market share through the early 90s. It was obvious why the Commodore 64 got the support it did, with almost 40% marketshare by the end of 1983 and staying in double digits through the end of 1987 and having at lease some percentage of market share through the early 90s. And yes, the Macintosh, Atari ST, Amiga, and of course, PC DOS, did take a lot of focus away from the 8-bits. It was a no-win for the Atari 8-bit. Atari would have had to have competed on price BEFORE the Commodore 64's release, not after.

[Drummerboy]

Yeah, Reading you comments, sure the bad way was marketed the Atari 8Bit was a strong reason to had less atention of the comercial Games developers. I still remember when was launch the XE System Series, and looked like it had wanted to make things better. For that years were in time to compete in the 8Bit market.

 

I dont think so the piracy was a reason to no develop for Atari 8 Bit (i know Piracy is always the big problem on any platform for the software developers), but you know, Commodore 64 is one of the scenes more pirates that existed in the 80s and 90s and yet with that situation companies continued to develop games and software for the C=64 even the last years.

 

I dont know about programing, just the "normal" basic things, (where the Basic language looks the same in all platforms). Then The Atari 8Bit was a hard Computer to Program?

[bbking67]

Atari had pretty good support until 1986 when most of the major publishers moved on to 16-bit (and C64). A 130XE enhanced version of Ultima V would have been sweet, but it wasn't in the cards. I personally think that the storage limitations of SS-SD were a factor. Porting the games themselves probably wasn't the only factor. Some publishers did publish games using Double Density--but that was incredibly risky given that no stock atari drive was capable of SS-DD until the XF551 came along.

 

To write for Atari, you'd have to write to a lowest common denominator of 48K SS-SD to have a chance of reasonable sales. Even then you are cutting out all stock 400's.

 

The Atari was no harder to program than other 8-bits and I don't think piracy was any worse on the Atari than C64 or Apple 2. The Atari did have a large number of 400's sold with cartridge only or tape, so many of those machines were likely retired by the early- to mid-eighties.

 

I think the "real" marketshare of floppy-equipped Atari's was very very low compared to the Apple and C64 numbers.

[TMR]

I dont think so the piracy was a reason to no develop for Atari 8 Bit (i know Piracy is always the big problem on any platform for the software developers)

Piracy is a double edged sword; it's a problem yes, but the machines that succeed have usually seen more piracy than their rivals because the promise of an instant collection of shonky software has been known to shift metric bucketloads of hardware. And anybody who thinks the games industry has nothing to do with the cracking scene is naive at best because it regularly "borrowed" programmers for games coding, protection and so on with the unwritten understanding being that beta code would probably "escape" after that hiring.

 

I dont know about programing, just the "normal" basic things, (where the Basic language looks the same in all platforms). Then The Atari 8Bit was a hard Computer to Program?

Relatively speaking, for assembly language i'd personally say it was somewhere between the Apple II and the C64; the entry level is relatively low because the hardware is helpful as long as you're doing things a certain way, but pushing harder or trying to do things differently takes more knowledge and experience.

[Rybags]

IMO piracy is not the reason for the lacklustre A8 support from the mid 80s.

 

C64 you could copy a fairly high percentage of games with a stock drive and often games were cracked and all over the place within a week of release.

 

On A8, practically all games had some form of protection by the mid 80s, fair enough the cracking scene was probably every bit as efficient as C64 but I doubt our market was affected more than any other.

[Almost Rice]

lowest common denominator. 48K. They had to make programs 48k compatible to get max audience for Atari 8bits. Apple 2 and C 64 were 64k minimum by mid 80s. atari 8 bits were still stuck with 48k programs.

[+wood_jl]

Had to be sales numbers, and the software sales that those [system] sales numbers perpetuated. Granted, piracy was a factor amongst all systems and Atari and Commodore [64] systems were well-pirated. But the greater the system sales, the greater the software sales, piracy notwithstanding. Commodore sold a HELL OF A LOT of C64 systems. There's not denying that, and the software industry did not ignore that. Atari computer sales were mediocre at best. By the time the ST series came about, it looked like the future and (in the early years) showed some promise as "the new Atari market" and so A8 software fell off sharply after ST debut. Commodore had the Amiga, but there was this enormous "critical mass" of C64 installed base (software purchasers) that could NOT be ignored. As a result, C64 got much more software support later on.

