Atari's approach to announcing products

[DracIsBack]

Back in the day, I remember Atari announcing products a lot to magazines, but not all of them would ship. And when it came to the 7800, a lot of the same games would be announced again and again, sometimes multiple times before they would ship, if they even did at all. Skyfox, for example, keeps getting announced over and over yet a ROM has never even surfaced.

 

I stumbled across this great resource while looking for Don Thomas's IC When site. Crazy the number of times "never shipped" appears.

 

http://mcurrent.name/atarihistory/tramel_technology.html

 

Almost like they used the PR to gauge interest in retail and public before spending the money to manufacture!

 

 

[Trebor]

The 1987 highlights helps to show how starved and under supported the 7800 was:

 

"1987...Atari promoted 40 game titles...16 games for the 2600...10 games for the 7800...14 game cartridges...XE game system."

The least promoted was the 7800.

Seeing another mention of Demolition Derby again - under 1986; may be a snowball's chance, but a proto of that or/and Skyfox would be nice.

[+save2600]

Very interesting. I must have been in a bubble in the late 80's, cause I can't recall a single time Atari promoted anything other than maybe the occasional ST ad here or there. I do remember the 2600 revival (under fitty bux), but not the 7800 or XE stuff. Guess I had my head too buried into computers, music, sports and girls to have noticed much of anything else.

 

Looking back at my magazine subscriptions at the time… nope! No mention of the 7800 or XE in the likes of AmigaWorld, Amazing Computing, RUN or Compute! Okay, maybe Compute! had a few.

[DracIsBack]

Very interesting. I must have been in a bubble in the late 80's, cause I can't recall a single time Atari promoted anything other than maybe the occasional ST ad here or there. I do remember the 2600 revival (under fitty bux), but not the 7800 or XE stuff. Guess I had my head too buried into computers, music, sports and girls to have noticed much of anything else.

 

Looking back at my magazine subscriptions at the time… nope! No mention of the 7800 or XE in the likes of AmigaWorld, Amazing Computing, RUN or Compute! Okay, maybe Compute! had a few.

 

They tended to do retail advertising more (ie. Toys R Us Flyers). It's not always thought of as "advertising" but it's actually really expensive and reaches a wide audience.

 

I remember seeing some print ads in a couple of comic books and game magazines, but other than that, not much. Never saw any of the 7800 commercials you see in Youtube on TV, so who knows how widely or often they aired them?

[DracIsBack]

 

The 1987 highlights helps to show how starved and under supported the 7800 was:

 

"1987...Atari promoted 40 game titles...16 games for the 2600...10 games for the 7800...14 game cartridges...XE game system."

The least promoted was the 7800.

Seeing another mention of Demolition Derby again - under 1986; may be a snowball's chance, but a proto of that or/and Skyfox would be nice.

 

 

Ya .. though they may have been padding the XE and 2600 numbers with re-released games.

 

For example, the pre-crash Donkey Kong on t he 2600 was done by Coleco, while the post-crash re-release was done by Atari.

http://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=148

http://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=149

Edited November 13, 2015 by DracIsBack

[Trebor]

 

Ya .. though they may have been padding the XE and 2600 numbers with re-released games.

 

For example, the pre-crash Donkey Kong on t he 2600 was done by Coleco, while the post-crash re-release was done by Atari.

http://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=148

http://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=149

 

Indeed, they did. Saw a mention of 2600 Masters of the Universe that was going to see an Atari re-release ("Never shipped"), after the 'INTY' one that did ship.

 

Nonetheless, the lack of focus on the 7800 is still dishearten.

 

In that same year, Nintendo releases ~60 games for the NES, and Sega releases ~35 games for the SMS.

[DracIsBack]

 

Indeed, they did. Saw a mention of 2600 Masters of the Universe that was going to see an Atari re-release ("Never shipped"), after the 'INTY' one that did ship.

