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

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, Matt_B said:

"Possible" is a dangerous word. For instance, it would also be "possible" for Bushnell to have raised the $120 million that Warner pumped into the development of the VCS by walking into a newsagents, buying 120 scratch cards and winning a million bucks on each of them. That's absurdly unlikely to happen, but it's still "possible."

Related to this: we (in the sense of human beings) tend to look upon initial success as something that's immediately-repeatable.  More:

2 hours ago, Matt_B said:

While not that improbable, there are still a lot of 'lightning in a bottle' moments in the history of Apple.

And that's the crux of the matter.  Sticking with Apple as an example, they've had a history of brilliant ideas interspersed with average-to-mediocre ones as well as some very notable flops.  But, in general, nobody buying an iPhone 12 is likely to care about the Apple ///, Lisa, or Pippin.  Many of today's iPhone buyers likely weren't even born when those devices were on the market, and out of those who were, they either don't care or don't remember.  All they know is that Apple has made a phone for the last 14 years that they want to keep buying.

 

WRT Atari, it was also a company that was successful despite its failures.  Its lightning-in-a-bottle moment was the 2600, which none of its subsequent products ever really matched up to.  Given that those subsequent products were ultimately brought to market on other owners' watch and sank or swam accordingly, it seems reasonable to say that with or without Bushnell, multiple iterations of the company's management didn't helm the ship particularly better.

 

Perhaps the question to ask isn't, 'would Atari have been better off if Bushnell stayed', but rather, 'who would have managed Atari better than those who came after Bushnell?'  Even Bushnell knew that he wasn't the right person to run the company past a certain point, so his leaving of his own accord was likely the best decision that could have been made given the circumstances.

[Leeroy ST]

15 hours ago, Xebec said:

 -- he definitely wasn't at the extreme edge of cutting corners like Sir Clive Sinclair.

Oooh. Could you elaborate on this?

 

I'm always open to learning new things about the Spectrum or Sinclair in general. 

[Lord Mushroom]

On 8/11/2021 at 2:29 PM, Lord Mushroom said:

- From 1974-1978 a guy called Joe Keenan was the president of Atari. Nolan was chairman.

Nolan was still the CEO, though. I am guessing they had a nice suit/ponytail arrangement.

[Matt_B]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

Oooh. Could you elaborate on this?

 

I'm always open to learning new things about the Spectrum or Sinclair in general. 

There were two kinds of cost-cutting in Sinclair computers. The obvious kind from the outside where you've got the cheap plastic cases, rubber or membrane keyboard and the minimal set of interfaces.

 

Then there's the rather more impressive kind you can only appreciate when you open one. They were able to integrate the functions of what would otherwise have been around a hundred discrete logic chips or, in more advanced computers a set of three or four custom chips, into a single ULA which could be mass produced at relatively low cost. This necessitated things like the one-size-fits-all graphics mode, single sound channel and the need for extra adapters on the bus even to add something as simple as a joystick or a printer, but they were never in danger of losing a price war.

 

Upon learning of how Sinclair were doing this, Jack Tramiel was undoubtedly influenced. He never took things to quite the same level, but you can find lots of instances of integrating the functions of multiple chips into one to save on costs throughout the XE and ST ranges, as well as Commodore's Plus/4 and C16.

[Lord Mushroom]

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

"Possible" is a dangerous word. For instance, it would also be "possible" for Bushnell to have raised the $120 million that Warner pumped into the development of the VCS by walking into a newsagents, buying 120 scratch cards and winning a million bucks on each of them. That's absurdly unlikely to happen, but it's still "possible."

The example I provided was very similar to Atari´s situation, and so it showed that it was not just theoretically possible to raise the necessary money, but plausible.

 

And they would probably just need a fraction of the $120 million Warner put in. More money is of course better, but the first millions are much more important than the last.

 

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

So, while Atari in 1976 are probably in better shape than Apple, they're playing a very different game. That kind of gradual expansion isn't an option to them and their platform is closed, at least until the creation of Activision.