 

One of the fun things (to me, anyway) is using a C64 in modern (retro) times to play (and evaluate) some of the titles that I wished would have come out for my beloved A8 back in the day. They're as close as you can come to the A8, and therein lies my appreciation.

[Kyle22]

My personal opinion:

 

Piracy, poor marketing, the commode-door 64, price wars... It all added up.

 

If they had mass produced the 1450XLD at a reasonable price, and included some nice business software with it (Spreadsheet, WordProc, Database, etc.) I think it would have done very well.

 

I believe that the main problem was in-fighting within Atari management, basically Atari management just drew a bad hand in the poker game of life.

 

It could have been so different now. Had Atari put the 65816 in the 1450XLD, lots of RAM, and an internal hard drive option, we may now have forgotten about the long lost company named Apple that made inferior computers...

 

We would all be talking on our FujiPhones, and listening to music on out A-Pods.

 

If I only had a Flux Capacitor for my DeLorean......

 

 

-K

[atarian1]

Had to be sales numbers, and the software sales that those [system] sales numbers perpetuated. Granted, piracy was a factor amongst all systems and Atari and Commodore [64] systems were well-pirated. But the greater the system sales, the greater the software sales, piracy notwithstanding. Commodore sold a HELL OF A LOT of C64 systems. There's not denying that, and the software industry did not ignore that. Atari computer sales were mediocre at best. By the time the ST series came about, it looked like the future and (in the early years) showed some promise as "the new Atari market" and so A8 software fell off sharply after ST debut. Commodore had the Amiga, but there was this enormous "critical mass" of C64 installed base (software purchasers) that could NOT be ignored. As a result, C64 got much more software support later on.

 

One of the fun things (to me, anyway) is using a C64 in modern (retro) times to play (and evaluate) some of the titles that I wished would have come out for my beloved A8 back in the day. They're as close as you can come to the A8, and therein lies my appreciation.

 

I second what wood_jl says. With the smaller installed base, every pirated copy hurt software sales more than other platforms. The Apple II had a huge installed base thanks to the education market that Steve Jobs helped create by giving schools lots of Apple IIs. The Commodore 64 was the best selling computer of all time also created a huge installed base. Both of those huge installed bases can absorb more from lost pirated copies than the Atari 8-bits.

 

The people who are discounting piracy as a big factor in the smaller number of new software titles at the time probably did not live through the 80s. I know it may sound harsh, but people who actually read every computer magazine that covered Atari computers at the time had a cover issue discussing piracy. It has been pointed out that it seems there were more Atari pirates and they were better organized. This hurt more with the smaller user base, and was likely supported by smaller sales numbers.

 

I remember not caring myself as a stupid kid and ended up with a large library of pirated software. It was sometimes a competition between Atarians who was the bigger pirate and who had more stuff! Some Atari "user groups" were full of pirates and even (Warner) Atari themselves did not want to come to them knowing that these gatherings were piracy havens.

 

Eventually though, I started growing up (around 1987-ish) and saw what I was doing was destroying the Atari marketplace, but it was too late at that point. I eventually got an ST and vowed not to pirate ST software after seeing how pirates destroyed the 8-bit line. Yes, I had less stuff, but a clearer conscience and seeing new software being regularly released for the ST was the reward and satisfaction I felt when I made this decision. What was interesting was seeing other Atarians having the same epiphany as I did. Big time 8-bit pirates became legit ST owners.

 

Sorry to digress, but I believe dismissing piracy as one of the big reasons for the decline of the Atari 8-bits is being ignorant.

[Kyle22]

My personal opinion:

 

Piracy, poor marketing, the commode-door 64, price wars... It all added up.

 

If they had mass produced the 1450XLD at a reasonable price, and included some nice business software with it (Spreadsheet, WordProc, Database, etc.) I think it would have done very well.

 

I believe that the main problem was in-fighting within Atari management, basically Atari management just drew a bad hand in the poker game of life.

