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

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Now you are just making crap up.   I was an Atari fan.   I was not an NES fan.   

Nope, this has been established long ago there's a bias in how you look at things, regardless you dodged the post without addressing it anyway, what a surprise.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Again more made up crap.  I would have been happy if CV survived.  . 

Good, because it did survive the crash, objectively.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

But you are the one arguing that there was no drop in demand for games.  You dismissed the Wikipedia article that said CV sales fell in 84.   You constantly state that the CV had rosy prospects.   

I said the demand drop was marginal, and it was. There's a reason why once the bad moves subsided during the Warner Atari sale in 84 the 2600 rebounded strongly. There's a reason why RDIs market research made them think a $1000 machine might work in 85, or Nintendo head Yamaguchi convinced unlike his colleagues the market still had demand trying multiple times. Price again for the 500th time was the primary problem, price wars and undercutting to be specific. Not lack of consumer demand, which was comparatively minimal. (And if low game demand was the big thing why were people playing some of those same games on the computers they were "moving" too? Sometimes people dont think )

 

I also never said anything about being rosy you're imagining that because for some strange reason you want to strike down anything that shows Colecos console was alive.

 

Yes Colecovision had a SALES drop in 84 compared to 83, and price cuts, effects from a halt production earlier in the year, retailers reacting the wrong way in some places due to Atari bad business decidions, and split resources with the Adam contributed to them being down. None of that has anything to do with demand. Demand is why it was still selling well and kept operating like normal while Mattel was flailing after tailgating Atari, and Atari itself was being shopped around.

 

I never said CV was up higher than ever, but they were still in a good position unlike say... The other two biggest competitors.

 

CV sales 1984 were substantial:

 

 

And that was with the effects of the production halt that was already mentioned to you before earlier in the year. Too bad that Adam thing was a mistake. But they do dial it back by the last quarter of the year where CV did well, and then sold profitably until they started winding down for continuation in June 1985.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Nope, you are the only one who ever challenges me on my assessment of Jack.  

There are multiple threads here that challenge your debunked jack hate myths. I'm just pointing them out.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Leeroy ST

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

I'm assuming here Curt and Marty only looked at the US side of things? 

 

Yes because they were talking about the warner sale, the circumstances around the game crash, and post. Which is also what other guy was arguing, I guess he forgot about that when he liked the post.

 

Anyway Lost Dragon here is one of the threads which both Curt and Marty were in, you may find the thread an interesting read, especially once you hit page 2:

 

 

 

[Matt_B]

6 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I don´t see a flaw in my argument. Atari would have been very different if they had produced other stuff, but it would still have been Atari. The question in this thread is whether or not Atari would have been better off, not if they would have sold more consoles/computers/games.

We're here because of the products that Atari historically produced though. Take all that away and we're off on a different forum talking about some other company. Also, what if the other stuff they'd produced had been kitchen appliances, perfume or gardening supplies rather than them staying in the tech industry? Would that still be Atari? How far are you prepared to stretch it?

 

David Crane once described Kotick's Activision as a different company that just happens to share the same name. People would perhaps be less likely to confuse the two if they didn't both make video games.

6 hours ago, zzip said:

I think it's the company philosophy that matters more than anything.   You can change staff, but as long as you keep doing the kind of thing that made you popular in the first place, then your fans will be happy.   Most people couldn't name most of the people behind the scenes anyway.    A brand is supposed to encapsulate all that stuff that isn't easily quantified.

 

However, there are so many brands that eventually sell out.  Abandon the types products that people liked in the first place,  or produce cheaper quality versions of them.   Or whatever else.   At some point it might stop feeling like the same company you liked in the first place.  Of course it's kind of subjective when this happens.

I'd think that companies who stick to their original mission tend to retain their staff better than most, so the two things tend to go hand in hand. We're not just talking about the regular turnover of staff either but the mass layoffs that can accompany a change in ownership, as happened to both Atari and Activision at various points. New owners who share the same ethos aren't going to do that; indeed, they'll probably rehire as many key people as they can afford to.

 

Also, while not everyone cares about the people, they aren't always easily replaceable. You might be able to hire other hardware engineers but the world had precisely one Jay Miner, and Atari let him go.

