How powerful was the cancelled Atari Panther compared to the Atari ST/Amiga?

[Leeroy ST]

1 minute ago, mr_me said:

GCC might have had a royalty deal with Warner regarding Atari 7800 consoles and cartridges, with the patents and copyrights staying with GCC.  Considering the deal they made with namco, royalties sound likely. Even if it were a sale of 7800 patents and copyrights to Warner the IP remains with GCC until they are paid and Warner was no longer in the consumer electronics business.  Whatever contract Warner had with GCC, Tramiel didn't take it.  Warner's plan was to sell atari 7800 consoles at $150 and cartridges at $25 to $30, there's plenty of money for everyone.  At $50 a console and $10 a cartridge, there's almost no money in it for GCC and no reason to accept Tramiel's offer.  Now Tramiel has nothing invested in the 7800 consoles and cartridges sitting in the warehouse, he got them for free, and he has plenty of other unsold stock that he can liquidate.  His offer to GCC shows that he is not serious about video games.

No it shows he didn't want to pay the money, you can't make up some bullshit spin to fit your narrative without evidence, you're drawing random conclusions, especially since Jack had a track record showing similar. It's clear that a better deal was done later based on the terms being different by end of 1985 (whatever those terms were whichj Jack agreed to pay GCC for.)

 

3 minutes ago, mr_me said:

What value?  Tramiel got all the arcade IP for free.

I don't get the difficulty you're having between the difference between Atari Corp and Atari Games which are two different companies with their own studios and staff.

 

Which also had their own Ips, even GCC had an ip or two that wasn't owned by Atari that may have been part of the negotiations or if it was before the discussions, they had some royalties or rights to them since they made the games that had to be negotiated. 

[mr_me]

Prior to the 1984 sale there was one company, Atari Inc.  Atari inc had a commercial/arcade games division, a consumer/home games division, a computer division, and a communications division.  A company is made up of employees and other assets including intellectual properties.  Tramiel didn't get any employees of any division through the sale.  He got certain assets and that included all the arcade division intellectual properties.  Atari Inc was not split up, they closed certain divisions terminated all those employees.  They changed their name to Atari Games at Tramiel's request so everyone would know which Atari is a games company and which is the computer company.

 

What part did I make up regarding GCC? We know GCC held the rights, we know they had an agreement with Warner, and we know that agreement didn't transfer to Tramiel.  The numbers that I mentioned are all from Steve Golson of GCC, the engineer of the maria chip.  He's the one that said they didn't accept Tramiel's lowball offer.

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

They changed their name to Atari Games at Tramiel's request so everyone would know which Atari is a games company and which is the computer company.

 

 

All you're doing is proving my point that Jack couldn't get the division even if they wanted to. Which ended up being controlled by Namco the same year the ST came out. 

 

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

What part did I make up regarding GCC? We know GCC held the rights, we know they had an agreement with Warner, and we know that agreement didn't transfer to Tramiel.  The numbers that I mentioned are all from Steve Golson of GCC, the engineer of the maria chip.  He's the one that said they didn't accept Tramiel's lowball offer.

You're not addressing any of the points I made with this post which is why you're not understanding why your stance that not negotiating the original deal with GCC meant they didn't want the console division is a conclusion that isn't based in reality. Not only did GCC have ip, but it's not jacks fault Warner didn't fix issues with GCC before the sale.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Leeroy ST

[zzip]

On 9/11/2020 at 7:12 PM, ColecoKing said:

Atari didn't panic over Coleco sales, they were losing money on the 5200 and it wasn't selling. I'm sure they wanted to win as well so they went back to the lab for a new console with BC for VCS. Would have worked to if Atari Jack didn't keep the damn thing alive.

Mr_me 5200 pacman released close to the 2600 version but didn't even receive half the attention, it seems people wanted to play Star Raiders on it instead.

But why would they think the 7800 would be successful if the 5200 wasn't?   They were screwing over the Atari loyalists who bought the 5200 at launch.  A good number of them were going to lose trust in Atari.   That is just a terrible PR move.  Good thing the internet didn't exist in those days :)

 

They were also working on a BC adaptor for 5200.  They could throw that thing in as a holiday bundle for future Christmas seasons and help shift stubborn 2600 owners.

