Another missed opportunity by Atari?

[leech]

2 minutes ago, zzip said:

Really?  That's weird.    Seems to be common thing for RPGs though.  ST has Ultima 2-6, but not 1.   Not even the "remastered" version of Ultima I that Origin released in 86.   And Questron II, but not I.

Yeah, I can almost understand not getting the earlier ones, or the last ones (like Ultima) but to randomly skip one in the middle like Phantasie for the Amiga is odd.  Especially for a game that lets you transfer your characters from one game to the next!

Would be cool if someone could port the Apple IIGS version to the ST / Amiga of Ultima 1

[zzip]

30 minutes ago, leech said:

Would be cool if someone could port the Apple IIGS version to the ST / Amiga of Ultima 1

Yeah, as I said, Origin re-released it in 1986, rewritten in assembly, ported to C64, DOS, MSX, IIgs and other platforms. and ran full page color ads in magazines promoting it.    It's weird that they didn't see fit to bring it to up-and-coming systems like ST and Amiga at the time,  but IIgs got a port (Maybe because Richard Garriott was an Apple guy?) 

 

For Phantasie,  I think Phantasie 3 released on Amiga when it was a brand new game,  and the others in the series were ports of previous releases.  Maybe they were disappointed in the sales of Phantasie 3/1 and never bothered to finish the Phantasie 2 port?  Amiga sales did get off to a rocky start.

[leech]

The IIGS re-release happened in 1994 according to Mobey Games.  I think they did a new port for it as you said, because Richard Garriott had written them all on the Apple II.  I think that version also supports the Mocking Board.

[Xebec]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Really?  That's weird.    Seems to be common thing for RPGs though.  ST has Ultima 2-6, but not 1.   Not even the "remastered" version of Ultima I that Origin released in 86.   And Questron II, but not I.

No 68000 systems got Ultima I   for what it's worth:

https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Computer_ports_of_Ultima_I

 

(Amiga also did not get Ultima 2!)

 

Was really happy to play Phantasie I-III on the ST though back in the day

[leech]

23 minutes ago, Xebec said:

No 68000 systems got Ultima I   for what it's worth:

https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Computer_ports_of_Ultima_I

 

(Amiga also did not get Ultima 2!)

 

Was really happy to play Phantasie I-III on the ST though back in the day

I keep meaning to sut down and have a go at beating all three!  I had them on the 8bit, but decided I should with them on the ST.

[zzip]

18 hours ago, Xebec said:

No 68000 systems got Ultima I   for what it's worth:

https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Computer_ports_of_Ultima_I

 

(Amiga also did not get Ultima 2!)

 

Was really happy to play Phantasie I-III on the ST though back in the day

True,  but ST got that weird GEM-based Ultima II that Sierra put out.

 

I still like playing Phantasie III on ST from time to time.   It's an easy RPG to get into,  and it has really nice visuals.

[+DarkLord]

I agree with you about the interface for Ultima II on the ST.

 

In fact, I never completed it because the whole conversion

just kinda put me off. Probably didn't help that I played III

first, then went *back* to II...

 

[Dmitry]

Speaking on the original topic, of Atari's lost opportunities, from my perspective, nobody made it.  I mean Sinclair, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Radio Shack, not to mention Osbourne, Kaypro, etc.  I was disappointed in Atari for a while, but nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight, I have to say, they never had a chance.

In fact all those early companies are gone, except one, Apple.  ...and they nearly went out of business for a few years there.

 

Speaking of Apple, what a turnaround.    I'm glad I got on the Mac train after Atari....  For me the Mac market is quite the exciting "little" market.  The fact that Apple just released M1 Mac's on their own silicon and on power per watt basis, is stomping the competition, to me this is about as an exciting time to be in computing, as it was in the 80's.