[Lord Mushroom]

2 hours ago, Matt_B said:

what if the other stuff they'd produced had been kitchen appliances, perfume or gardening supplies rather than them staying in the tech industry? Would that still be Atari? How far are you prepared to stretch it?

Just far enough to win the argument.

 

I am actually willing to stretch it even further than that. As long as it is called Atari, I consider it to be Atari. If it changes name (to Midway Games West, for example), I consider it to be semi-Atari.

 

Nokia used to make rubber boots, but changed to cell phones. I think they were still Nokia.

[Matt_B]

3 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Just far enough to win the argument.

 

I am actually willing to stretch it even further than that. As long as it is called Atari, I consider it to be Atari. If it changes name (to Midway Games West, for example), I consider it to be semi-Atari.

 

Nokia used to make rubber boots, but changed to cell phones. I think they were still Nokia.

So, when Infogrames changed its name to Atari... Naah, I'm not even going to go there. All the games studios got closed down after the bankruptcy anyway, so I don't think there's much point in even calling what's left Infogrames, let alone Atari.

 

As for Nokia, they were both a rubber company and an electronics one since a merger in the 1960s, with the original Nokia being a paper company. Ironically, it's the boots company that's still going - as Nokian footwear - while the phone company got bought up by Microsoft only to be closed down later when Windows phones bombed. The new Nokia phones are essentially a different company, because they're another brand that's just not going to be left to die. Do the people who are using them care? Probably not so long as they're good enough phones, but it's hard to see them ever driving innovation like their predecessor did during the 1990s because it's just not the company that it was.

 

Getting back to Bushnell's sale of Atari in 1976 though, I'd still think it a positive move. They got to keep all the staff, with even Bushnell remaining in day-to-day charge of the company, with access to bigger budgets and Warner's marketing power. It's only the events of subsequent years that caused the wheels to come off and whether they'd even have made it as far as they did without the injection of cash the sale gave them remains an open question for me.

[DavidD]

19 hours ago, pacman000 said:

Courts were looking for overt threats, but a threat need not be overt to be effective. Nintendo did check store shelves regularly, to make sure they were well-stocked. It wouldn’t take too much more effort to check for other brands, or to withhold shipments if they found some. Just claim that the new products were back ordered, & point out the store could sell the other system. The manager would get the message. 
 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-19-fi-223-story.html

I'm probably missing something, but I read the article and all it seemed to talk about was the Atari/Tengen lawsuit regarding the NES lockout chip.  Is there a different article hinting at threats?

[Lord Mushroom]

38 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

So, when Infogrames changed its name to Atari...

Touché

[Lostdragon]

14 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Yes because they were talking about the warner sale, the circumstances around the game crash, and post. Which is also what other guy was arguing, I guess he forgot about that when he liked the post.

 

Anyway Lost Dragon here is one of the threads which both Curt and Marty were in, you may find the thread an interesting read, especially once you hit page 2:

 

 

 

Only looked through the first page and already a few things jumped out. 

 

Michael Katz is mentioned saying he wanted newer and more relevant titles for the 7800,but found most console developers tied into producing software for Nintendo, so he went with the home computer conversions. 

 

Makes sense, but when i look at some of the home computer conversions.. 

 

Jinks? 

Tower Toppler (aka Nebulus over here) 

Impossible Mission

 

They translated well enough to a strict games console, but Ace Of Aces? 

 

It's controls were never going to translate well to the 7800,i had it on the C64 and your constantly switching screens. 

 

IF Katz was taken on because he knew the videogames market, Tramiels didn't and he secured Ace Of Aces for the 7800 (pure assumption on my part, I know little on Katz and never really followed the 7800,it just wasn't a thing here in the UK like that), i would love to hear the reasoning behind getting thst one. 

 

I wouldn't really class Jinks as a relevant title either, again i am only familiar with the C64 version (and even then because of it's fantastic SID music) which got savaged at review. 

 

A curious slant on Breakout yes, but relevant? Hmmnnn... 

 

 

 

The other aspect, Steve Golson being mentioned and him being wrong about Jack not being interested in the 7800.

 

 

Marty talks of the interview with Michael Katz being used for his RG article, this would of been under the Imagine Publishing era, I remember seeing Steve used/interviewed in the very early RG days, Live Publishing, in a feature on the 7800.