Of course Atari could have funded the expansion partly by sales if they had to. The fact that Apple was dependent on third party support made it more important for them to have big sales number quickly. Atari made new games themselves and could also easily port their earlier arcade games.

 

14 hours ago, Matt_B said:

It's all or nothing with the VCS, and if they don't get it out by the holidays of 1977, the company is probably dead.

The VCS was a more powerful console than existing consoles, had much better controls and had access to their own arcade hits. They would have beaten the competition even if they were delayed a year.

[Lord Mushroom]

14 hours ago, DavidD said:

If I find a quote, I'll post it -- I'm just going with the logic that it seems unlikely they would have had had time to create the new design and manufacture it that quickly -- 1984 makes more sense for the AVS, as I know that the NES was written up in articles BEFORE the launch which implies it had its own showing.

I have been googling some more. Still only 1 site saying 1984 and now 15-20 saying 1985. One of the sources is an article written in 1986 which is talking about the presentation of the AVS one year ago:

https://www.nintendotimes.com/1986/01/06/one-year-ago-the-nintendo-avs/

 

The NES was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1985 too, but the CES was a bi-annual show. The AVS was shown in January and the NES in June.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Even Bushnell knew that he wasn't the right person to run the company past a certain point, so his leaving of his own accord was likely the best decision that could have been made given the circumstances.

We don´t know that he left voluntarily. Warner claims they fired him, and Bushnell says it was a mutual decision. The truth could be somewhere in the middle. That Warner demoted him, and that was the final straw for him, so he left.

 

If he did leave voluntarily, I find it unlikely that he did so because he thought Warner would run the company better. He had been fighting with Warner. That doesn´t sound like something he would do if he thought they knew better than him.

 

And even if he did believe they would run it better, I think he was wrong. Based on the series of mistakes they made.

[Lord Mushroom]

This may have been mentioned earlier in the thread, but I am not going to read 7 pages to check. I have read that one of the things Bushnell disagreed with Warner over was the venture into computers. So with Bushnell we probably wouldn´t have had Atari computers.

[zzip]

29 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The VCS was a more powerful console than existing consoles, had much better controls and had access to their own arcade hits. They would have beaten the competition even if they were delayed a year.

Astrocade seems to have better specs, at least on paper, and Bally/Midway had an arcade division as well.  I don't think it was Atari's arcade hits that gave the 2600 and edge, but when they landed "Space Invaders".  That's what put it over the edge and lead to it becoming a massive hit.

 

12 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

And even if he did believe they would run it better, I think he was wrong. Based on the series of mistakes they made.

Under Warner, it was the fastest-growing company in US history.   To focus solely on the mistakes ignores the incredible success.    There were decisions that lead to the success that happened after Bushnell's departure, such as porting Space Invaders to the console.   Who knows if he would have made the same decisions, there's a good chance he wouldn't have.   The chances that Atari would have performed better than "fastest growing in US history" are slim as well.   At best they ride the same wave due to the hotness of the videogame market 80-83, and crash the same way when the bottom fell out.   But at worse they make the wrong decisions--  somebody else gets Space Invaders, and uses the resulting clout to also get Pacman and other hot titles.

[Leeroy ST]

Also iirc in the early days the Fairchild and VCS were selling more competitively with each other in units.

 

Because of google screwing with their backend the search for google newspapers barely searches for what you type in any more making it impossible to find that article and get the numbers, but there is a chance a delay may have costed Atari.

[DavidD]

5 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The NES was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1985 too, but the CES was a bi-annual show. The AVS was shown in January and the NES in June.

Okay -- January and June makes sense, as it gives them several months to have the new NES design made. 

[Matt_B]

7 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The example I provided was very similar to Atari´s situation, and so it showed that it was not just theoretically possible to raise the necessary money, but plausible.

Yes, but at the same time you've got to realize that there were a lot of other companies selling kit computers in 1976 that were considerably less successful than Apple. Most of them were out of the computer business entirely by the time the decade ended. Everyone remembers Apple, Commodore and Tandy because they were the ones who made it. Against them there are literally dozens who tried to do almost exactly the same thing but failed are forgotten.