 

Nonetheless, the lack of focus on the 7800 is still dishearten.

 

In that same year, Nintendo releases ~60 games for the NES, and Sega releases ~35 games for the SMS.

 

Yeah - sigh.

 

Reality was that Atari really didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) spend a lot on development of new games. Big bummer. A lot of the XE titles were already out on disk or tape; a lot of the 2600 games were already released pre-crash by other manufacturers.

 

New dev for all three systems was actually very late compared to the competition, as you note. And of course, there's the matter of the smaller cartridges compared to the competition, the cheaper manuals, the silver labels, the lack of battery saves, extra chips, use of RAM being discouraged, pokeys almost never used.

 

But then they weirdly wasted money too. For example, they have multiple gun games, but the gun was hardly available for purchase outside of buying an XE. Likewise, they sold Pole Position II cartridges separately yet it was picked in with the system.

[empsolo]

I don't get how people expected the how the 7800 gets all of this third party support from developers as compared to the NES, when Atari was quite willing to treat the 7800 system like complete crap. The fact they weren't willing to spend money on any real advertising or put any effort into first party games, would have sent warning flags to a lot of developers to stay away from the system.

Edited November 20, 2015 by empsolo

[Lost Dragon]

I'd still love to know if it was an acytual Atari UK PR release or RAZE simply making the claim up, that Atari would be showing 7800 Turrican, running at the upcoming Atari event.....

As for wasting money, those 2-page adverts in UK mags showcasing XE games like Blue Max, Ball Blazer, Fight Night, Star Raiders etc....which by then were very dated compared to the range of titles on the mainstream 8 Bit systems, i have to wonder if tht ever really paid for itself....

[Lynxpro]

I don't get how people expected the how the 7800 gets all of this third party support from developers as compared to the NES, when Atari was quite willing to treat the 7800 system like complete crap. The fact they weren't willing to spend money on any real advertising or put any effort into first party games, would have sent warning flags to a lot of developers to stay away from the system.

 

Or they could've looked at it as an opportunity to completely dominate an entire platform since there wasn't any real competition. Think about Aspyr for the Mac platform as an example or Bungie prior to Microsoft acquiring them for Halo.

 

Or…Activision back when they first started. They were Atari 2600-exclusive and their success did hurt Atari's own cartridge sales [although Activision's titles most likely were responsible for some buyers purchasing the 2600 over the Intellivision].

Edited November 20, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Bill Loguidice]

Let's not forget that Nintendo locked up a lot of third parties for the NES, so Sega and Atari got the scraps. Of course, even then Sega was a better and more prolific first party developer than Atari, so in many ways it hurt less on the Master System.

[empsolo]

Let's not forget that Nintendo locked up a lot of third parties for the NES, so Sega and Atari got the scraps. Of course, even then Sega was a better and more prolific first party developer than Atari, so in many ways it hurt less on the Master System.

But here's the thing though. Nintendo didnt start gaining support from the first few US devs until the 1987 at the earliest. In 1986 and in 1987, Atari is mostly competing with the first iterations of Nintendo's first party titles. Which in this case were the NES Black Box Titles and Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Zelda as well as a few Japanese third parties. Atari had every oppurtunity to try and grab western devs but instead decided to cheapen out on making the 7800 an attractive commodity to consumers. Especially when they passed on decent advertising, announced vaporware titles in an attempt to string consumers along, and then forced devs to pay extra for an archaic audio hardware that was slightly below early black box titles in quality. And to top it off, the 7800 was dropped in 87 anyway and was replaced by the XEGS.

 

I really don't see how Atari was ever going to be really competitive when we take a look at these missteps that Atari took when it came to launching and supporting thier own damn system. It seems more like Atari drove away developers and really didn't give a crap until it was too little, too late.

[DracIsBack]

Atari had every oppurtunity to try and grab western devs

 

I'm not sure Atari had "every opportunity" to grab anything. The hot titles were coming out of Japan. nintendo had those devs locked up. Even if NES games came out in 1987, deals and development would have been done earlier than that.