 

That they introduce exciting languages like Swift and get this huge swell of focus on their free development platform, I see parallels to the old days of integrated-basic computing there as well.  in terms of buying a computer and writing code for it with a rich community of coders writing for a beloved platform - it's all there.  Just missing player missile graphics and a cartridge port.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Dmitry

[Xebec]

On 12/18/2020 at 6:07 PM, Dmitry said:

Speaking on the original topic, of Atari's lost opportunities, from my perspective, nobody made it.  I mean Sinclair, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Radio Shack, not to mention Osbourne, Kaypro, etc.  I was disappointed in Atari for a while, but nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight, I have to say, they never had a chance.

In fact all those early companies are gone, except one, Apple.  ...and they nearly went out of business for a few years there.

 

Speaking of Apple, what a turnaround.    I'm glad I got on the Mac train after Atari....  For me the Mac market is quite the exciting "little" market.  The fact that Apple just released M1 Mac's on their own silicon and on power per watt basis, is stomping the competition, to me this is about as an exciting time to be in computing, as it was in the 80's.

 

That they introduce exciting languages like Swift and get this huge swell of focus on their free development platform, I see parallels to the old days of integrated-basic computing there as well.  in terms of buying a computer and writing code for it with a rich community of coders writing for a beloved platform - it's all there.  Just missing player missile graphics and a cartridge port.

 

 

 

 

I sometimes think that..  but a few things to consider:

 

- The Atari 400/800 did start outselling the Apple II for a couple of years, with the main failure point (imo) of the Atari being that Warner-Atari didn't open up the hardware and was much less friendly with developers than Apple.

 

- The Apple II essentially gave Apple the $$ to fund the Mac

 

- If the Atari 400/800 had embraced developers, and continued selling well - and Atari hadn't fucked over Jay Miner and friends with the bonuses, we could have seen something like the Amiga much earlier - given extra funding Atari would have had (up to the end of 1983 at least), and it might have even launched before the Mac - vastly overshadowing it.    

 

Atari and Commodore were destined to destroy each other once Jack left Commodore, I don't think there was anything that could have saved either platform long term after that;  other than maybe the Amiga (with extra funding, focus on 3D graphics later, etc) becoming a brand of console like Playstation or Xbox..  

 

I think Atari legitimately had a chance in 1979 to at least be second to the PC (like the Mac) but it was over once they failed to pay the hardware developers and didn't embrace their vision for the next generation .. 

[leech]

1 hour ago, Xebec said:

I sometimes think that..  but a few things to consider:

 

- The Atari 400/800 did start outselling the Apple II for a couple of years, with the main failure point (imo) of the Atari being that Warner-Atari didn't open up the hardware and was much less friendly with developers than Apple.

 

- The Apple II essentially gave Apple the $$ to fund the Mac

 

- If the Atari 400/800 had embraced developers, and continued selling well - and Atari hadn't fucked over Jay Miner and friends with the bonuses, we could have seen something like the Amiga much earlier - given extra funding Atari would have had (up to the end of 1983 at least), and it might have even launched before the Mac - vastly overshadowing it.    

 

Atari and Commodore were destined to destroy each other once Jack left Commodore, I don't think there was anything that could have saved either platform long term after that;  other than maybe the Amiga (with extra funding, focus on 3D graphics later, etc) becoming a brand of console like Playstation or Xbox..  

 

I think Atari legitimately had a chance in 1979 to at least be second to the PC (like the Mac) but it was over once they failed to pay the hardware developers and didn't embrace their vision for the next generation .. 

Yeah, I think Jay Miner and Co left due to how Warner was treating the engineers and because he really wanted to start on a project using the 68000 much earlier than others, and finally just said screw it and left and started their own thing.

Basically Bushnell selling to Warner was the original downfall of a very profitable company.  I think up until that point they were one of the fastest growing companies and started an entire industry for the moat part. 

I have said the same before, it was also the 16 bit era battle of C= vs Atari that hammered the nails in the coffin.  Sure, Jack murdered some of the heart and soul when he took over and made Atari Corp.  Seems they had a LOT of cool projects they were working on and he sort of smashed away all of them he didn't see as being profitable.  (I think I read somewhere that Atari wanted to get into VR as early as the early 80s.)

