Atari Corp - Business is War

[R4ngerM4n]

http://ataribook.com/book/businessiswar/

 

Works for me. Someone added spaces to the link...

 

Database error...

[+save2600]

Was thinking of adding stuff to an Amazon order and remembered this book. *Still* not available?

[Andromeda Stardust]

*crickets*

[Troyzilla]

So has this book been shelved permanently? It kinda seems so. Too bad. I ordered the first one and wanted to read about the details what went wrong from the 16-bit era on...

[Andromeda Stardust]

So has this book been shelved permanently? It kinda seems so. Too bad. I ordered the first one and wanted to read about the details what went wrong from the 16-bit era on...

Hi welcome to AA.

 

16-bit era was supposed to be the third book. Business is War was goind to cover the latter half of the 80s, duing the Traimel years when Atari split up their arcade and consumer divisions, 7800 and SMS were getting scraps after NES took the lion's share, Tengen and the infamous Tetris scandal, and plenty of other juicy tidbits I could sink my teeth into. Unfortunately Curt is MIA with health issues and other project failures that will remain nameless, and I don't think the other coauthor, Marty aka RetroRogue has posted here in quite some time. It is unfortunate. I just wanna read the end of this saga, and frankly I don't even care if it's riddled with grammatical errors like the first book...

[dj_convoy]

The first book... it irks me. I like it, in some regards (I bought it twice, after all) but it needed a real editor so badly. Maybe more than one. The whipsaw between tenses and timeframes and so on... it's so much great information... a great story... but presented in a baffling way.

 

I still would have checked out the second book.

[calimero]

So no word from Marty or Curt????

 

What was last infromation regarding book "Business is war"?

 

 

EDIT:

I just saw Curt post at "Atari Museum" group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/105586892805903/

I leave him a message...

Edited January 21, 2017 by calimero

[pacman000]

So no word from Marty or Curt????

 

What was last infromation regarding book "Business is war"?

 

 

EDIT:

I just saw Curt post at "Atari Museum" group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/105586892805903/

I leave him a message...

Correct link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/105586892805903

[Andromeda Stardust]

Geeze, will the second book ever happen?

[MrMaddog]

Geeze, will the second book ever happen?

 

Who knows, guess many people don't care about post-2600 Atari...

[Andromeda Stardust]

Who knows, guess many people don't care about post-2600 Atari...

Someone could write a whole book on Tengen and the Tetris saga alone. Tengen was the arcade branch of Atari games who would rather port stuff to the NES as an unlicensed company than make 7800 games. Traimel ran the Home console and PC division of Atari at that time. IIRC Atari were split into two separate entities with arcade and home console/PC doing their own thing. Traimel struggled to even get licenses for Atari Games arcade titles, though luckily Food Fight did arrive unscathed on the 7800 and XEGS.

 

So yeah up until the video game crash and immediate aftermath (pre nes) was only part one of what was proportedly a three part saga. The fact that the promise of a revised edition of the first book never came doesn't give me confidence a second book is coming...

[+save2600]

Who knows, guess many people don't care about post-2600 Atari...

Nah, they're fully aware of their audience: us old farts. lol

 

Relase the frickin' book already. Before those of us that actually do care, die.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Relase the frickin' book already. Before those of us that actually do care, die.

A bit harshe, don't you think? Writing a 700 page non-fiction documentary requires a ton of research and planning. Despite the typographical and grammar errors of the first book, it was quite a masterpiece.

[+save2600]

Whoops, forgot to add the smiley. They should know it was meant as flattery. ...There you go, now not as "harsh".

[atarian1]

Actually save2600 has a point, but mine is a little different. What I am afraid of is the people Curt/Marty are interviewing dying. That's why I got pissed off when the 7800XM got the priority over the Business Is War book. To me, the stuff in the 7800XM will be here for a while. There will always be FPGAs, circuit boards, etc. that can be scrounged together to make a piece of technology like the 7800XM.