 

And to top it off, the 7800 was dropped in 87 anyway and was replaced by the XEGS.

 

 

No. The XE seemed to become the focus in 1987 and part of 1988, but systems were made and sold throughout, and new games came throughout. In the end, Atari Corp released more carts for the 7800 than they did for the XEGS and for a longer period of time. If you read through the link above, you'll see that the 7800 kept getting releases after the XE stopped getting them.

[Schmudde]

Almost like they used the PR to gauge interest in retail and public before spending the money to manufacture!

 

 

 

I believe this is referenced in Commodore: A Company on the Edge. I don't remember Bagnall's source for this claim, but it was established that Jack Tramiel used this technique to gauge interest in a product. The first cited instance is the Commodore PET at the Chicago CES in 1977. But there were others. Commodore "created" a lot of vaporware under Jack T.

 

Jack Tramiel didn't get where he was because he knew computers inside and out; he was successful in producing typewriters, adding machines, digital calculators, and computers because he acted upon his intuition and was not afraid to take risks where others were. Announcing products that one may not ever ship is A) a way to gauge the market and B) very risky.

 

As far as the 7800, Atari Corp was just a small company with limited resources. I agree that there were many missed opportunities in 1986 and 1987. Tramiel really did buy the preeminent name in video games and 3rd parties might have been more inclined to the company's platforms had Atari Corp. been more focused on their video game offerings.

 

Considering the success of the ST and Atari's financial situation after Jack's deal with Warner, I think it's difficult to argue that prioritizing the computer line was a mistake.

 

/ü

[+save2600]

 

...I think it's difficult to argue that prioritizing the computer line was a mistake.

 

 

Prioritizing the 8-bit line for sure. In_this_country. Same mistake C= made with the 128 after the Amiga.

 

Hilarious though that the 2600, two years later in 1979, was supposed to be replaced by their A8 architecture. Yet years after the 5200 flopped, Atari thought the A8 repackaged again as a game machine, could still be relevant by the mid to late 80's. Drunken captains of industry… sad or hilarious, take your pick!

[Schmudde]

 

Prioritizing the 8-bit line for sure. In_this_country. Same mistake C= made with the 128 after the Amiga.

 

Hilarious though that the 2600, two years later in 1979, was supposed to be replaced by their A8 architecture. Yet years after the 5200 flopped, Atari thought the A8 repackaged again as a game machine, could still be relevant by the mid to late 80's. Drunken captains of industry… sad or hilarious, take your pick!

 

Yeah, the XEGS wasn't a good idea. The few advertisements that did run for the XEGS made it all the more confusing by touting the machine's "computing power" when the 7800 was struggling to find an identity itself.

 

I remember reading Atarian magazine as a 7800 player and being really confused about the XEGS.

 

/ü

[Lost Dragon]

Ahhh, how i remember the news stories in Atari User Magazine regarding the XEGS:

Feb'87, Bob Gleadow is telling UK press that he's just brought back prototype XE hardware from USA to show UK software houses and it was Atari UK who convinced Atari USA to go with this, not 7800....

Aug'88, Bob Gleadow vist's UK Atari magazine offices in Adlington, Cheshire and talks about plans for the XE range, how it'd carry the flame etc, how Atari were going to set up 30-40 dedicated Atari Games Centres in the largest towns and cities of the UK, how Atari were encouraging software houses to port ST games to XE (and also 7800 and VCS).

Reality was rather different :-(

Even IF they had seen likes of Tower Toppler/Xenophobe/Commando/Deflektor/Jinks etc etc released at the time, it'd done nothing for the XEGS fortunes i feel.

It was clear from the start the UK Software houses were never going to get behind it in large numbers any more than they had the A400/800/XE/XL range......