Granted knowing all that I do now about VR, it really hasn't been ready for home use until the last few years.

[calimero]

Lot of about Atari Inc. can be found here: http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/11.html 

[Xebec]

1 hour ago, leech said:

Yeah, I think Jay Miner and Co left due to how Warner was treating the engineers and because he really wanted to start on a project using the 68000 much earlier than others, and finally just said screw it and left and started their own thing.

Basically Bushnell selling to Warner was the original downfall of a very profitable company.  I think up until that point they were one of the fastest growing companies and started an entire industry for the moat part. 

I have said the same before, it was also the 16 bit era battle of C= vs Atari that hammered the nails in the coffin.  Sure, Jack murdered some of the heart and soul when he took over and made Atari Corp.  Seems they had a LOT of cool projects they were working on and he sort of smashed away all of them he didn't see as being profitable.  (I think I read somewhere that Atari wanted to get into VR as early as the early 80s.)

Granted knowing all that I do now about VR, it really hasn't been ready for home use until the last few years.

Agreed.

 

It was also unfortunately really hard to get capital in the 70s (oil crisis), and in the early 80s only those companies with chip fabs were getting money (fabless wasn't taken seriously - Altera, the original FPGA maker, actually lied about buying/owning fabs so they'd get venture funding to get off the ground, in 1983 or so).  

 

Did Bushnell give the go-ahead for the Atari 400/800 project?  or did Warner green light that?  

 

Atari did finally do VR - sorta - with the Jaguar, and Missile Command VR and a few others that never got fully fleshed out.  I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do something in the 80s -- along with the STacy, portfolio, etc and other cool things they had available.  

 

It was kinda fun to live the C= vs. Atari battles of the mid/late 80s but yes.. that was unfortunately game over for both of them.   Perhaps the last real chance was the Amiga could have potentially taken down the Mac with proper investments and marketing, but C= leadership (post-Tramiel) was even worse than Warner Atari.. 

[MrMaddog]

Atari, in the early 80's, had a lot of cool research projects like the VR room where you "point and move" at objects on the wall with your hands.  but of course they all were turned down by Warner management who only cared about keeping the 2600 VCS on life support.

 

The Atari vs. C= fanboi war was just something within the home computer demographic mainly with schoolchildren to argue, but the reality was that outside of the home it was the "business" computers that mattered which eventually made their way to the homes.

 

IMHO, Jack should have focused more on rebuilding the home computer market in the US with the ST instead of splitting the whole company's attention between the high end PC market (owned by IBM & Apple) and low end video game consoles (dominiated by Nintendo).

 

[leech]

1 hour ago, MrMaddog said:

Atari, in the early 80's, had a lot of cool research projects like the VR room where you "point and move" at objects on the wall with your hands.  but of course they all were turned down by Warner management who only cared about keeping the 2600 VCS on life support.

 

The Atari vs. C= fanboi war was just something within the home computer demographic mainly with schoolchildren to argue, but the reality was that outside of the home it was the "business" computers that mattered which eventually made their way to the homes.

 

IMHO, Jack should have focused more on rebuilding the home computer market in the US with the ST instead of splitting the whole company's attention between the high end PC market (owned by IBM & Apple) and low end video game consoles (dominiated by Nintendo).

 

Commodore and Atari both engaged in price cutting to try to out sell each other, cutting their profits way down.  Basically Jack getting kicked out of his own company and then buying Atari kind of killed both of them in the end.  Apple on the flip side of that almost priced themselves out of the market by charging too damn much.  So timeline was, '94, Commodore declared bankruptcy, '96 Atari did a reverse merger with JTS (who declared bankruptcy a little while later) and Apple in '98 almost went bankrupt, but managed to borrow a giant chunk of money from Microsoft. 

 

Always blew my mind how Commodore could have died though, as they had their own chip fab.  I mean if nothing else they could have been making chips for everyone else and stuck around. 

[calimero]

7 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Atari, in the early 80's, had a lot of cool research projects like the VR room where you "point and move" at objects on the wall with your hands.  but of course they all were turned down by Warner management who only cared about keeping the 2600 VCS on life support.