 

[zzip]

On 9/12/2020 at 2:42 PM, ColecoKing said:

Going into the Panther and Amiga, Amiga had a big problem. Amiga eventually passed the Atari ST and had many ,many gaming software but near all the games weren't big hits, they had a ton of games and nothing that stood out or had a major impact on consumers. The closest you got was Turrican and Team17 and this was something Atari didn't have to deal with as they had their big IPS and also games like Dungeon master and others selling good numbers.

Didn't Dungeon Master eventually get ported to Amiga?   It was on PC

 

[mr_me]

 

32 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

All you're doing is proving my point that Jack couldn't get the division even if they wanted to. Which ended up being controlled by Namco the same year the ST came out. 

 

You're not addressing any of the points I made with this post which is why you're not understanding why your stance that not negotiating the original deal with GCC meant they didn't want the console division is a conclusion that isn't based in reality. Not only did GCC have ip, but it's not jacks fault Warner didn't fix issues with GCC before the sale.

Tramiel got all the existing Atari IP created before the 1984 sale, Namco later got all the Atari Games IP created after the 1984 sale.

 

Why would Tramiel want the deal Warner negotiated with GCC when we know Tramiel wants to sell the stuff at less than half the price.  He is under no obligation to honour Warner's deal.

 

You'd have to ask the Tramiels what exactly they wanted from Atari Inc.  My understanding was they were interested in Atari's computer manufacturing facilities.  And they didn't get any division of atari, because they did not get any of it's employees through the sale, they got certain assets and contracts.  And they didn't pay a dime for the video game assets.  

Edited September 13, 2020 by mr_me

[zzip]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

Atari Inc was not split up, they closed certain divisions terminated all those employees.  They changed their name to Atari Games at Tramiel's request so everyone would know which Atari is a games company and which is the computer company.

And yet they were both named "Atari" and used the same fuji symbol, so how exactly does that prevent confusion?   If I had not read in the magazines that Jack didn't buy the arcade division, I would have still assumed that they were the same company

[Leeroy ST]

1 minute ago, mr_me said:

 

Tramiel got all the existing Atari IP  

Already with this first part you are showing you aren't reading my points and ignoring them.

Also some Atari arcade releases/ips in 84 did not go to Atari Corp.

 

But also again HCC either had their own Ips up for negotiation adding to the complexity or they had royalities/other deals with Warner on the games since they developed them which also could have complicated negotiations.

 

4 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Why would Tramiel want the deal Warner negotiated with GCC when we know Tramiel wants to sell the stuff at less than half the price.  He is under no obligation to honour Warner's deal.

I've been saying this for pages. It's literally why negotiations continued until 1985 which I was telling others.

 

 

[Leeroy ST]

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

And yet they were both named "Atari" and used the same fuji symbol, so how exactly does that prevent confusion?   If I had not read in the magazines that Jack didn't buy the arcade division, I would have still assumed that they were the same company

Most people did, when Atari Games sued nintendo every article had to go on a 4-5 paragraph flashback to get people up to speed that it wasn't the Atari with the game consoles and the computers. This was also true when Williams brought them years later and people though they brought Atari when Atari Corp was working on the Jaguar.

 

This is an example of one of the mistakes that you can fully put the blame on Jack for.

 

Not as dumb as leader of infogrames being a big Atari fan and renaming his company Atari SA which caused it's own confusion some years ago. I think there's 7 Atari's out there.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Leeroy ST

[empsolo]

Blowing out the entire warehouse catalog for 50 bucks a console? At that point that sounds like the Tremiels had no interest in game development because it would become cost prohibitive to do any development. There would be no return on the investment after hiring dev teams, marketers, and manufacturing services. Unless you intended on paying people literally pennies per hour.

Edited September 13, 2020 by empsolo

[mr_me]

2 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Already with this first part you are showing you aren't reading my points and ignoring them.

Also some Atari arcade releases/ips in 84 did not go to Atari Corp.

 

But also again HCC either had their own Ips up for negotiation adding to the complexity or they had royalities/other deals with Warner on the games since they developed them which also could have complicated negotiations.

 

I've been saying this for pages. It's literally why negotiations continued until 1985 which I was telling others.

 

 

Yes, any arcade IP created after July 1 1984 and any work in progress was not included in the sale.

