ataridave Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Then they were here in the United States? Was it just poor marketing? I found the "Then along came Atari" commercial on Youtube, but that was run in Canada. And I'm just really curious about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 the US seemed to go for the Mac and PC's. although they did sell a lot of Amiga's too, just not so much the ST. In Canada we seemed to sell both Amiga's and Atari's about 50/50, and everyone i knew had either or. and mainly due to the price. i bought my 1040stfm in 1988 for $700 when a PC or Mac were both a few thousand dollars, and at the time they were way better than a monochrome mac or 4 color CGA PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Europeans went for quality, that's why. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fletch Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 (edited) Atari also had a long reputation as a gaming company in the USA. From the early 1970's, anyone who went to a bar, an arcade, a vacation spot, the 7-11 was exposed to a game with an Atari logo on it. As time went on and Atari ventured into computers, many US consumers and certainly businesses never took Atari seriously as a viable platform for serious work. IBM was the business machine. Heck, the company is International Business Machines and nobody was ever fired for buying IBM. Apple had the reputation of starting the home and small business computing market, so again people had a level of comfort here in the USA with Apple products. Some of us, myself included, bought Atari machines. When we'd go to stores to buy software there was occasionally slim pickings or more likely no pickings to be had. The 8-bit Atari era was challenging in that regard, but during the ST era it was damn near impossible to find anything locally. Mail order was the only real option for many of us. Edited December 28, 2014 by Fletch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 (edited) in my town in Alberta Canada, we had a dozen Atari stores when it came to the ST, i actually worked for one until 1995, doing board upgrades and repairs. until it closed down, and it was the last in town to do so. when i was in university, the computer lab was all Atari 1040stf they were cheap to buy, could easily hook up to the mainframe (serial connection) and terminal program. worked great. Edited December 28, 2014 by locnar77 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Amiga didn't do much better than the ST in the States. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ataridave Posted December 29, 2014 Author Share Posted December 29, 2014 (edited) the US seemed to go for the Mac and PC's. although they did sell a lot of Amiga's too, just not so much the ST. In Canada we seemed to sell both Amiga's and Atari's about 50/50, and everyone i knew had either or. and mainly due to the price. i bought my 1040stfm in 1988 for $700 when a PC or Mac were both a few thousand dollars, and at the time they were way better than a monochrome mac or 4 color CGA PC. Cool, I didn't know that the stfm was sold in Canada. The Amiga didn't fare much better here, but I don't think anyone had to mail order any software for it. I had the 512K Macintosh, and while the selection of games at my local Software ETC was a tiny fraction of what it was for IBM compatible PCs, it wasn't that bad. Edited December 29, 2014 by newataridave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 and up here the Mac was almost non-existent, pc picked up around 1991-1992 then took off once 386 and vga came out. then everything shifted toward it. i still have my 1040, plus a few more that i've collected. i will always have a place for my Atari's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 probably a symptom more than a reason but sometime in early 88 Atari started diverting supply to europe, there just were not St systems to buy. I know as I was a dealer for these and it was very frustrating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 Amiga didn't do much better than the ST in the States. we sold the crap out of the A500 after ST's became nearly unavailable. just a trickle of supply till STE then it was a bit too late. We tried hard though and carried software for it until 93-94 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyHW Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 From my fragmented memory of Ontario, Canada in the 80s, the business market was dominated by PCs, and the home market was dominated by Commodore 64. And when people were ready to upgrade their C64s they switched to the PC clones which were much cheaper. Atari ST, Amiga, and Mac were more niche market machines, used for specialty applications. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 (edited) that is very true, atari, amiga and mac really didnt have the straight forward business software companies were looking for. and if people used a pc in the office they wanted one at home too, so they could run the same software. the atari and amiga were gamers computers, just like the mac was for desktop publishing. and the Amiga had video editing, and the ST was great with music editing. but yes totally niche market. but pc's weren't cheap, as i said up above I paid $700 + $300 for my 1040st and color monitor. when i bought my first PC, a 486 dx66 in 1992ish with a 14" monitor it was well over $3000 and it was just a clone. Edited December 29, 2014 by locnar77 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeFulton Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 The biggest reasons were: 1) The price gap between the PC and ST was larger in Europe than in the USA, making the ST a more attractive choice price-wise. 2) Game consoles where less common in Europe than in the USA. To a large degree computer gaming filled the gap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keops Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 (edited) By the way, how was the NTSC/PAL (60Hz vs 50Hz) issue handled with games in North America? Did you have to switch the games to 