 

On the link that I post http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/11.html you can read about that and many other sci-fi things that Atari Inc. do. Alan Kay and key people from Intel work at Atari at that time...

 

“Point and move” or VR room that you mention, I put video on YT:

 

 

[calimero]

 

11 hours ago, Xebec said:

I sometimes think that..  but a few things to consider:

 

- The Atari 400/800 did start outselling the Apple II for a couple of years, with the main failure point (imo) of the Atari being that Warner-Atari didn't open up the hardware and was much less friendly with developers than Apple.

 

- If the Atari 400/800 had embraced developers, and continued selling well - and Atari hadn't fucked over Jay Miner and friends with the bonuses, we could have seen something like the Amiga much earlier - given extra funding Atari would have had (up to the end of 1983 at least), and it might have even launched before the Mac - vastly overshadowing it.    

 

.... 

If you talk about missed opportunity then deal with IBM to build computer for them, is biggest Atari missed opportunity (Atari 800 could be IBM PC). 
 

Good compilation of references is:

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-almost-was-atari-ibm-pc

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by calimero

[calimero]

6 hours ago, leech said:

Apple in '98 almost went bankrupt, but managed to borrow a giant chunk of money from Microsoft. 

Apple had lost of 816 millions in 1996. so 150 millions from Microsoft in 1997. (buying non voting stocks) surely did not save it.

In whole deal with Apple/Microsoft (when "dr." Bill Gates appear on stage) in 1997., beside: web browser, 150 millions, Office coming back  to Mac OS... Microsoft probably pay Apple much, much more for ending ongoing trials (among them scandal with QuickTime code that ended up in Microsoft Video for Windows! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company).

 

(sorry for offtopic)

6 hours ago, leech said:

 

Always blew my mind how Commodore could have died though, as they had their own chip fab.  I mean if nothing else they could have been making chips for everyone else and stuck around. 

I was wondering the same for years. Did Commodore produce any chips for third party clients?

 

Today, even Apple with in house CPU designers does not have production plants (chip fab.)... it was remarkable what Commodore had back in time. It is no wonder that they obliterate competition. 

[leech]

I have seen other places say it was 500 million that Microsoft lent them, and supposedly they paid them back within a year.  Not sure if anyone around still knows the exact number. 

 

But even 150 in 1998 money would be enough to get them on their feet a bit.  That is why Sam Tramiel started suing everyone, trying to get some cash into Atari before they went the way of Commodore.  Like suing Sega over using 9 pin joystick ports.  Thanks guys for forcing us to all buy different controllers for the Saturn and Dreamcast!

 

For the chip fab, only thing I can think of is that they just didn't take on other chips, and people had stopped using MOS designs.  Hard to imagine that we wouldn't have gotten some companies that would have been happy with "Made in America" or something.   It is like Nokia, they used to have their own fabs as well, I don't think they do anymore, an 'Atari' happened to them too, though from my understanding, a lot of the old people are there through HMD.

 

The most annoying thing for me out of the death of Atari and Commodore is that we are now all stuck using Windows, or mac OS, unless you like tinkering with your computer and enjoy privacy and control of your system and run Linux.  There simply isn't anything as straight forward and easy to use as TOS/GEM though.

[zzip]

On 12/18/2020 at 6:07 PM, Dmitry said:

Speaking on the original topic, of Atari's lost opportunities, from my perspective, nobody made it.  I mean Sinclair, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Radio Shack, not to mention Osbourne, Kaypro, etc.  I was disappointed in Atari for a while, but nowadays, with the benefit of hindsight, I have to say, they never had a chance.

In fact all those early companies are gone, except one, Apple.  ...and they nearly went out of business for a few years there.

The biggest missed opportunity was putting most of their eggs in the computing basket rather than the console basket.   The days of proprietary computing platforms were numbered once IBM entered the ring, but nobody realized it yet.   But proprietary gaming systems are still going strong until this day.

