Why Atari 5200 was considerate a fail?

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

 

Wow.  That's nuts.  Do you have to have the VR thing to play them?  I don't know jack about anything beyond PS3.  That's the most recent non-Nintendo console I played.  

It depends on the game.  Many are VR only,  but there are some that can be played in VR or without.     Battlezone, Wipeout, No Man's Sky, Star Wars Squadrons come to mind as games that work either way.

[XLurker]

I remember back in December 1982 I was in Toys R US, deciding whether buy a Colecovision or an Atari 5200. The pack in game was the deciding factor for me. If the pack in game had been a game with name recognition like Pac-Man, Centipede or just about anything other than Super Breakout I might of chosen the 5200. The same goes for the Atari 7800 with Pole Position II. IMO Atari marketing's cheap mindset was a major factor in causing both systems to fail.

[johannesmutlu]

On 5/8/2021 at 4:33 PM, Pete5125 said:

I was around, didnt know anyone that had a game system other than 2600, remeber around time of crash babysiter selling old 2600, and 20 games in those 4 pack game holders  to my dad in 83, then nes coming out, in that time every flea mkt you could think of had old games for a buck or 2, then around 86 everyone had a nes, everyone stold old atari in basement if you'd visit your uncle and he'd give you all his old games stored in a cardboard box down stairs.

 

At this point only poor kids had atari, everyone else had nes and a few of balls had sega mastersystem then, I only had 1 friend w/7800 truely only reason parents got it was it could play old 2600 games,so he had very few 7800 games.

 

By the time genesis came out had a part time job so could get sega, sold old 2600 and shoebox of games for 10 bucks at a yard sale.

 

Bought a lynx, 1 of 4 people that had it but it was better than game boy.

 

Got a jaguar and have most games on the system.

Hi i am recently now also a big atari buddy,all because of the fact that sega and nintendo games did also appear on some of atari’s own gaming system,

now if only the atari jagduo will be ever produced if theres enough request about it to atari and if that will ever happen, then i will definitely buy the more sleecker looking atari jagduo😁

[phuzaxeman]

On 11/11/2021 at 8:17 AM, XLurker said:

I remember back in December 1982 I was in Toys R US, deciding whether buy a Colecovision or an Atari 5200. The pack in game was the deciding factor for me. If the pack in game had been a game with name recognition like Pac-Man, Centipede or just about anything other than Super Breakout I might of chosen the 5200. The same goes for the Atari 7800 with Pole Position II. IMO Atari marketing's cheap mindset was a major factor in causing both systems to fail.

Every Atari console not named the 2600 was a failure.  PacMan became the pack in game the following year however it was too late.

[+MrFish]

On 11/11/2021 at 9:17 AM, XLurker said:

I remember back in December 1982 I was in Toys R US, deciding whether buy a Colecovision or an Atari 5200. The pack in game was the deciding factor for me. If the pack in game had been a game with name recognition like Pac-Man, Centipede or just about anything other than Super Breakout I might of chosen the 5200. The same goes for the Atari 7800 with Pole Position II. IMO Atari marketing's cheap mindset was a major factor in causing both systems to fail.

Pack in games are extremely important. NES consoles moved off the shelves in droves in the U.S., in large part due to its great pack in.

 

Next-gen consoles need next-gen pack ins. Breakout... lol... I think Atari was counting on their name to sell consoles. We can all see how that went down.

 

Combat, on the other hand, was a killer pack in for the 2600.

 

[Atariboy2600]

 

[phuzaxeman]

6 hours ago, Atariboy2600 said:

 

The 5200 didn't fail because of the controller alone. I have the scores to prove the controllers are fine. Reliability was always the issue and if Atari had better flex unit and buttons, we wouldn't be talking about the controller.    

[TrekMD]

Atari has also developed a self-centering controller for the 5200 that would have addressed that particular issue but it was never released.

[Keatah]

We stopped playing 5200 because the controllers stopped working. Such a hassle. Then we realized everything on the 5200 was available on the 400/800 anyways. No need follow the console or discuss it during recess.  Too much IP rehashing then, and even now.