 

I don't know what agreement GCC had with Warner regarding IP.  With Ms Pacman, copyrights went to Midway (and then Namco), with a perpetual royalty deal for GCC.  GCC completed two arcade games for Warner, Quantum and Food Fight, prior to the 1984 sale.  I know Food Fight had an advance on royalties deal.  The Atari 7800 and cartridges could also have had a royalty deal with IP going to warner.  Whatever the deal was with warner, Tramiel wanted a different deal and couldn't sell the inventory without the permission of GCC.  At the prices discussed it wasn't about manufacturing but about liquidating inventory.

 

On july 4 1984 a local radio station in texas reported that the atari manufacturing facility in el paso was not included in the warner sale to tramiel and would be shut down.  El paso was where atari 7800 consoles were being manufactured.

 

"1984 July 23: Business Week reported that Atari's Jack Tramiel had "axed several of Atari's current products, including the 7800 video game system"

 

Publicizing that information could just be part of Tramiel's hardball negotiating, as he would rather liquidate the inventory as quickly as posdible.

[Leeroy ST]

32 minutes ago, mr_me said:

 

 

Publicizing that information could just be part of Tramiel's hardball negotiating, as he would rather liquidate the inventory as quickly as possible.

But his actions later would conflict with that, it's likely he just wanted to get rid of the other Atari inventory as quickly as possible and use the 7800 in store as a start to to the production numbers because it's very clear that 100k included those warehouse shipments.

[empsolo]

32 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

But his actions later would conflict with that, it's likely he just wanted to get rid of the other Atari inventory as quickly as possible and use the 7800 in store as a start to to the production numbers because it's very clear that 100k included those warehouse shipments.

But why blow it out at $50 a pop? That's practically fire-sale prices at that point. It would be extremely counter intuitive to blow out your inventory of consoles and games just to lose money in marketing, development, and manufacturing of new games and consoles. It only makes sense that Jack wanted to firesale the 7800 to clear out his warehouses for his computers. But when GCC said no and wanted proper royalties, Atari was forced into a razor and razorblades model for the 7800 in order properly pay GCC and make profit.

Edited September 14, 2020 by empsolo

[ColecoKing]

Turboray

Wow. Im are literally touched in the head. The 6502 performance is hindered by Maria on the 7800 directly, and indirectly when trying to create/manage more complex DLs for more detail. Rikki & Vikki runs in high res mode, scrapyard dog runs in that low-res 'fat pixel' mode, and a lot of 7800 games draw even fatter pixels for performance reasons. The 7800 is limited in how much detail it can show per line/ per screen because the convoluted nature of Maria. Platformers literally dominated the 8bit and 16bit generations (and there are games on the NES use 16bit game design asthetics/mechanics ). Xevious is a moronic example of what the NES can do for shmups, not to mention ignoring all the negatives of the 7800 port. Also, NES games run at 60hz (with scrolling too). Do yourself a favor and stay in your lane (the 7800 subforum) if you gonna spew bias nonsense.

You are making completely different argument than what I am making. I never said the Nintendo didn't do better than Commando or the Xevious but Xevious came out on NES in 1985 and 7800 in 1986 we are talking about looking at the games from past perspective. There is nothing bias about the well established consensus that Atari can have more sprites on screen without flicker and can use it for terrain while NES have better sprite quality and detail for tile games, where is the bias?

How about the flight simulator gifs I posted? Are those bias? Why Nintendo have nothing even similar to any of 700 flight simulators and they are all choppy twitch shooters? Flight simulator plays into 7800 strengths just like grid tiles are Nintendo strength what bias? You project your own vision of what was actually said ha.

[ColecoKing]

zzip

But why would they think the 7800 would be successful if the 5200 wasn't? They were screwing over the Atari loyalists who bought the 5200 at launch. A good number of them were going to lose trust in Atari. That is just a terrible PR move. Good thing the internet didn't exist in those days :)

They were also working on a BC adaptor for 5200. They could throw that thing in as a holiday bundle for future Christmas seasons and help shift stubborn 2600 owners.

Adapters are expensive.