 

It could have been so different now. Had Atari put the 65816 in the 1450XLD, lots of RAM, and an internal hard drive option, we may now have forgotten about the long lost company named Apple that made inferior computers...

 

We would all be talking on our FujiPhones, and listening to music on out A-Pods.

 

If I only had a Flux Capacitor for my DeLorean......

 

 

-K

If I may quote myself...

 

Piracy, yes, was a big thing. The Commies did it too, though. I, myself, and a lot of other people I knew didn't have the money to buy new titles, so we downloaded from BBSs. I, personally, only 'cracked' and distributed 'a few' titles, though. Sometimes you gotta only change a BCC to a BCS, or maybe replace a few instructions with NOPs

 

-K

[TMR]

The people who are discounting piracy as a big factor in the smaller number of new software titles at the time probably did not live through the 80s. I know it may sound harsh, but people who actually read every computer magazine that covered Atari computers at the time had a cover issue discussing piracy.

Because it's a great topic to get reader interaction going; magazines like that kind of thing and a good "thud and blunder" anti piracy argument drags in the responses, both from the industry and the pirates themselves. Jumping on that bandwagon has never hurt the relationship between magazines and games publishers either...

 

Many of those magazines and indeed the software houses had pirates working for them too, either in house or freelance; review copies or beta code were a regular source of originals for crackers to work from.

 

It has been pointed out that it seems there were more Atari pirates and they were better organized. This hurt more with the smaller user base, and was likely supported by smaller sales numbers.

More pirates and better organised? That does sound a little like hyperbole unless you were similarly involved in the C64 or Apple II scenes at the time to be making a direct comparison?

[Magic Knight]

From being active during the middle 80's in the UK, i saw that a great deal of titles NOT being published was down to the lack of machines in the shops in the first place.

 

Apart from specilist computer shops, on a general basis Dixons, Currys, Littlewoods and not much else had 800XL machines for around the £100 mark . And Boots retail store only had 600XL for a whopping £149.

 

C64, speccys and Amstrads were practically everywhere. The lack support on the harware must have not been lost on the developers as the 80's went on.

 

Piracy for the speccy was rife as was the C64. Each machine had its own piracy issues and i dont think any was less or more as a machine and probably a percentage of user out there. In my school - of around 700 people only 3 had Atari 8 bits - and one was a techer!

Speccy owners were dominant and only a small handful had c64 and amstrads (as their parents i think chose them) but the dominant 8 bit was spectrum.

 

I remember a couple of kids complain that they got c64 for christmas when everyone else got spectrum 48ks!

[high voltage]

whilst Spectrum was a (bad) gaming computer, you did other things than playing games with the A8, WP, graphics, music, business etc....

[high voltage]

about that piracy thing, I had both during the 80s, A8 and C64 both with fdds, and later an A2 as well. I always was offered huge amounts of copied disks on Commodore, less on A8 and virtually none on A2. most piracy was done on C64. listening to UK stories with Spectrum, piracy was even more than Commodore, as tape copying was way easy.

Edited November 6, 2013 by high voltage

[Tezz]

whilst Spectrum was a (bad) gaming computer, you did other things than playing games with the A8, WP, graphics, music, business etc....

Yea, it wasn't intended to be a gaming computer but that's what 99.9% of people bought one for

 

As portrayed amusingly by Alexander Armstrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3l_NV9oQ1c

.. well almost as amusing as the BBC make up.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Tezz

[Tezz]

Here in the UK the Atari market was much smaller than the competition (I can only speculate about how much of that was down to price and promotion) so most software houses didn't entertain developing Atari software. Even the budget labels didn't want to know. It was just simply business. In the 8-bit era most of the emphasis here was directed at the Spectrum and C64 where they had a large volume of sales.. and inevitably piracy.

[Tezz]

lowest common denominator. 48K. They had to make programs 48k compatible to get max audience for Atari 8bits. Apple 2 and C 64 were 64k minimum by mid 80s. atari 8 bits were still stuck with 48k programs.

.. and Almost Rice has already made the point I was going to add to what I'd written above..

 

That also didn't help matters.