[patroclus99]

On 9/11/2022 at 11:23 AM, Keatah said:

We stopped playing 5200 because the controllers stopped working. Such a hassle. Then we realized everything on the 5200 was available on the 400/800 anyways. No need follow the console or discuss it during recess.  Too much IP rehashing then, and even now.

Awwwww, c’mon now… don’t be such an ol’-stick-in-the-mud. We live for the 5200 drahhh-ma.

 

But seriously, a lack of fiduciary vision kills a lot of companies, especially companies focused on innovative products… Soda-pop, condiments, men’s underwear, supermarket-beer, anything organic or environmentally friendly… a baboon with a BMA can run those lines. But, imagine Apple without Jobs, Tesla without Elon, Chrysler without Iacocca, Martha Stewart without… Martha,

 

Or,

 

Jeffree Star Cosmetics

 

 

 

without Jeffree Star!

 

 

[Chinese Cake]

Actually the real reason why the 5200 failed, is because Atari pulled it from sale before it had a chance to succeed. Whether or not they could have put out fixes and still sold several million consoles despite losing millions is something we will never know, but Atari never bothered to try. Atari was too upset about the losses they were suffering to give the 5200 a longer shelf life. 

 

The kicker is that because they pulled it out so early, just as people were experiencing more and more problems, that became the image of the console. So the 5200 is often unfairly shat on as a result. 

[Keatah]

In my household I was pissed that the 5200 had the same games as the 400/800. And came with inferior analog controls, not precise digital.

 

It was for those 2 reasons why we didn’t spend money on it or promote it through schoolyard banter.

 

Times that by thousands of users and no wonder it was a flunker.

[MrMaddog]

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

In my household I was pissed that the 5200 had the same games as the 400/800. And came with inferior analog controls, not precise digital.

 

It was for those 2 reasons why we didn’t spend money on it or promote it through schoolyard banter.

 

Times that by thousands of users and no wonder it was a flunker.

 

Just curious, what do you think of the TrakBall games like Centipede or was just using the CX-22 TrakBall on the 400/800 enough?

 

Anyway I never considered owning a 5200 back then because it was too friggin' expensive!

 

 

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, MrMaddog said:

Just curious, what do you think of the TrakBall games like Centipede or was just using the CX-22 TrakBall on the 400/800 enough?

I thought they were pretty good overall and a great way to bring home arcade realism. I'm not a trackball person, and therefore didn't see the controllers as the killer-app that some folks did.. Strongly prefer simple digital (switch) joysticks. But CX-22 was good enough for me.

 

[Machine]

On 10/26/2022 at 4:27 PM, Chinese Cake said:

Actually the real reason why the 5200 failed, is because Atari pulled it from sale before it had a chance to succeed. Whether or not they could have put out fixes and still sold several million consoles despite losing millions is something we will never know, but Atari never bothered to try. Atari was too upset about the losses they were suffering to give the 5200 a longer shelf life. 

 

The kicker is that because they pulled it out so early, just as people were experiencing more and more problems, that became the image of the console. So the 5200 is often unfairly shat on as a result. 

 

The 5200 was in stores for a very long time in our area. I stopped liking it for a long time cuz of the controllers and the poor controls. Even when the controllers worked, the games did not seem to handle very well. If they would have released a 2600 joystick with two buttons, I think it would have really helped.

 

I got a 5200 for my birthday. Within a few months, both controllers stopped working. I ended up buying another system and swapping out the broken controllers. Within a few days, both of the new controllers stopped working. They were shit.

If they had gotten the controllers right, I would have stuck with it. Everyone talked about how shitty the controllers were and people treated the system like a leper.

 

Hard for any system or game to succeed if the controls or controllers suck. To me, this is the biggest reason. The only game I thought controlled well was Space Dungeon. Love that game.

