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Would Atari had been better off if Bushnell hadn´t sold it?


Lord Mushroom

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125 members have voted

  1. 1. Would Atari had been better off if Bushnell hadn´t sold it to Warner?

    • Probably yes
      50
    • Probably no
      38
    • I have no idea
      37

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44 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

Microsoft would probably take exception to that, seeing  as they've been making consoles for a couple of decades now. ?

Ha, yeah but they only did it because they are the 'me too' of tech companies.  Granted, I kind of thonk of Sony the same way, but they at least made consumer electronics before.  Microsoft was always a software company with some decent controller / keyboard / mice that were decent. 

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Just now, leech said:

Ha, yeah but they only did it because they are the 'me too' of tech companies.  Granted, I kind of thonk of Sony the same way, but they at least made consumer electronics before.  Microsoft was always a software company with some decent controller / keyboard / mice that were decent. 

Not really. Microsoft released their hardware in 1980 in the shape of the Z80 SoftCard for the Apple II.

 

They got into consoles by creating the OS for the Sega Dreamcast, which incidentally supported DirectX so I guess you could call that the first Xbox. An offer to Sony to do a similar job for the PS2 was rebuffed, so they decided to go it alone by creating the Xbox.

 

There's a definite parallel with how Sony went on to create the PlayStation after Nintendo declined their initial offer of a partnership. The moral of the story is not to turn down a big tech company when they offer to help you with their console. Unless it's Apple, I suppose; bad luck there for Bandai.

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1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

Not really. Microsoft released their hardware in 1980 in the shape of the Z80 SoftCard for the Apple II.

 

They got into consoles by creating the OS for the Sega Dreamcast, which incidentally supported DirectX so I guess you could call that the first Xbox. An offer to Sony to do a similar job for the PS2 was rebuffed, so they decided to go it alone by creating the Xbox.

 

There's a definite parallel with how Sony went on to create the PlayStation after Nintendo declined their initial offer of a partnership. The moral of the story is not to turn down a big tech company when they offer to help you with their console. Unless it's Apple, I suppose; bad luck there for Bandai.

Z80 card for an Apple hardly constitutes a console, more like a peripheral.  The Dreamcast using WinCE is still just them providing software.  So I stand by my point that the Xbox was their first actual computer / Console, and even that was basically an x86 system.

 

Sony made hardware for other things and was going to do the CD expansion for the SNES, got snubbed and then took the gaming world by storm...

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On 9/6/2021 at 1:22 AM, Leeroy ST said:

These aren't 100% accurate but just using quick lists.

 

NES: 1380 games

400 are scrolling platformers

255 are shooters (most scrolling)

165 are sports

127 rpgs (chunk of them actually action adventure titles)

46 racers

35 are scrolling beat em ups 

 

 

CV 145 games:

12 platformers varying type 

40 shooters varying type

10 action adventure games

3 rpgs

10 racing games

11 sports

14 educational

30 general arcade games of different styles

 

2600 580 games:

165 shooters

50 platformers of varying types (static, multi-screen, scrolling)

50 sports

~50 misc arcade games of varying types

40 puzzle games

30 racing games

20 Action Adventure games

20 educational

15 vehicle sims

 

As you can see the NES has more games overall but the ratio is less balanced. If we go with what was promoted and what sold it's even more lopsided.

 

No the NES had advantages like native multi color sprites, and such. But it had some disadvantages too.

 

Of course that's a base NES, some problems are lessened with the chips, but not entirely removed.

 

One way I look at it, the 7800 is more of an evolution of the CV than the 5200 honestly. I would say NES is an evolution of the 5200.

 

In regards to what strengths and weaknesses both consoles have compared to each other.

 

 

AtariMania: Atari 2600, here, you’ll find more than 9,000 different (PAL, NTSC and SECAM) cartridge titles released between 1977 and 1992. 

Edited by high voltage
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On 9/6/2021 at 1:22 AM, Leeroy ST said:

These aren't 100% accurate but just using quick lists.

 

NES: 1380 games

400 are scrolling platformers

255 are shooters (most scrolling)

165 are sports

127 rpgs (chunk of them actually action adventure titles)

46 racers

35 are scrolling beat em ups 

 

 

CV 145 games:

12 platformers varying type 

40 shooters varying type

10 action adventure games

3 rpgs

10 racing games

11 sports

14 educational

30 general arcade games of different styles

 

2600 580 games:

165 shooters

50 platformers of varying types (static, multi-screen, scrolling)

50 sports

~50 misc arcade games of varying types

40 puzzle games

30 racing games

20 Action Adventure games

20 educational

15 vehicle sims

 

As you can see the NES has more games overall but the ratio is less balanced. If we go with what was promoted and what sold it's even more lopsided.

 

No the NES had advantages like native multi color sprites, and such. But it had some disadvantages too.

 

Of course that's a base NES, some problems are lessened with the chips, but not entirely removed.

 

One way I look at it, the 7800 is more of an evolution of the CV than the 5200 honestly. I would say NES is an evolution of the 5200.

 

In regards to what strengths and weaknesses both consoles have compared to each other.

