Alternate Reality

[pocketmego]

Ok, its 1984...

 

Kassar doesn't get busted for insider trading and stays with Atari.

 

The Deal with Nintendo goes through and Atari purs out the NES as planned, with import titles from Japan.

 

Plans also go ahead with the Atari 7800.

 

Kassar wins either way...

 

The 7800 is a success and he can kill the NES.

 

Or

 

The 7800 BOMBS and he can fall back on the already produced NES.

 

So, what happens next?

 

-Ray

Edited September 18, 2006 by pocketmego

[Goochman]

Nintendo quickly figures out it doesnt need Atari and the song remains the same.

[Angelus]

That would have been cool to watch go down but honestly Nintendo were on fire with the NES. Their games divisions were pumping out so many hits that I don't think Atari would be able to keep up. Ofcourse Nintendo wouldn't have had that monopoly with keeping 3rd parties tied to their console only,but still Nintendo had everyone and their grandmother buying the NES for Mario,Zelda,Punch Out,Metroid,etc.

 

I like your scenario though,I wish it would have gone down like this. It bothers me that the company I grew up on is no longer around,well they are but Infrogrames isn't really Atari in my book.

[jboypacman]

How about this one......Atari agrees to the deal with Nintendo and releases the NES in North America but there is still a backlash from the Video Game Crash and both Atari and Nintendo die.Nintendo lives on in Japan and we here in the U.S. wont get another Video Game System untill many years later from Sony.It would become very popular and cool to own one of Sony's new game systems and then a few other companies would start releasing there own video gaming systems on the U.S. market but only after publishing games for a few years for the Sony system.Sega would release its Saturn,Nintendo would try again this time with a CD based Ultra 64,and Time Warner would bring back Atari from the dead with new CD based gaming system and a possiable Atari hand-held.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Nintendo quickly figures out it doesnt need Atari and the song remains the same.

...or Sega buys out Coleco and kills Atari anyhow.

[+remowilliams]

Even with the infinite number of parallel realities suggested by quantum physics, I still have a hard time imagining one where Atari knew how to actually market products correctly.

[Brian R.]

If Atari went through with distribution of the NES in America, why would it have even developed the 7800, to say nothing of releasing it? We may have seen many of the 7800's arcade ports - its strong point - released for the Atari Entertainment System instead...

 

... which makes me wonder, if Atari had released the NES, what would they have called it???

[jbanes]

If Atari went through with distribution of the NES in America, why would it have even developed the 7800, to say nothing of releasing it?

Atari was never going to release the NES. They were planning to get the exclusive rights for North America, then sit on them while the 7800 had its chance at the market.

 

I think PocketMego's point is that the NES would have been in waiting if the 7800 flopped. Atari could simply ramp up production of the Atari Famicom, then market it as the 7800's successor.

[Goochman]

If Atari went through with distribution of the NES in America, why would it have even developed the 7800, to say nothing of releasing it? We may have seen many of the 7800's arcade ports - its strong point - released for the Atari Entertainment System instead...

 

... which makes me wonder, if Atari had released the NES, what would they have called it???

 

The Atari Trojan Horse

[ninjarabbit]

I honestly can't imagine an alternate reality where Atari and the 7800 does well. Even if Atari does get the rights to the NES no retailer in 1984 is going to want anything to do with an Atari product because they've still got tons of unsold inventory that Atari refused to buyback. And the way Atari was run at the time you know they'd do something stupid to breach the contract with Nintendo and Nintendo ends up going solo anyways.

[shadow460]

If Atari went through with distribution of the NES in America, why would it have even developed the 7800, to say nothing of releasing it?

Atari was never going to release the NES. They were planning to get the exclusive rights for North America, then sit on them while the 7800 had its chance at the market.

 

I think PocketMego's point is that the NES would have been in waiting if the 7800 flopped. Atari could simply ramp up production of the Atari Famicom, then market it as the 7800's successor.

 

Nintendo would have eaten Kassar and Atari alive in court for that.

In fact, there was a popular rumor going around for a while that that's exactly what happened.

No way Nintendo would have signed a contract that didn't assure the production and sale of the NES here in the US. Especially with the people who wrote the book on video games. Nintendo might have made some mistakes, but their execs are not stupid.

If this had happened, though, the lag in production for the NES would have given Sega a foothold that they might have leveraged to own the market with their Master System. I think that we'd still be playing Sony and Microsoft games now due to mistakes that Sega made later on, but that's beside the point.

 

Nintendo might even have been asking Atari for a non compete agreement. If that's the case, the 7800 was doomed before it even left the drawing board. It's a rock solid console, but Nintendo already had better things being worked on even in 1984.

The mistakes that doomed the 7800 and perhaps Atari were made before the system was ready to ship. Perhaps Nintendo might have goofed and Atari or Sega would have taken the throne. Multiple opportunities came where Jack could have taken a risk that might have saved the system--he played it safe and still lost.

 

The mistakes that killed the 7800? No buyback, support of the wrong system (Imagic is also partly to blame for this), lack of licensing (it could have held a grandfather clause for existing third parties) ... the list goes on.

Today Sony and them have the history of mistakes made to base their decisions on. The folks who "messed up Atari" didn't have the wealth of experinces the grandfather of gaming went through. They had no idea that so many third parties would drop in and ultimately destroy the market. They had no idea that people were eager to buy something fresh, especially with backwards compatibility.