But this is not surprise anyway Warner Atari notirious and piss everyone off, they crew over everyone. They piss off customers, they piss off developers, they piss off early adopters, they piss off retailers, they piss off investors, they screw over their own employees, they piss of your sunday school teach, nothing new. Mattel showed that people could have taken advantageous of terribly run company but they made a few mistakes that gave 2600 permanent status for years. Even for Atari themself they had one hit wonder outside maybe Lynx but that's a different Atari.

1 million 52000 compared to 1.5 million Coleco in 1984 yeah Coleco do over 2 million later but that was when the 5200 was discontinued they cancelled it because they saw the red they wanted instant hit like 2600 major profits.

They release REDESIGN of 5200 console without fixing controller problem!!!!! Piss off more customers they run far off into the sunset. other companies made better controllers they should have talked to them to make officially licensed product to bundle with the redesigned 5200 if they could not make it themselves, instead they sat there and acted like Blackberry though name alone would sell 5 million consoles ore more first year. Good luck hahahahahaha.

[Goochman]

I dont have any articles or interviews, but from my memory back in the day is Jack didnt care about the VG market.  There may have been people "hired" in those positions as any cash coming in was needed but not the focus.

 

You also cannot trust *anything* Atari put out in interviews.  Almost never did they deliver what they said in the press.  Alot of what Atari said was just throwing out to see what stuck.

 

There is a quote somewhere from Jack that they didnt care about the 2600 and was blowing out the stock to keep the retailers off his back.  They got so many requests for 2600 stock is when the light bulb went off and Jack realized he can make money back in the VG market (2600 jr, he had the 7800, etc...) - Thats when Jack put more effort into playing in the console market - it was to fund the Computer division, not beat Nintendo.

 

 

[zzip]

1 minute ago, Goochman said:

You also cannot trust *anything* Atari put out in interviews.  Almost never did they deliver what they said in the press.  Alot of what Atari said was just throwing out to see what stuck.

That's true of any company.  They are always going to put a positive spin in interviews and do press releases that make the most mundane things sound amazing.

 

But now years after the fact you can find interviews where the people involved are more honest, like that Leonard Tramiel talk I posted or that Michael Katz interview someone else posted which basically confirmed what we all had already figured out.   Jack only really cared about the ST at first, and selling the console line was just a way to earn easy cash to help that.

[zzip]

51 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

zzip
 

 

 

Adapters are expensive.

But this is not surprise anyway Warner Atari notirious and piss everyone off, they crew over everyone. They piss off customers, they piss off developers, they piss off early adopters, they piss off retailers, they piss off investors, they screw over their own employees, they piss of your sunday school teach, nothing new. Mattel showed that people could have taken advantageous of terribly run company but they made a few mistakes that gave 2600 permanent status for years. Even for Atari themself they had one hit wonder outside maybe Lynx but that's a different Atari.

1 million 52000 compared to 1.5 million Coleco in 1984 yeah Coleco do over 2 million later but that was when the 5200 was discontinued they cancelled it because they saw the red they wanted instant hit like 2600 major profits.

They release REDESIGN of 5200 console without fixing controller problem!!!!! Piss off more customers they run far off into the sunset. other companies made better controllers they should have talked to them to make officially licensed product to bundle with the redesigned 5200 if they could not make it themselves, instead they sat there and acted like Blackberry though name alone would sell 5 million consoles ore more first year. Good luck hahahahahaha.

yes, adapters are expensive, but sometimes you have to take a loss to boost your marketshare.   Maybe they just didn't have the business model of consoles figured out yet.

 

Still I have a hard time wrapping my head around what they were thinking.  Besides screwing over 5200 owners, they knew the console business was weak after 1982, and was still weak in 84,  why would they think another new system featuring mostly the same games that had already been released on 2600/5200 was going to turn things around and not be another sales disappointment?

[Leeroy ST]

There's a difference between Jack focusing on the ST first than consoles until money came in, and lying saying he, or at least the companies top brass, didn't care about games at all and didn't put in any budget or effort into gaming. 

 

Those are two different things, and when you fumble the timeline with Nintendo it makes it an even more flawed argument. Atari was competing with Nintendo with what they could at the time and last I checked people were still buying Atari consoles and it took time for Nintendo to actually get on top. You can't dismiss things like third party lock-down deals which also screwed over Sega which had more games and games of similar type to what Nintendo was selling in addition to unique titles and it did worse. 