[Lynxpro]

 

Prioritizing the 8-bit line for sure. In_this_country. Same mistake C= made with the 128 after the Amiga.

 

Hilarious though that the 2600, two years later in 1979, was supposed to be replaced by their A8 architecture. Yet years after the 5200 flopped, Atari thought the A8 repackaged again as a game machine, could still be relevant by the mid to late 80's. Drunken captains of industry… sad or hilarious, take your pick!

 

The 5200 didn't flop. High prices and the lack of automatic backward compatibility with the 2600 hurt its sales initially. It still sold well and was already projected to top Colecovision's sales/installed base when Warner forced Atari to discontinue it in favor of GCC's 7800. Atari's engineers wanted the 5200 to be backwards-compatible with the 2600; it was the stubborn foreign product manager who refused to incorporate it. He was also the one who didn't listen to the engineers about the problems with the non-centering 5200 joystick. The 5200 still sold close to 2 million and that was without it even being released in Europe, its much higher price compared to the Colecovision, its non-compatibility with the 2600 and initially lacking a 2600 adapter, a poor pack-in [Super Breakout until it was replaced with Pac-Man] while the Colecovision had Donkey Kong, and of course the joystick issue(s).

 

The XE Game System was a last-ditch effort to prop up the XE computer line. Software houses were canceling development for the XE line while blaming it all on piracy. Atari needed new users added to the installation base to convince them to continue development. They also had difficulty with retailers who didn't want to carry the 65XE but they'd carry it if it was repackaged as a game system so they could sell it to parents who wanted a game system for their kids but also offering computer abilities. If I'm not mistaken, Commodore even considered a C64 game system variant for that very same reason after the 8-bit mass market computer craze died in the face of the rebounding console video game industry at the time. It was also really easy to license the rights to already-existing Atari 8-bit video game titles and repackage them as cartridges for the XEGS. Development for Atari 8-bit was also arguably easier than for the 7800 because a lot of the industry programmers already had considerable experience coding for the platform, plus the MARIA was considered difficult to program in comparison. So that's why Atari Corp pushed out the XEGS when one would consider it to be lacking in common sense to launch such a machine while the 7800 was on the market.

 

And yes, the A8 hardware was originally intended to be released in 1979 as a successor to the VCS. That's what Nolan Bushnell wanted. However, Manny Gerard at Warner wanted to salvage the development costs around the VCS and him and Ray Kassar thought they could still make it into a big hit by licensing Space Invaders. In retrospect, both sides of their arguments were correct. Kassar wanted the A8 developed into a computer to compete with Apple and earn huge profits off of the MSRP versus how much lower the price would have to be if it were marketed as a video game console. An A8 game console at a low price combined with an exclusive to Space Invaders most likely would've sold just as well as the VCS ultimately did and it would've forced Mattel to go back to the drawing board for the Intellivision. But that's hindsight.

[DracIsBack]

 

it was the stubborn foreign product manager who refused to incorporate it. He was also the one who didn't listen to the engineers about the problems with the non-centering 5200 joystick.

 

Speaking as one of those, I'd love to get the product manager's take on why the decision was made. The flip side of the coin is often there are a lot of constraints (revenue targets, budgets, executive pressure, market feedback, partner pressure) that force your hand. As fun as it would be to tinker away at a product until it's absolutely perfect, the reality is that luxury never happens.

 

I've seen it go the other way where a "It'll take o more than 1 year to get this rewrite done" project that the engineering team pushed aggressively for ended up taking three and nearly shutting down our office..

[Lynxpro]

 

Speaking as one of those, I'd love to get the product manager's take on why the decision was made. The flip side of the coin is often there are a lot of constraints (revenue targets, budgets, executive pressure, market feedback, partner pressure) that force your hand. As fun as it would be to tinker away at a product until it's absolutely perfect, the reality is that luxury never happens.

 

I've seen it go the other way where a "It'll take o more than 1 year to get this rewrite done" project that the engineering team pushed aggressively for ended up taking three and nearly shutting down our office..