No, instead they were pioneers, or explorers maybe. That kind of exploration includes major risks. They risked a company on their limited experience, and quite frankly, Atari stayed in business a lot longer than anyone expected them to back in 1977.

Hmmm, one system with nine interchangeable games? What's the count now...six systems, several computers, some portable computers, and perhaps over two thousand titles?

 

I don't see Atari as dead or failed to any other company--instead I think it was an undisputed success. It shares that throne with Nintendo, and that's been good for us all.

[jbanes]

Nintendo would have eaten Kassar and Atari alive in court for that.

I'm guessing that Kassar figured that out, which was why he went on his tirade about Donkey Kong on the Coleco Adam. Basically, he was stalling for as long as he could so as to get the 7800 into production. Even a court case would have still delayed the NES while the 7800 became established in the market.

[rockman_x_2002]

In this alternate reality, let's suppose then that Atari claimed the NES for their own, the 7800 flopped, and the NES was ready to go. I figure Atari would have signed a licence agreement with Nintendo such that Nintendo's name would appear prominently alongside Atari's somehow on all the games and such.

 

I doubt the system's name itself would bear both company names, I figure the system might have been called the "Atari Family Computer System"... or perhaps not since the Atari 2600 was known as the "Video Computer System," and that name presents a possible confusion (as if they needed any more of that ). I'm sure that Atari would work out something along those lines, however, since the Japanese system was called "Famicom". They'd probably be bound to keep the name similar for this market.

 

I figure that people would recognize the popularity of the NES under Atari's name and the system would be a success. But I can't imagine Atari making a whole lot of money off the deal, and I figure Nintendo would realize they could go it alone. By the time the SNES was ready for US launch, Nintendo would do that system for themselves.

 

In fact the only two things I can forsee that might be different from the scenario we actually got is that, first, Atari, upon news of Nintendo's next console being a solo act, might have done work on their own system to compete with the SNES and Genesis (perhaps the 32-bit Panther might have actually been released thanks to funds from NES sales). But I figure this, too, would bomb. After 1995 or so, I figure the timeline would equal out and we'd see nearly exactly the same events that actually took place. The other thing is that we might or might not have gotten the Jaguar, however, if the Panther had failed.

[pocketmego]

I honestly can't imagine an alternate reality where Atari and the 7800 does well. Even if Atari does get the rights to the NES no retailer in 1984 is going to want anything to do with an Atari product because they've still got tons of unsold inventory that Atari refused to buyback. And the way Atari was run at the time you know they'd do something stupid to breach the contract with Nintendo and Nintendo ends up going solo anyways.

 

LOL, this is very true. Marketing still would have fallen short. I shiver at the idea of how Atari would have marketed the NES.

 

-Ray

[+AtariNerd]

The title of this thread got me rather excited for the few seconds I though it had to deal with the works of Philip Price somehow being ported to the 7800, perhaps with certain "enhancements".

 

Knowing the 7800's overall limitations, however, i knew it couldn't be true.

 

Still, for those few seconds...

[pocketmego]

I honestly can't imagine an alternate reality where Atari and the 7800 does well. Even if Atari does get the rights to the NES no retailer in 1984 is going to want anything to do with an Atari product because they've still got tons of unsold inventory that Atari refused to buyback. And the way Atari was run at the time you know they'd do something stupid to breach the contract with Nintendo and Nintendo ends up going solo anyways.

 

 

But, I don't think the Crash was ever going to last forever, in any reality. The truth is, people enjoy playing video games and so long as people enjoy something they aren't going to stop doing it. In some way or another Video Games would have been big again by 86/87, just like they were when the NS hit.

 

I never believed Nintendo saved video games. I think video games needed a break and Nintendo hit at the right time.

 

-Ray

[+remowilliams]

The title of this thread got me rather excited for the few seconds I though it had to deal with the works of Philip Price somehow being ported to the 7800, perhaps with certain "enhancements".

 

Knowing the 7800's overall limitations, however, i knew it couldn't be true.

 

Still, for those few seconds...

lol - how true

 

You can't say Alternate Reality in an Atari crowd without drawing those kind of expectations

[ninjarabbit]

I honestly can't imagine an alternate reality where Atari and the 7800 does well. Even if Atari does get the rights to the NES no retailer in 1984 is going to want anything to do with an Atari product because they've still got tons of unsold inventory that Atari refused to buyback. And the way Atari was run at the time you know they'd do something stupid to breach the contract with Nintendo and Nintendo ends up going solo anyways.

 

 

But, I don't think the Crash was ever going to last forever, in any reality. The truth is, people enjoy playing video games and so long as people enjoy something they aren't going to stop doing it. In some way or another Video Games would have been big again by 86/87, just like they were when the NS hit.

 

I never believed Nintendo saved video games. I think video games needed a break and Nintendo hit at the right time.

 

-Ray

 

It doesn't manner how long the crash would have landed. Atari pissed off retailers by not buying back their product and forcing them to eat the losses and the mere fact that a few years later Tramiel convinced some retailers to carry an Atari product is amazing since in the mid and late 80's the Atari name was poison to retailers.

 

 

The NES got big because it did offer a new and modern gaming experience with games like SMB and LoZ offering new and much deeper gaming experiences. They weren't constantly rehashing 4 and 5 year old games like Asteroids and Centepede. At the end of the day it's about the games and if the NES didn't have games it would have bombed too.

[Rik]

Kassar leaves the business,gets a sex change,and opens up a female impersonaters club cabaret,and gets busted for cocaine possesion

Edited October 16, 2006 by Rik