 

 

[Chinese Cake]

4 minutes ago, Machine said:

 

The 5200 was in stores for a very long time in our area. I stopped liking it for a long time cuz of the controllers and the poor controls. Even when the controllers worked, the games did not seem to handle very well. If they would have released a 2600 joystick with two buttons, I think it would have really helped.

 

I got a 5200 for my birthday. Within a few months, both controllers stopped working. I ended up buying another system and swapping out the broken controllers. Within a few days, both of the new controllers stopped working. They were shit.

If they had gotten the controllers right, I would have stuck with it. Everyone talked about how shitty the controllers were and people treated the system like a leper.

 

Hard for any system or game to succeed if the controls or controllers suck. To me, this is the biggest reason. The only game I thought controlled well was Space Dungeon. Love that game.

 

 

 

In terms of sales no one was under the impression that the 5200 was failing despite the complaints until Atari abruptly decided to pull the console. it was not long after they said they sold a million consoles iirc.

 

What's funny about the controllers though is Atari did send out new ones, but they were virtually the same and didn't really fix any issues other than maybe being slightly more durable. 

 

So Atari really must have already decided they were going to pul it and didn't want to bother apply real fixes to the controllers, which is unfortunate because when you remove the controller issues, and the massive size of the console aside, it was quite the leap from the 2600. 

 

 

[Machine]

No one tried harder to love the 5200 more than me. I overlooked the controller problems for years and kept trying to love it. After a few years, I got fed up and tossed the system into the closet.

 

Having new options for controllers, I have gone back to the system and am enjoying it more than ever.

No doubt the controllers played a huge part in holding the 5200 back.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Machine

[Keatah]

My NIB replacement controllers seemed to fail faster than the original ones. They were bought new at the store.

 

I liked how the advertised aura and anticipation of the coming of the 5200 fit in with video gaming in general. It was the right time for a super system. Moody. Sophisticated. And futuristic.

 

Initially I knew nothing of the  stale 1978/1979 tech inside it. And every year of tech was a big leap. So the latest was important.

[ledzep]

On 9/11/2022 at 11:23 AM, Keatah said:

We stopped playing 5200 because the controllers stopped working. Such a hassle. Then we realized everything on the 5200 was available on the 400/800 anyways. No need follow the console or discuss it during recess.  Too much IP rehashing then, and even now.

 

I've never understood that sentiment.  I owned an Atari 800 back when they were new and my best friend had the 5200.  I had Star Raiders on both, a few other games.  Hands down most of the 5200 versions were better, superior, to the point that I wanted a 5200.  But we already had a 2600 and the computer, no money left for another console and the Atari 800 was a computer so I had fun dealing with BASIC programming.  But the controllers changed the game for me.  I did like the novelty of having Star Raiders' controls on the 800 keyboard, I could pretend it was a ship's flight console, but having to reach from the joystick to the keyboard to change something during a battle got me killed many times.  And digital joysticks sucked for that game, imagine flying a plane with a digital joystick, hahaaha.  Same goes for the trak-ball, that made a night and day difference with Missile Command and Centipede.  I give the nod to the paddle controllers for games like Breakout but I now have 2 modified 5200 controllers that are paddles so the 5200 wins 100%.  I never had an issue with playing digital joystick games with the 5200's analog stick, I can't figure out why it was such an issue with other owners.  But then I grew up with all the greatest 8-bit arcade games in the arcades so I was used to dedicated controllers that weren't just 8-way sticks with a fire button or two.  No way were both versions of all the Atari games identical or redundant.  Sure, a few might not be able to take advantage of the analog sticks or trak-ball but many of the best games work better on the 5200 or are not hampered by the analog sticks, except possibly (from my experience) Qix (trying to retrace a path along a branch sometimes got stuck at the intersection but I also remember that happening in the arcade, though not for as long).

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

Atari's strategy at the time was dubious to say the least. It launched a new console, the 5200, but remained focused on the 2600. Instead of correcting the 5200's eventual flaws, it stretched the string until it snapped.