 

 

Atari VCS: RPG games:  Dragonstomper

 

Anyway, Atari VCS genres, just look on AtariMania under'Genre' (it's very easy): www.atarimania.com/advanced-search-atari-2600-vcs-game-_2_G.html

 

Atari invented, Nintendo copied

 

 

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18 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

In fairness, he didn´t say he was hired, just that he worked there. Here is part of an interview were he mentions hiring Jobs, among other things:

 

 

 

Ha, he also says Jobs didn't shower and other engineers complained about him, so he made him work the Engineering Night Shift... which didn't exist.  Got two Steves for the price of Jobs as well.  :P  Bushnell is a smart Mofo.

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3 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Of course! Atari's very first games, Computer Space and Pong, were both completely original. Absolutely not clones of existing games. ?

I was watching another talk by Nolan Bushnell who explained at the beginning that everyone's who has ever taken a shower has had an idea... but the idea doesn't matter unless you're the first one to implement and market it right.  He's 100% correct.  I've had ideas but not had the funding to make them materialize, and then see them get released regardless.  As well... the idea sphere is all around, someone will pick it up. 

 

So yeah, while Computer Space and Pong were not entirely original ideas, putting them into an places that weren't multi-million dollar computers so that people could pump quarters into them was.  Bushnell, in that same talk, said Computer Space was a failure, because drunk people in bars couldn't figure out how to play it.  Pong on the other hand was a huge hit.

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6 hours ago, leech said:

I was watching another talk by Nolan Bushnell who explained at the beginning that everyone's who has ever taken a shower has had an idea... but the idea doesn't matter unless you're the first one to implement and market it right.  He's 100% correct.  I've had ideas but not had the funding to make them materialize, and then see them get released regardless.  As well... the idea sphere is all around, someone will pick it up. 

Exactly. That's why it's irrelevant that Super Mario 64 is not the first 3D platformer for instance. ;)

 

Remember when you said: "Fans of things are funny.  They will claim that the company they are a fan of invented this or that.  And when you prove them wrong, then they go to the "but they did it better and they are remembered for making it good."  I hear this all the time about Apple."

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2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Exactly. That's why it's irrelevant that Super Mario 64 is not the first 3D platformer for instance. ;)

 

Remember when you said: "Fans of things are funny.  They will claim that the company they are a fan of invented this or that.  And when you prove them wrong, then they go to the "but they did it better and they are remembered for making it good."  I hear this all the time about Apple."

But there is a difference between proof and a claim.  Apple making it better is an objectionable claim..  what Bushnell said is an idea is nothing without it actually becoming something.  This is different than someone making / creating / selling something.  Then some fan claiming that another entity made it first, when that is false.  And then just 'correcting' themselves and saying "well, $company made it better and no one cared someone else made it!"

 

Not sure if bolded my comment to qrgue with me or agree with me.  ?

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14 hours ago, leech said:

Z80 card for an Apple hardly constitutes a console, more like a peripheral.  The Dreamcast using WinCE is still just them providing software.  So I stand by my point that the Xbox was their first actual computer / Console, and even that was basically an x86 system.

The SoftCard has a CPU in it. Later versions had some RAM and a video circuit so are basically computers, or at least they'd done all the technically difficult bits by that point. I'd suspect the main reason they didn't make a fully fledged computer out of it was mainly because it was a means to the end of running their software on Apple's hardware when it had a different CPU. They weren't rivals back then, so such things happened.

 

It's not like they stopped there either. They were making all sorts of other hardware for the next couple of decades. One of the more relevant projects would be the WebTV, which they bought as a start-up in 1997. It was more of a set-top box than a computer or a console, but a lot of the people who worked on it went on to the Xbox.

 

It's only really software that makes consoles distinct from computers, so anyone who can make an OS for one can make a console. While the ability to make custom graphics hardware was essential to make competitive consoles until the mid 90s, that had already ceased to be the case by the end of the decade. Both the Dreamcast and Xbox were both basically designed out of off-the-shelf computer components with only a modest amount of customization, making the hardware side the comparatively easy bit.

 

10 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

This depends on if you consider a CD-i player a games console or not. If so both Sony and Microsoft technically got their start there.

I don't think Microsoft had much to do with CD-i beyond helping to set the CD-ROM standard. That was mostly a Philips product with Sony along for the ride. Nintendo were interested for a while too, hence the licensed games, but pulled out long before it was ready for market. I guess you could argue that it's a console because it plays games, but it's not really its primary function. File alongside the Nuon and the aforementioned WebTV, I guess.

 

Microsoft were rather more involved in the Sega Saturn, where they created the CD-ROM firmware, which I suspect is what led to the partnership with the Saturn.

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44 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

The SoftCard has a CPU in it. Later versions had some RAM and a video circuit so are basically computers, or at least they'd done all the technically difficult bits by that point. I'd suspect the main reason they didn't make a fully fledged computer out of it was mainly because it was a means to the end of running their software on Apple's hardware when it had a different CPU. They weren't rivals back then, so such things happened.