 

Anyway, Apple were just a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies and the real pioneers of the microcomputer revolution were MITS. They should never have sold to Pertec in 1977. We could all be using Altair phones but for that. ?

 

7 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

And they would probably just need a fraction of the $120 million Warner put in. More money is of course better, but the first millions are much more important than the last.

 

Of course Atari could have funded the expansion partly by sales if they had to. The fact that Apple was dependent on third party support made it more important for them to have big sales number quickly. Atari made new games themselves and could also easily port their earlier arcade games.

Warner were already using sales as funding though. That $120 million was not the sum total of the money that was put into Atari; it's how deep in the hole they were before they started to get a return from the investment; if you're also counting the money pumped back in from sales it'd be in the billions. Developing the VCS and giving it a global marketing push in such a short space of time was a monumental undertaking, and we shouldn't underestimate that.

 

Could it have been done for less? Almost certainly. Money was spent on a lot of dead-end research and side projects that incidentally included Chuck E. Cheese, so Bushnell had to buy that back from them when he left. Unless you're going to apply the benefit of hindsight though, it would be easy to can something vital.

 

There's a big gap between the $30 million valuation and the $120 million investment. If someone's willing to put more than the former amount in they're buying the company outright. If Bushnell and the existing owners want to remain a controlling stake they're probably looking at less than $15 million. We are talking quite a lot less.

 

7 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

The VCS was a more powerful console than existing consoles, had much better controls and had access to their own arcade hits. They would have beaten the competition even if they were delayed a year.

Delaying a year makes a huge difference. The Channel F gets a second attempt to build up its userbase rather than getting dismissed as last year's machine. The Videopac and Astrocade will already be out in some markets in 1978. And if the big push on the VCS doesn't happen until 1979 they're up against the considerably more capable Intellivision in that year, rather than going in as an established market leader who is getting all the big arcade ports.

 

Plus, of course, Bushnell still probably thinks the VCS is obsolete in 1978. ?

 

Also, the increasing expense of developing new arcade machines was another of the reasons for the sale to Warner, as even Atari's hits went out of fashion quite quickly. They had a lot of unsold Pong machines at the time of the Warner purchase, for instance, because everyone else had been cloning it and undercutting them.

[Xebec]

Reading through this thread, I have another argument in support of "I don't know" :

 

It looks like *both* Bushnell and Warner Atari were very much of the mindset of "develop stuff internally" -- 

 

Atari's early success was due to their internal engineering prowess, and building the hardware and software (arcades, dedicated game machines, etc) internally, and that's what caused them to generate profit.  My theory is this would have encouraged Bushnell Atari to continue this practice.  

 

Warner of course being the large east coast corporation, like IBM before the PC, wanted to control every aspect of the business further reinforcing the "do not share too much with developers".

 

The 2600 became very successful after both Warner pumped money in to make it a thing, and then later to advertise it..  as well as the successful separation of ex-Atari engineers to form Activision.   (The irony here is if Atari *had* credited those developers on the 2600, then maybe the whole 3rd party development scene for the 2600 would have been delayed -- REDUCING it's success). 

 

I guess my point is - the 2600 and 400/800 could have been even bigger successes if Atari had embraced developers like Apple had, and I don't see evidence that Bushnell Atari would have done this.  (And IRL Warner Atari certainly didn't until it was too late).   The 2600 technically got a boost by Activision forming, though at the loss of good developers at Atari themselves.  

[Xebec]

On 8/16/2021 at 11:52 PM, Leeroy ST said:

Oooh. Could you elaborate on this?

 

I'm always open to learning new things about the Spectrum or Sinclair in general. 

I can't really add more than what Matt_B already added -- but if you haven't watched it, check out "Micro Men" which covers Sinclair's computer efforts, as well as that of the BBC Micro, ARM, etc.  (You can freely find it on YouTube easily).   