 

I should've just typed product manager. Got caught up in how the engineers described him. If I recall, he was French and they flew an inflatable frog at some trade conference they attended due to their displeasure with him and his decisions.

 

If "he" were interviewed today, he'd probably try to justify why those decisions were made. My understanding was that he objected to 2600 compatibility based upon how he saw the 5200; it supposedly wasn't a cost issue. It's true backwards compatibility wasn't exactly obvious in the industry at the time. The logic of it and explaining the 5200's alleged lack of success became conventional wisdom in the industry. That's why the 7800 had it and why the Sega Genesis offered it via the Power Base Converter for the SMS. Of course, conventional wisdom went on hold when Nintendo rejected it for the SNES, for better or worse.

[DracIsBack]

If "he" were interviewed today, he'd probably try to justify why those decisions were made.

 

He probably would. And to be honest, I'd love to hear them. Because there are always many sides to the story that make it interesting.

 

Never been in a tech company where it wasn't the culture of at least a few of the rank and file engineers to mutter condescendingly about how everyone else in the org should go about doing their jobs (sales, marketing, executives, the ceo), without really having much understanding of the factors that are at play for those people. Also never been in a company where when given the chance to move over, they see what life is really like for those people and usually (quickly) move back to engineering.

[Lost Dragon]

From a UK perspective, whilst piracy was indeed a key factor for the Atari 8 Bit Range being so poorly supported, it was far from the sole reason.

 

I've been lucky enought to field questions to people from likes of:Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Hewson, Firebird etc and you've everything from the small userbase compared to the C64, partly due to Atari hardware and software being over priced in the early days, to those like Andrew Hewson who thought the hardware was a step backwards.

 

Where on earth Atari thought they were suddenly going to gain massive software development for the XEGS and/or the 7800 in the UK, was beyond me.

 

Bad enough UK Press printing utter rubbish about who was developing and what for A8/7800...

 

Gauntlet on 7800 by Bob Armour (Ace/Zero), Gremlin with misc 7800 titles, John Croudy doing Druid II on A8, team of ex-Imagine coders doing 7800 titles..never confirmed...

 

It seems an awful lot was simply assumed or plain made up.

[empsolo]

From a UK perspective, whilst piracy was indeed a key factor for the Atari 8 Bit Range being so poorly supported, it was far from the sole reason.

 

I've been lucky enought to field questions to people from likes of:Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Hewson, Firebird etc and you've everything from the small userbase compared to the C64, partly due to Atari hardware and software being over priced in the early days, to those like Andrew Hewson who thought the hardware was a step backwards.

 

Where on earth Atari thought they were suddenly going to gain massive software development for the XEGS and/or the 7800 in the UK, was beyond me.

 

Bad enough UK Press printing utter rubbish about who was developing and what for A8/7800...

 

Gauntlet on 7800 by Bob Armour (Ace/Zero), Gremlin with misc 7800 titles, John Croudy doing Druid II on A8, team of ex-Imagine coders doing 7800 titles..never confirmed...

 

It seems an awful lot was simply assumed or plain made up.

Welcome to Atari circa 1987...

[Lynxpro]

Welcome to Atari circa 1987...

 

Throwing everything they had at the wall and hoping something would stick...

Edited November 26, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Zonie]

Very interesting. I must have been in a bubble in the late 80's, cause I can't recall a single time Atari promoted anything other than maybe the occasional ST ad here or there. I do remember the 2600 revival (under fitty bux), but not the 7800 or XE stuff. Guess I had my head too buried into computers, music, sports and girls to have noticed much of anything else.

 

Looking back at my magazine subscriptions at the time… nope! No mention of the 7800 or XE in the likes of AmigaWorld, Amazing Computing, RUN or Compute! Okay, maybe Compute! had a few.

... and certainly not in Compute's Gazette... (C64 mag)