50 Hz to play them? (back then motion was frame based in games in general, not time based, and most games were calibrated for 50Hz, the main market, afair). A US retailer told me a story about north american gamers having to boot the game with an app that switched to 50Hz before launching the games. Edited December 31, 2014 by Keops Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 if you were using an atari monitor sc1124 it handled both 50hz and 60hz just fine, (a little bit of flicker with 50hz) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Because it was CHEAP, FAST-BUCK TRAMIEL TACTICS. My local Atari dealer *COMPLETELY* folded, because of this. They didn't offer any other product lines. Poor them! Atari computers (meaning - at the time - primarily the then-"hot" ST - brought bigger-bucks in Europe, than it did in the US. So Atari (Tramiel) shipped all (almost) product to where it got a big, fast buck - Europe. Meanwhile, the beleaguered US Atari dealership took a shank in the can, after doing Atari's "pioneer" work for them, only having mass-market (and mail-order) reap what little profits there were, in the long run. My local Atari dealer couldn't get jack-shit from Atari direct (as they used to) and had to resort to ordering from "Computer Mail Order" (or similar such firms) rather than Atari, and then struggling on a thin margin. Atari would only ship to LARGE US firms, and completely threw their dealer network to the wolves. I witnessed it, firsthand, as my local Atari dealer folded. Too bad they didn't sell Amiga 500s, as did atarian63, back in the day; they might have made it. The reason that Atari computers were more successful in Europe is because - at the time - it was more profitable to ship the limited production (Atari Corp. was a relatively-small company) to Europe and sell it for more, and neglect the US market. Fast-buck, but "cheap didn't sell" in the long run, quite obviously. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwiliteZoner Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Because they had them in stock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keops Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 if you were using an atari monitor sc1124 it handled both 50hz and 60hz just fine, (a little bit of flicker with 50hz) What I mean is: were those games always switched back to 50Hz, even Epyx (North American) editions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 no, all games and programs released in North America are all 60hz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 When i interviewed Atari Uk's Marketing Manager (at time of the ST), Darryl Still for ST Gamer Vol 1 (still avaiable to buy folks :-) ), he talked of the German side of Atari never seeing the gaming side of the ST and also puts down a lot of the ST's sales in the UK to the 'supremely successful' Power Pack, which just 'sold and sold and sold' and was for Atari 'an amazing product'. He's not wrong either as myself and so many friends at the time got into 16 Bit gaming on superb bundles like this, £100 cheaper than the Amiga, plus 20 games...no contest... Bit short sighted in the long term as Amiga was 'The better machine' :-), but back then, it was a no brainer for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeFulton Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 My local Atari dealer couldn't get jack-shit from Atari direct (as they used to) and had to resort to ordering from "Computer Mail Order" (or similar such firms) rather than Atari, and then struggling on a thin margin. Atari would only ship to LARGE US firms, and completely threw their dealer network to the wolves. I witnessed it, firsthand, as my local Atari dealer folded. Too bad they didn't sell Amiga 500s, as did atarian63, back in the day; they might have made it. It's simply not true that Atari would only ship to large dealers and distributors. I worked at a small dealer for a couple of years and we never had any particular problem getting stock as long as we did one thing. Paid our bills. The few times we had any issues with getting product from Atari, it was when we were a little late paying on some invoice. When that happened, we would be at the bottom of the queue for getting anything. But as long as we were paid up and current, we never had to wait more than a week or so for most products. If your local dealer had problems getting stock, it was very likely because they had an outstanding unpaid balance with Atari. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeFulton Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 What I mean is: were those games always switched back to 50Hz, even Epyx (North American) editions? I dunno why you think Epyx releases would be different one way or the other, but as a general rule, games ran at the default refresh rate the system booted on, whatever that was. A game programmed around 50hz and using the vertical blank for timing would run about 15% faster on 60hz but that's about it. A few games, very few, wouldn't run at 60hz. Probably too much code and too little time between vertical blanks. But there was a little program called "50hz.tos" which switched the system into 50hz mode. Once this was run, many of these games would work. As long as you were using the Atari SC1224 monitor, anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Europeans went for quality, that's why. Seriously? Even the Keyboard of the ST is a typing horror, the rest isn't really better. The ST was cheap, and in "Europe" "Geiz ist Geil" (in honour words "saving money is good" "was/is the selling factor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 no, all games and programs released in North America are all 60hz All TV sets with a "SCART" Plug allowed to use either 50Hz or 60Hz. So it was no problem to have them run correctly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
locnar77 Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 no such thing as scart in north america Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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