 

My personal opinion - Jack Tramiel focused on cutting costs and then charging a price (initially) that turned a profit based on that build cost.  Jack would occasionally "OK" features the engineers wanted added even if there was a little bit of cost add.  It was later on that Tramiel would really turn the screws if he got into a price war.   However, Clive focused on the price he wanted to sell out FIRST ("I want to sell a personal computer at 99 GBP"), then challenged his teams to build something that would make money at that cost.  

 

@Matt_B The only other comment is the consolidation of multiple functions into single chips was already sort of an industry thing since the early 1970s; the original microprocessor (4004) was in fact the combination of multiple functions onto one chip to improve performance and reduce cost.  I'm not sure if Tramiel was primarily inspired by Sinclair, though I don't doubt he was aware of Sinclair's activities and took some actions accordingly.  :). 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Xebec
English is tough

[Leeroy ST]

8 hours ago, Xebec said:

and 400/800 could have been even bigger successes if Atari had embraced developers like Apple had, and I don't see evidence that Bushnell Atari would have done this.  (And IRL Warner Atari certainly didn't until it was too late).   The 2600 technically got a boost by Activision forming, though at the loss of good developers at Atari themselves.  

I dont know.

 

A400/800 was known more of a game device/toy in many circles pretty early. Even before C64 became huge.

 

C64 had at least initially reached multiple parts of the market with it's hardware, software, and accessories appealing to multiple demographics at an affordable price, then eventually became a popular media gaming box.

 

I think that the A400/800s success was capped early on, and would have stayed that way without changes. The ST started out in the opposite direction and did better in that area 

[Xebec]

4 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

I dont know.

 

A400/800 was known more of a game device/toy in many circles pretty early. Even before C64 became huge.

 

C64 had at least initially reached multiple parts of the market with it's hardware, software, and accessories appealing to multiple demographics at an affordable price, then eventually became a popular media gaming box.

 

I think that the A400/800s success was capped early on, and would have stayed that way without changes. The ST started out in the opposite direction and did better in that area 

Hmm The 400/800 did initially outsell Apple II and the Commodore machines at the time (1980-1981).  The books I've read said that the Atari 400/800 architecture wasn't shared with devs for a while (until like 83-84) which discouraged a lot of development.  Apple ended up succeeding with grassroots devs and a focus on schools, while Commodore of course with cost/performance.  Atari definitely lost the game in 83 when they didn't cut costs fast enough on the platform to sell it competitively.  

 

I do agree though - at least in the US everyone perceived the Atari 400/800 as a toy rather than a real computer..  because of the Atari name.   Sad because it was really advanced for 1979-1980..

 

Atari would have needed a scenario where the 400/800 was launched more dev friendly, followed up by the Amiga .. to succeed permanently in the PC market.  

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, Xebec said:

The books I've read said that the Atari 400/800 architecture wasn't shared with devs for a while (until like 83-84) which discouraged a lot of development.

I would disagree quite strongly with this statement.  By 1983, the systems had been on the market for four years and were well-understood and -documented.  Source for the 400 / 800 OS was available, as was the DOS 2.0 source.  De Re Atari popped up c.1982, with Mapping the Atari around 1983.  Lots of other documentation was available right out of the gate as well, but it did take time for people to come to grips with the machine's capabilities.

 

Granted, Atari's third-party developer relations were never the greatest, but the 400 / 800 era was probably the best they ever were in the company's history.

[Xebec]

8 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

I would disagree quite strongly with this statement.  By 1983, the systems had been on the market for four years and were well-understood and -documented.  Source for the 400 / 800 OS was available, as was the DOS 2.0 source.  De Re Atari popped up c.1982, with Mapping the Atari around 1983.  Lots of other documentation was available right out of the gate as well, but it did take time for people to come to grips with the machine's capabilities.

 

Granted, Atari's third-party developer relations were never the greatest, but the 400 / 800 era was probably the best they ever were in the company's history.