 

THAT IS NOT THE CASE WITH PEOPLE! We are all getting older and people are going to die. I think most of the people Curt/Marty are interviewing are at least in their 50s or 60s now. Sure, we are living longer now, but all of us who are old know that it's not fun. One example I can think of is Sam Tramiel who has a history of heart disease with a heart attack that drove Jack to reinvest Atari funds into something else (JTS). Unfortunately, having one heart attack increases the risk of another and other diseases. We already lost Jack before he could be "fully" interviewed by Curt/Marty (by one week IIRC what he told me at CGE). Once one of these important people to the book dies, they take all the information that we would love to know about with them. It's lost forever. You can't just look for "something better" like a better chip which one can do when making something like the 7800XM.

 

I don't know how the 7800XM development is going, but I wish Curt can tell his 7800XM critics to eat dirt and concentrate his time on the book. We can replace chips, but we can't replace people.

 

P.S. I am a pre-paid buyer of the 7800XM and a big Kickstarter supporter of the Business Is Fun book (my name is in the book).

[Lost Dragon]

Atarian1 makes a very valid point about the ravages of time.

 

Having dabbled in misc games research alongside Unseen64 and GTW etc myself..

 

It was so often brought home just how lucky we were to be able to chat, either online or in person with likes of Richard Joseph and Les Player..

 

We had questions we would of loved to of put to Mike Singleton and Fergus McGovern.. but they are sadly no longer with us.

 

The other factor is that people simply don't remember events with the same degree of clarity as the years pass.

 

How many times have we seen a person reply with honesty they simply don't remember.. or hazzard a guess but make clear their memory is hazy, it's been so long since..

 

Or an answer is given..but Historians are able to cross reference and point out they probably meant...

 

You also find people sometimes change stance when commenting again on a subject discussed years earlier.

 

Also..even if you get hold of the likes of Leonard Tramiel, a single source isn't enough..

 

It's evident Leonard had very little idea of European software development for the Panther and if you took his statements as sole source..You'd miss what was going on elsewhere.

 

Interviewing and fact checking is a real time drain.

 

Frustrating and often unrewarding..

Edited October 15, 2017 by Lost Dragon

[Wyluli Wolf]

I've been waiting and watching for this book as well. After 5? or more years...I think I have given up on this ever being completed/published.

It's too bad as the first book, although flawed, was epic. TONS of great information. Really enjoyed reading it and so looked forward to the second book in the series....

Perhaps one day.....?

[H.E.R.O.]

It's too bad if this never comes out. Would have been a great companion to Brian Bagnall's Over The Edge about Commodore so we would have had accounts from both sides of the Tramiel War.

[pacman000]

 

Who knows, guess many people don't care about post-2600 Atari...

I care. I want to know:

 

1) How Atari became profitable again?

 

And:

 

2) Why did they fail again?

 

Even if you aren't interested in Atari, or technology, or video games, these questions are important; answering them would provide lessons to future business men.

Edited February 14, 2018 by pacman000

[Lost Dragon]

I don't do Facebook, so maybe there have been updates posted there,but is this book still happening?.

 

It's been 4 years since the cover art etc went up and a lot of discoveries have been made in that time..

 

 

Who knew Imagitec Design were working on 7800 Toki? or Atari had been given a finished version of Paperboy on the 7800 but choose not to release it?

 

Various myths about the Panther console (and it's software) have been broken and developers given their insights on Games they were working on or admitted they cannot remember much,if anything.

 

ST and the uk wise..Darryl Still has been interviewed countless times, Les Player now sadly no longer with us detailed his time at Atari UK,Bob Katz and Mike Fulton talked openly as well, that reduces number of new people to find..

 

Bob Gleadow would be a prime candidate.

 

We know from personal experience Sam Tramiel liked to tell a brave story...when we chased up a certain British engineer who's role Sam had bugged up to the press at the time,it turned out his role was actually very minor,so he was unable to assist Clint Thompson.