 

Cant remember who wrote it, Pete Latimer maybe? been years since i saw the feature, but i do remember Steve saying the Sega Master System was graphically more powerful than the 7800,a topic which has been much debated over the years. 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

OK skimmed page 2 of that thread over breakfast. 

 

Staying focused on the industry people material. 

 

We have Jerry Jessop retelling the Brad Saville story and Jerry thus not being a credible source here, as he wasn't actually there. 

 

The actual story itself appears to be one Jane Whittaker implied he personally witnesses, when he's talking to Andrew Rosa, but Jane claims it wasn't Jack Tramiel who swept the hardware off the desk.. 

 

We can easily dismiss Jane's claim, it just made me chuckle seeing the story appearing in that thread and being told by someone else that wasn't actually there.. 

 

Where was I? 

 

 

Leonard Tramiel used to confirm an aspect of a story and many from the industry seem to blame Leonard or post information that counters info  Leonard gave.. 

 

So is he a reliable source or would you need Sam to confirm it as well? 

 

Steve Gilson, who was said was wrong about claims about Jack Tramiel on page 1 of the thread is now being used to back up claims in page 2 of the thread... 

 

I'm more confused than ever. 

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

Steve Gilson, who was said was wrong about claims about Jack Tramiel on page 1 of the thread is now being used to back up claims in page 2 of the thread... 

 

I'm more confused than ever. 

Negative.

 

Marty mentioned him being wrong in his (contradicting) recollection of Jack because he and Curt found evidence of the contrary here as mentioned by Curt:

 

Quote

See, now a few years ago I might've whole heartedly agreed with you Steve, but I've gotten a real insider view of the happenings within Atari from emails and internal memo's. There was nothing spiteful or vindictive about the business done by the Tramiels

What you're referring to is Curt's other post, which was talking about Maria chip development, and since he actually worked on the chip Golsom has more credibility in that area:

 

Quote

The FACTS are, Steve Golson, one of the two LSI engineers who worked on the MARIA chip of the 7800 whom I still speak with to this day stated that GCC was left in a limbo during the sale of Atari because Warner and the Tramiels felt each was responsible for paying GCC for the MARIA chip work.

So he was mentioned in two different circumstances by Marty and Curt.

 

He also brought up Tom Brightman to back up the myth busting:

 

Quote

The FACTS are, Tom Brightmans project management scheduling notes from August 8, 1984 show the Atari 2100 (aka Atari 2600jr) was already continued to be worked on.)

 

[pacman000]

8 hours ago, DavidD said:

I'm probably missing something, but I read the article and all it seemed to talk about was the Atari/Tengen lawsuit regarding the NES lockout chip.  Is there a different article hinting at threats?

Quote

Toy store shelves are checked weekly to monitor sales, and new products are introduced deliberately and in limited supplies to keep business flowing smoothly.

Not an overt threat, but enough to make a store manager leery of crossing them.

[Leeroy ST]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

The actual story itself appears to be one Jane Whittaker implied he personally witnesses, when he's talking to Andrew Rosa, but Jane claims it wasn't Jack Tramiel who swept the hardware off the desk.. 

 

Plot Twist:

 

It was Jane who swept the hardware off the desk.

 

That's why Jack awarded him programmer of the year!

[Lostdragon]

I  think it would be fair to say, in summary then:

 

Any historian/writer, can only go on the sources available to them at the time and once sufficient due diligence research has been carried out, they run the info and if fresh material comes to light after publication, it's shared and the jigsaw picture takes shape further still. 

 

 

The only person who really knew Jack Tramiels intents, personal feelings on anything, was Jack Tramiel. 

 

I believe the interview that was penciled in for the follow up book by Curt and Mary, was in effect to be  Jack's attempt to put the record straight on a number of claims about him that keep cropping up? 

 

Sadly he passed before the interview could take place, Curt passed as well. 

 

 

People like Steve Golsen and Michael Katz, i have honestly not seen enough interviews with, to get a feel for myself.

 

Tom Brightman drew a blank with myself, maybe more of a household name in America? 

 

Steve Golson, having helped design the 7800 hardware, is in a good position to talk with authority on which was the more powerful system, the 7800 or the Master System. 

 

#Jane Whiitaker was involved in the creation of the very desk the hardware was swept from and to buy his silence he was made VP of Atari to buy his silence ? 