 

It's not like they stopped there either. They were making all sorts of other hardware for the next couple of decades. One of the more relevant projects would be the WebTV, which they bought as a start-up in 1997. It was more of a set-top box than a computer or a console, but a lot of the people who worked on it went on to the Xbox.

 

It's only really software that makes consoles distinct from computers, so anyone who can make an OS for one can make a console. While the ability to make custom graphics hardware was essential to make competitive consoles until the mid 90s, that had already ceased to be the case by the end of the decade. Both the Dreamcast and Xbox were both basically designed out of off-the-shelf computer components with only a modest amount of customization, making the hardware side the comparatively easy bit.

 

I don't think Microsoft had much to do with CD-i beyond helping to set the CD-ROM standard. That was mostly a Philips product with Sony along for the ride. Nintendo were interested for a while too, hence the licensed games, but pulled out long before it was ready for market. I guess you could argue that it's a console because it plays games, but it's not really its primary function. File alongside the Nuon and the aforementioned WebTV, I guess.

 

Microsoft were rather more involved in the Sega Saturn, where they created the CD-ROM firmware, which I suspect is what led to the partnership with the Saturn.

Microsoft had a spread sheet disc that iirc came out the same time CD-i launched online and there's a very rare model that is certified to run dos.

 

It's not much and also very rare, but it's not that much less involved than slapping Windows CE on the Dreamcast. The logo not the os.

 

Also Nintendo wasn't interested in making a player, just gave phillips the licenses. Sony however did.

 

And while CDI wasn't primarily for games I think Nuon is an odd comparison as Nuon itself isn't even a system technically. But yeah.

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1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

And while CDI wasn't primarily for games I think Nuon is an odd comparison as Nuon itself isn't even a system technically.

CD-i suffered from having poor focus.  Nobody at Philips could decide if it was a gaming console, video player, educational tool, or the ever-nebulous multimedia wonder device that was so hot in the early '90s.  A family member worked on a couple of titles for it (scriptwriting and editing, mostly, not development as such), and we had one with the MPEG card on loan as a result; I remember it being the first system I was really excited to see and totally let down to experience.  When it left our care, its return to Eindhoven (or wherever in Holland that it went to) was not mourned.

 

Out of curiosity, if Nuon doesn't count as a system, then where does that leave MSX?

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On 9/6/2021 at 5:47 PM, Leeroy ST said:

Yeah but there's a much closer similarity between say Mega Man 3 and SMB3, than between Doom and Metroid Prime. Or Dishonored and COD.

 

I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you that it's not perfect. I still refuse to use that "character action game" silliness for example.

Eeeeehhhhhhh.... Doom and Metroid Prime are more similar than Mega Man 3 and Super Mario Bros. 3.

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29 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Microsoft had a spread sheet disc that iirc came out the same time CD-i launched online and there's a very rare model that is certified to run dos.

You're probably thinking of the CD-i/PC 2.0 card. It was an entire CD-i on an ISA card complete with its own CPU that used the CD-ROM drive and video output from your PC. I think it was one of those things where it spent most of its life in development hell and was too buggy to get  a proper release. Microsoft didn't have anything to do with it as it was entirely a Philips project. This was in the days before signed drivers so they had no control over other people's hardware in PCs.

 

There were also Sega MegaDrive and 3DO cards for the PC. Again, nothing to do with Microsoft.

 

29 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

It's not much and also very rare, but it's not that much less involved than slapping Windows CE on the Dreamcast. The logo not the os.

There are about eighty Dreamcast games that use Windows CE and you'll see the logo when you boot any of them up. That's a lot less than they were hoping for when they ported it, with most developers just bypassing it to write directly for Sega's APIs, but they obviously did a lot more than just slap a logo on it.

 

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8 hours ago, leech said:

But there is a difference between proof and a claim.  Apple making it better is an objectionable claim..  what Bushnell said is an idea is nothing without it actually becoming something.  This is different than someone making / creating / selling something.  Then some fan claiming that another entity made it first, when that is false.  And then just 'correcting' themselves and saying "well, $company made it better and no one cared someone else made it!"

 

Not sure if bolded my comment to qrgue with me or agree with me.  ?

I just meant haters like fans tend to contradict themselves depending on what fits their narrative. :P

 

I understand what you meant and I agree, but in the case of Croc I mentioned, it was released after SM64 and was a mediocre game anyway.

 

10 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Unless that's the claim that was made, and it became common consensus despite the claim being wrong

Once again you caricature things to make it easier to criticize. I believe you saw one or two YouTubers claiming SM64 was the first ever 3D platformer (even though it was "first third person game with a free camera" rather, which is a really weird claim, but whatever). But I really doubt it became "common consensus".

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2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I just meant haters like fans tend to contradict themselves depending on what fits their narrative. :P

 

I understand what you meant and I agree, but in the case of Croc I mentioned, it was released after SM64 and was a mediocre game anyway.

 

Once again you caricature things to make it easier to criticize. I believe you saw one or two YouTubers claiming SM64 was the first ever 3D platformer (even though it was "first third person game with a free camera" rather, which is a really weird claim, but whatever). But I really doubt it became "common consensus".

So..  does this make Atari better off with Bushnell or Warner? 

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