 

Leonard Tramiel's ahem, interesting working relationship with people working on Panther and Jaguar has been well documented over the years..

 

Jack Tramiel sadly passed away days before an interview could take place..

 

So i am most curious to find who has been spoken to regarding the ST to Jaguar era of Atari..

 

Along with their working relationships with the Tramiel family...if the book is dependent on anecdotal evidence from those who worked with Jack..that's a mountain to climb in terms of filtering out personal bias for and against him.

 

By all accounts he was a hard task master.

 

Plus, wouldn't the people involved now be in their late 50's/early 60's?

 

Tendency for the mind to play tricks, forget details..fill in blanks etc.

 

 

With all the various interviews done by so many,along with new documentation being shared by the likes of Scott Stilphen, giving more insights into what went on behind the scenes, i wonder if the book has been taken back to the drawing board as it were, so new leads can be followed up..new claims put to existing leads etc?

 

The lack of any real updates and even indication of a few names to wet the appetites of potential customers, is concerning.

 

Not wishing to sound cynical as i am sure there are still so many untold stories, but it's been 4 years...

 

And when 1 of the authors himself admits R.J Mical,would rather tell a good story,than the truth, i fear they have a mammoth task just fact checking through interviews they've carried out.

Edited July 15, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[+Mitch]

The last update said the book was on hold until after the 7800 XM module shipped.

 

Mitch

[Lost Dragon]

Do you mind if i ask when the last update was and where it was made?

 

Marty hasn't logged onto here in over a year.

 

The updates simply stopped.

 

It makes sense to focus on finishing a specific project.

 

But it would be nice to get some idea who has been interviewed already and who they hope to get still.

 

 

Appreciate you at least letting me know.

[Andromeda Stardust]

No progress for two years now...

Make that four years.

 

Page has not been updated since the first post on July 2nd, 2014. Someone out there is still paying the hosting bills though.

http://ataribook.com/book/businessiswar/?p=6

 

The last update said the book was on hold until after the 7800 XM module shipped.

 

Mitch

7800XM module was promised to start shipping in January of this year. Same old song though they are making progress. Had the XM module not existed as a distraction, perhaps the revised second edition (with juicy tidbits about unearthing the games from the landfill dig site which occurred after the first edition was published) would have been released, with substantial work towards the second book.

 

The story of Tetris and the Tengen/NES/7800 wars needs to be heard, damnit!

[Lost Dragon]

From a UK perspective, it's the NES Vs 7800 War that holds the most potential to convince me to buy the book..if it ever arrives.

 

Talk of dealing with Atari UK aspects leaves me cold as it's been documented to death over here.

 

Unless they have reached the likes of :

 

Bob Gleadow head of Atari UK

 

Eric Salamon who i last knew of for his role at Heinz Ketchup and then a digital media agency..

 

Peter Staddon. .

 

And Paul Welch. .

 

Assuming they are still with us, i just cannot see many new insights into the UK and the A8/XEGS/LYNX/ST/Panther.

 

Plans for the 5200 and inital unveiling of 7800 etc well documented..ditto what was really going on with the Panther.

 

The above might have additional information, but i have never seen them interview outside of the commercial press of the time myself.

[Greyfox]

I'm sure this book will surface at some stage, I've seen development of books take years to create, even with my own publication of working on a coin-op on sand off for 6 years and although 99.9% it still needs one last element or two added, but have taken on a vastly new venture in the form of a visual history book of the Atari 8-bit and its third party games. So I'm assuming that this could become a museum piece for the moment until all things standing in this way have been addressed or overcome, but as Lost Dragon has stated some 4 years, memories are getting vaguer and vaguer or we have the sad opportunity of hearing of key people passing away and can never hear their perspective on the subject.

 

I do think they should even make a small announcement that the project is on hold or not in production for there foreseeable future, I think that's a fair request?