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Leeroy ST]

17 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

People like Steve Golsen and Michael Katz, i have honestly not seen enough interviews with, to get a feel for myself.

 

Tom Brightman drew a blank with myself, maybe more of a household name in America? 

Yes he's more if an American high light.

 

Shame Curt is gone but there are still some others who can continue looking for documents and memos, but big loss.

 

19 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

#Jane Whiitaker was involved in the creation of the very desk the hardware was swept from and to buy his silence he was made VP of Atari to buy his silence ? 

Then as "VP" he programmed most of A"VP" on Jaguar all by himself. Lol.

[zzip]

11 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Just far enough to win the argument.

 

I am actually willing to stretch it even further than that. As long as it is called Atari, I consider it to be Atari. If it changes name (to Midway Games West, for example), I consider it to be semi-Atari.

 

Nokia used to make rubber boots, but changed to cell phones. I think they were still Nokia.

And Coleco is literally an acronym for "COnnecticut LEather COmpany",  Nintendo was into other businesses before video games, and Sony has all sorts of businesses including insurance in Japan.   Atari is one of the rare birds that stuck mostly to games and tech.

 

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

I'd think that companies who stick to their original mission tend to retain their staff better than most, so the two things tend to go hand in hand. We're not just talking about the regular turnover of staff either but the mass layoffs that can accompany a change in ownership, as happened to both Atari and Activision at various points.

In this day and age, it's far less common for people to stay at one company for long periods of time,  and Atari is about to turn 50,  so even if there was a clean, unbroken line of ownership from then until today,  very few, if any of the original staff that made the company would still be working there.  Plus the games industry and tech change so fast, the company would have to change with it.  

 

For instance, I didn't like the turn console gaming took in the late 80s with all the side-scrolling platformers, endless continues, and overly bright colorful happy graphics as seen in the SMB series.  To me it was the Nintendoization of the industry.   But supposing Atari had continued to lead in the console market post-crash and was churning out the same types of games because it's what the kids wanted?   I might feel like Atari's changed and left me behind...  even if it was the same staff doing this stuff.   So a lot of this is very subjective and in the eye of the beholder.

[Lord Mushroom]

3 hours ago, pacman000 said:

Not an overt threat, but enough to make a store manager leery of crossing them.

Looks to me like they were just afraid of flooding the market with products, and cause another video game crash.

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

supposing Atari had continued to lead in the console market post-crash and was churning out the same types of games because it's what the kids wanted?

I think the gaming market would have been producing lots of those type of games anyway, but it would have taken a little longer. While I think Atari would have made more games like that, I don´t think they would have made as many of them as Nintendo did.

[zzip]

1 minute ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I think the gaming market would have been producing lots of those type of games anyway, but it would have taken a little longer. While I think Atari would have made more games like that, I don´t think they would have made as many of them as Nintendo did.

I suppose it comes down to whether that genre was driven by technology or was actually what people wanted.  My personal theory was the NES was particularly good at side-scrolling and that's what lead to the popularization of the genre.     If the 7800 was dominant, it was a sprite monster, so it might be that a bunch of sprite-heavy games dominated instead.   If the 5200/CV were dominant, then games would play to their strengths, etc.

 

[Leeroy ST]

8 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I think the gaming market would have been producing lots of those type of games anyway, but it would have taken a little longer. While I think Atari would have made more games like that, I don´t think they would have made as many of them as Nintendo did.

Games were already changing before and during the crash, this thing about industry maybe continuing just pushing Pacman and Asteroids doesn't hold up when Mattel and Colecos systems were having more complex versions of those and moving to pc genres. Technically so was the 5200 as it was pulled, with some of those games being released under Jack, like Rescue on fractuluss. But the press barely knew anything about games.

 

I'd argue gaming went backwards, variety was gutted and there was 90% side scrollers with a few basic Jrpgs sprinkled around that mostly played similar to each other and involved heavy repetition. There were a handful of exceptions.

 

Instead you had to wait for NEC/Genesis to start seeing those other titles and Computer style games to come up more commonly on consoles. Or CDi players depending on how you looked at them.

[pacman000]

6 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Looks to me like they were just afraid of flooding the market with products, and cause another video game crash.

Indeed. Which is why I said there was no overt threat to retailers, only the impression of a threat. Did Nintendo really mean to threaten retailers? Can't say; in my mind it seems possible, but the courts want more than a possibility of a threat.