 

Conventional wisdom back then was that consoles were dead and computers were the future, but conventional wisdom was wrong, as it often is. 

 

Atari had a market advantage in consoles in 1984, and they could have used that to ward off Nintendo before they got a foothold in the west.   They had the option to license the NES console and games that came with it.

[leech]

21 hours ago, zzip said:

The biggest missed opportunity was putting most of their eggs in the computing basket rather than the console basket.   The days of proprietary computing platforms were numbered once IBM entered the ring, but nobody realized it yet.   But proprietary gaming systems are still going strong until this day.

 

Conventional wisdom back then was that consoles were dead and computers were the future, but conventional wisdom was wrong, as it often is. 

 

Atari had a market advantage in consoles in 1984, and they could have used that to ward off Nintendo before they got a foothold in the west.   They had the option to license the NES console and games that came with it.

Didn't they also basically have the 7800 finished in 1984, then scuttled it after a small release, and then released it in full in 1986?  Jack didn't think consoles and games were worth pursuing.  Which was Atari's bread and butter before.  He wanted a computer company and bought a giant in the gaming industry...

[zzip]

23 minutes ago, leech said:

Didn't they also basically have the 7800 finished in 1984, then scuttled it after a small release, and then released it in full in 1986?  Jack didn't think consoles and games were worth pursuing.  Which was Atari's bread and butter before.  He wanted a computer company and bought a giant in the gaming industry...

There was a video posted on this site yesterday of a talk by one of the GCC employees who designed the 7800.    He said Jack came in in 1984 and wanted to sell the 7800 for $50.  It was supposed to be a $150 console.   He said we (GCC) expected royalties and it was written in the contract, so they said 'no'.  

 

I know it's been contentious here recently to say Jack wasn't interested in games.   But I think it's fair to say his main interest was in selling STs.   The legacy Atari products seemed to be seen mostly as a way to generate cash to keep the lights on while they built the ST business.

[Hwlngmad]

On 12/7/2020 at 9:00 AM, zzip said:

Maybe bugs.  I don't think cost was the issue given that IBM spared no expense on other aspects of the PC.   The build quality of those things was amazing,  nothing like the cheap plastic/aluminum PC cases we've become used to.   So I don't think they would have cheaped out on the most important component.

 

The 68000 was considered for the IBM PC.  However, there was a legal matter that made IBM go with the 8088 instead.

[Xebec]

2 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

The 68000 was considered for the IBM PC.  However, there was a legal matter that made IBM go with the 8088 instead.

Was it about not having a second source fab for 68000 or something else?

[Hwlngmad]

2 minutes ago, Xebec said:

Was it about not having a second source fab for 68000 or something else?

I do not know the particulars, but I know it had to do with a cross-licensing issue.

[Hwlngmad]

On 12/20/2020 at 3:11 PM, Xebec said:

I sometimes think that..  but a few things to consider:

 

- The Atari 400/800 did start outselling the Apple II for a couple of years, with the main failure point (imo) of the Atari being that Warner-Atari didn't open up the hardware and was much less friendly with developers than Apple.

 

- The Apple II essentially gave Apple the $$ to fund the Mac

 

- If the Atari 400/800 had embraced developers, and continued selling well - and Atari hadn't fucked over Jay Miner and friends with the bonuses, we could have seen something like the Amiga much earlier - given extra funding Atari would have had (up to the end of 1983 at least), and it might have even launched before the Mac - vastly overshadowing it.    

 

Atari and Commodore were destined to destroy each other once Jack left Commodore, I don't think there was anything that could have saved either platform long term after that;  other than maybe the Amiga (with extra funding, focus on 3D graphics later, etc) becoming a brand of console like Playstation or Xbox..  

 

I think Atari legitimately had a chance in 1979 to at least be second to the PC (like the Mac) but it was over once they failed to pay the hardware developers and didn't embrace their vision for the next generation .. 

Atari, Tandy/Radio Shack, Apple, Commodore all had their chances and blew it, particularly Apple and Commodore.