Hmm that's a bit late though, it should have been available day one to encourage developers.  By 83 Apple had clearly attracted a lot of third party software talent that Atari didn't have.  Here's a source on the strangled access for developers:

 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple-in-the-1980s-home-pc-wars

 

After the 400 and 800 launched, power users awed by Star Raiders proved eager to flex the machine’s advanced capabilities. But Atari, following its closed model with the 2600, had never intended to spill the secrets of the HCS architecture outside of special agreements with contracted developers. Crawford recalls, “There were about half a dozen people I knew who’d been bugging me for that information, and I had told them, ‘No, I can’t tell you anything

Edited August 19, 2021 by Xebec

[+x=usr(1536)]

2 hours ago, Xebec said:

Hmm that's a bit late though, it should have been available day one to encourage developers.

Agreed.  However, I wasn't very clear in my initial reply: I didn't mean to imply that it took until 1982 or 1983 for documentation to become available; rather, that process started considerably earlier but had been comprehensively covered by both Atari and third parties by the time 1982-1983 rolled around.

 

Quoting from the post referenced above:

 

"In 1980, things began to shift. After considering the demand from independent developers, the Activision exodus, and the success of Apple’s large and vibrant third-party software market, Atari executives reversed its closed-platform home computer policy. Crawford received the news with joy and contacted developers. “I got on the phone, called them all up, and said, ‘Well, guess what? Where do I mail the documentation to?'”"

 

1980 would have been less than a year after launch.  So while documentation wasn't available at the outset as it should have been, it was available considerably earlier than the launch of the XL range.

 

[Matt_B]

Texas Instruments made much the same mistake with the TI99/4. It had similarly cutting edge hardware to the Atari 8-bits but next to no software, no documentation and a ludicrously high price tag at launch. It took them a couple of years to fix it.

[high voltage]

The Atari 8-bit computer series was very flexible and awesomely easy to use, just like a toy, that's what he meant.

Edited August 20, 2021 by high voltage

[Xebec]

On 8/19/2021 at 10:48 AM, x=usr(1536) said:

Agreed.  However, I wasn't very clear in my initial reply: I didn't mean to imply that it took until 1982 or 1983 for documentation to become available; rather, that process started considerably earlier but had been comprehensively covered by both Atari and third parties by the time 1982-1983 rolled around.

 

Quoting from the post referenced above:

 

"In 1980, things began to shift. After considering the demand from independent developers, the Activision exodus, and the success of Apple’s large and vibrant third-party software market, Atari executives reversed its closed-platform home computer policy. Crawford received the news with joy and contacted developers. “I got on the phone, called them all up, and said, ‘Well, guess what? Where do I mail the documentation to?'”"

 

1980 would have been less than a year after launch.  So while documentation wasn't available at the outset as it should have been, it was available considerably earlier than the launch of the XL range.

 

Fair enough.  I guess the 800 was always doomed then as designed - without 80 column support and something like CP/M it was too late because of market perception.  

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, Xebec said:

Fair enough.  I guess the 800 was always doomed then as designed - without 80 column support and something like CP/M it was too late because of market perception.  

Those were arguably contributing factors to market acceptance for business use, but I think that calling the 800 doomed is a stretch.  Atari never really could figure out which part of the market to aim it at, and the perception of them being a games company didn't help with clarifying that message.  Still, it gathered a pretty decent following and the platform had a 13-year life in the marketplace across all iterations of the A8 hardware.

 

Bear in mind that this was a range of machines that outlasted (though never really outsold) the C64, Apple ][ family, ZX Spectrum, various Amstrads, TRS and CoCo machines, TI99 and variants, and a number of others in the same market space that I'm not remembering at the moment.  While I won't argue that better sales messaging from Atari and peripherals geared towards business use may have helped acceptance early on, the reality is that, in true Atari fashion, it managed to be a success despite Atari ?

[Cebus Capucinis]

Atari wouldn't have been better off, because then it couldn't be sold to Soulja Boy, and we wouldn't see the golden age of classic gaming ushered in by the unlikeliest of heroes....

[Shawn]

Will will never know cause that isn't what happened. The Warner money is what was able to market Atari the way it was so who knows.