Then he went to war with Commodore, lowering the price of computers and forgetting that the price of consoles was still high. One hell of a mess!

Plan C was the 7800, which was nothing more than a blue print in 1983 and which in the end left the necessary space for Nintendo to bury all the recovery dreams that Atari could have had.

In the end, Atari was practically out of money and only didn't go bankrupt because Warner didn't let it and sold it in pieces. Not to mention that Atari's new management was worse and more lost and unfocused than the previous one.

I can't help but wonder what the gaming market would be like today if Atari had done its homework.

[RangerG]

I don't consider the 5200 a failure in the sense that it caught up to and was running neck and neck with its competitor, the Colecovision. It definitely didn't dominate its generation like the 2600, but the 2.5 or third generation featured two competing leaders (the 5200 and the Colecovision). The crash killed this entire generation. Did this make them both failures?

[zzip]

12 hours ago, Keatah said:

Initially I knew nothing of the  stale 1978/1979 tech inside it. And every year of tech was a big leap. So the latest was important.

It takes time for new tech to be affordable to the public,  so this was not unusual for consoles at the time

 

for instance, the Z80 in the Colecovision - 1976 tech.  the TMS9918 graphics chip in CV - 1979 tech.     

[Keatah]

14 hours ago, ledzep said:

I've never understood that sentiment.  I owned an Atari 800 back when they were new and my best friend had the 5200.  I had Star Raiders on both, a few other games.  Hands down most of the 5200 versions were better, superior, to the point that I wanted a 5200.

Just in general the 5200 games weren't different enough to get me excited. I mean I didn't hate or dislike the system. But I was pissed that Atari duped me. I was also pissed that Atari wasn't really gung-ho on the system overall.

 

14 hours ago, ledzep said:

I did like the novelty of having Star Raiders' controls on the 800 keyboard, I could pretend it was a ship's flight console, but having to reach from the joystick to the keyboard to change something during a battle got me killed many times. 

First exposure to Star Raiders was at home with the Atari 400. Not in the stores. At home. Sitting my fat-ass on the 2" thick shag carpet infront of the the Zenith Chromacolor II that was taller than I was. Quickly discovered that SR was a 2-player game if you had a co-pilot or navigator to operate the keyboard. This was an equally fun position to man because you could plot strategy and make suggestions to the pilot - whose only job was to fly and blast stuff.

[phuzaxeman]

On 10/28/2022 at 7:50 AM, RangerG said:

I don't consider the 5200 a failure in the sense that it caught up to and was running neck and neck with its competitor, the Colecovision. It definitely didn't dominate its generation like the 2600, but the 2.5 or third generation featured two competing leaders (the 5200 and the Colecovision). The crash killed this entire generation. Did this make them both failures?

Spot on post.  In 82-84, the 5200 was king along with Coleco as the best consoles.  My friends that played the 5200 were amazed. 5200 had no bad games. People have forgotten Colecovision was discontinued only a year after the 5200 when computers and NES were the gaming options after the crash.   

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 10/28/2022 at 10:21 AM, zzip said:

for instance, the Z80 in the Colecovision - 1976 tech.  the TMS9918 graphics chip in CV - 1979 tech.

True, but this can be said for even modern consoles.  Hardware designs are frozen (with the exception of small revisions) years in advance of production, which means that by the time it launches they're typically 3 years or so behind current hardware.  Sure, they might have a hot-shit graphics chipset or CPU type not widely-available in desktop machines, but even that stuff doesn't tend to be cutting edge except when first hitting the market.

 

Besides, in 1982 the Z80 and TMS9918 in the ColecoVision were still current technology.  On the cusp of being moved aside by upcoming 16-bit architectures, sure, but this was a world in which the Apple Lisa (never mind the Mac) didn't yet exist, and 8086s were expensive and exotic in comparison to 8088s.  Besides, the 6502 and Z80 would continue to be bread-and-butter 8-bit architectures for another decade before really being put out to pasture, at least until embedded computing came along.  Not bad for 1970s tech all around.