 

Nintendo would be less explicit when communicating; they came from a different country, with a different communication style that the U.S. & most of Europe. A business leader would know that, & take that into consideration when dealing with them. https://www.communicaid.com/cross-cultural-training/blog/high-and-low-context/

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

Shame Curt is gone but there are still some others who can continue looking for documents and memos, but big loss.

 

 

It's a great loss when anyone from the community or industry passes, as with them goes the experience, knowledge and so often, the material they planned to share. 

 

We will now never know exactly what Jack had in mind to set the record straight. 

 

I think in today's climate, where magazine staff let industry figures like Jan, Jez, Martin etc, rewrite history to their whim, it's more important than ever that documents etc are shared, passed onto historical sites and preserved. 

 

 

But, look at the benifit even the smallest of finds can bring, the historian Scott Stilphen shared his zip files of Atari documents, now on Atarimania etc Frank Gasking of GTW got the lowdown on Lynx Rolling Thunder and Cabal, carried out his own research into Jaguar Deathwatvh, misc Atari Arcade titles etc. 

 

Arcade Attack have done some fantastic interviews with people who worked on commercial Jaguar titles. 

 

I'm sure there's more yet to be found. 

[Leeroy ST]

7 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

It's a great loss when anyone from the community or industry passes, as with them goes the experience, knowledge and so often, the material they planned to share. 

 

We will now never know exactly what Jack had in mind to set the record straight. 

 

I think in today's climate, where magazine staff let industry figures like Jan, Jez, Martin etc, rewrite history to their whim, it's more important than ever that documents etc are shared, passed onto historical sites and preserved. 

 

 

But, look at the benifit even the smallest of finds can bring, the historian Scott Stilphen shared his zip files of Atari documents, now on Atarimania etc Frank Gasking of GTW got the lowdown on Lynx Rolling Thunder and Cabal, carried out his own research into Jaguar Deathwatvh, misc Atari Arcade titles etc. 

 

Arcade Attack have done some fantastic interviews with people who worked on commercial Jaguar titles. 

 

I'm sure there's more yet to be found. 

I'm sure there's someone who might have or have access to the data or documents Jack would have shared. Curt got access to memos and some internal communication so anything is possible.

 

But it goes into why gaming history is such a mess. You not only have those rewriting in interviews, but there are video game books written in a bias perspective or tainted information. They have important information inside them in some cases, but usually only in one direction.

 

I think the Curt/Marty book was the first attempt at trying to balance things. 

[DavidD]

16 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

I'd argue gaming went backwards, variety was gutted and there was 90% side scrollers with a few basic Jrpgs sprinkled around that mostly played similar to each other and involved heavy repetition. There were a handful of exceptions.

 

Hmm... see, while I won't disagree that a large portion of the software would probably be derivative of the market leader, and thus a lot of cheaply produced titles, the NES did receive a rather large number of computer game ports.  I mean, everything from Cinemaware's stuff, to Ultima, Bard's Tale, Archon, MULE, Maniac Mansion, King's Quest... yes, that wasn't the majority of the market, but the NES had a fairly hefty influx of PC games from the 80s through the early 90s.  I'm not entirely sure if there was anything quite like that again until the PS/N64/Saturn era...

[Lostdragon]

Few more misc odds n sods. 

 

The Nintendo threat. 

 

More on Epyx woes before Atari bought the Handy off them.. 

 

 

David Crane Activision, asked about if he'd be producing games on the newly annouced Atari ST.. 

 

 

'I'll believe them (the new ST range) when I see them, there is one hell of a lot of rubber-gloved respect for Jack Tramiel in the States and there is no doubt there has to be a good market for a machine with the power of a Mac at one third of the price.' 

[Lostdragon]

16 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

I'm sure there's someone who might have or have access to the data or documents Jack would have shared. Curt got access to memos and some internal communication so anything is possible.

 

But it goes into why gaming history is such a mess. You not only have those rewriting in interviews, but there are video game books written in a bias perspective or tainted information. They have important information inside them in some cases, but usually only in one direction.

 

I think the Curt/Marty book was the first attempt at trying to balance things. 

You can also add YT into being a massive factor in rewriting history now, but that's a subject in itself.