 

What it boils down to is some users overly hating jack and assuming that Atari fumbled the ball and didn't even try when what actually happened is Nintendo got lucky and had strategies in place that wouldn't be noticed at launch but after word would lead to long-term damage to its competitors and when the press had Sega and Atari as footnotes and starts only reporting on Nintendo than retailers will act accordingly.

 

There were many factors to why things ended up the way they did not just one, and especially not one that isn't really true. 

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/13/2020 at 9:34 PM, zzip said:

Didn't Dungeon Master eventually get ported to Amiga?   It was on PC

 

Yep. 

Needed 1Meg of memory, but Amiga version had  stereo sound. 

 

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/14/2020 at 3:50 PM, zzip said:

That's true of any company.  They are always going to put a positive spin in interviews and do press releases that make the most mundane things sound amazing.

 

But now years after the fact you can find interviews where the people involved are more honest, like that Leonard Tramiel talk I posted or that Michael Katz interview someone else posted which basically confirmed what we all had already figured out.   Jack only really cared about the ST at first, and selling the console line was just a way to earn easy cash to help that.

From personal experience and not just relating to Atari and the Tramiel Family, you build a much better picture of events by collecting interviews and information from the employees of a company, than the company heads, you just need a good number of them, for the most balanced appraisal. 

 

So much of what Sam Tramiel said in interviews never came to pass or was grossly exaggerated, the interviews just make for a curio when reading back through them now. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/14/2020 at 3:50 PM, zzip said:

That's true of any company.  They are always going to put a positive spin in interviews and do press releases that make the most mundane things sound amazing.

 

But now years after the fact you can find interviews where the people involved are more honest, like that Leonard Tramiel talk I posted or that Michael Katz interview someone else posted which basically confirmed what we all had already figured out.   Jack only really cared about the ST at first, and selling the console line was just a way to earn easy cash to help that.

Just to clarify my earlier statement, I learnt more about the goings on of the likes of:

 

Imagitec Design

Bullfrog

System 3

Core Design

Argonaut 

HMS

 

 

By speaking with and reading interviews etc others carried out with the staff of, than i ever did from likes of:

 

Peter Molyneux 

Jez San

Jim Gregory 

Martin Hooley

Jim Gregory 

Mark Cale. 

 

Company bosses far too often like to use interviews to rewrite history, blame others including the Tramiel family, rather than admit they had staffing and financial issues,promised far more than they could deliver etc. 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

On 9/9/2020 at 8:29 PM, zzip said:

I think an STgs may have worked, but it depends on the year.   It would have to be before the Sega Genesis.  If it had the blitter, that would help make up for lack of sprite hardware.

 

Found some more varied talk from UK developers regarding the STE Blitter:

 

Jez San, (Argonaut) :As I understand it, the Blitter is virtually unusable. 

 

 

Glen Corpes (Bullfrog)  The Blitter's not as good as it could be. 

 

 

 

Wayne Smithson (Blood Money) The Blitter is pretty useless as well because there's no barrel shift of any kind, you still have to shift the graphics. 

 

And apart from the odd shoot-em-up, the hardware scrolling will hardly be used. 

 

 

Jeff Minter:I wouldn't mind using the hardware scrolling just because it's there

 

John Brandwood (Ocean Software):I think the Blitter and hardware scrolling are the best parts  (of the STE) and the machine (ST) was desperate for those. 

 

Andy Pennell (HiSoft) The Blitter is nice 

[Lost Dragon]

Whilst looking at industry figure talk on the STE, this quote from the late Les Player  of Atari UK caught my eye and reflects the issues within Atari at that time. 

 

 

LES:Atari hyped it (the STE) long before it arrived and that was always going to be a problem. Even insiders at Atari weren't sure what the machine would be like and people started to read between the lines. 

 

 

As a software developer now I can see Atari having real problems getting people to write for it. 

 

But to be fair, it's not really Atari's fault. It's just a problem of evolution. 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Leeroy ST]

6 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

But to be fair, it's not really Atari's fault. It's just a problem of evolution. 

I don't know about that, the ST was made from the get go to be a powerful but cheap way to get a computer to the mass market. Corner cutting at all, so I wouldn't believe evolution was to blame for the STE's issues since it was already based on a machine that had compromises in the first place.