Interview with Coleco President Arnold C. Greenberg 06/83

[2600Lives]

Greenberg was an eletist piece of shit (just like someone else..). Just another goddamned suit who thought he knew best about everything and only cared about the allmighty dollar, and willing to do whatever it took to get that dollar. Fuck him, plain and simple. I've heard those stories about Coleco for years, and an old buddy of mine's sister worked for them during the very final days. Though I've never met her in person, he's told me that she never had anything good to say about the place. Horridly low pay, jerkoff management, etc.

[atarian63]

I'd like to see all poorly run companies meet their justified death in the marketplace. That it doesn't always happen does not diminish my joy when it does.

 

Yeah, I hear ya on that one. When is Sears going to finally go away for good? Whenever I've gone in one of those stores I say, "Wow, this is the most disorganized and poorly stocked store ever" plus the employees are paid based on commission which rarely puts them much above minimum wage.

 

Ugh. I didn't realize that about Sears. I haven't been in one in ages.

 

At least we got rid of Circuit City!

Wow, Here they were much better and nicer than Best Buy. You could visit a store and see mostly the same people year after year, Best Buy you were lucky if it was the same person month to month.

Just my 2 cents for my area of the world.

Coleco certainly put the hurt on Atari. Lower cost, more profit. A Focus. Smart licensing on Coleco's part. Atari could have had that but instead we licensed E.T. :roll:Though I suppose it could have worked if better written. Not to mention Atari blowing tons of money of vaporware or Atari Tel or stopping R&D almost altogether and going off 20 directions at once like a company with ADD. Ahh there is the ADAM though, nice R&D on that one Ha Ha!

Edited March 9, 2009 by atarian63

[Disco Scottie]

I remember reading that article when it was first published. Greenberg certainly recognized what the future held for the industry... too bad he was such a prick at the time.

[Ransom]

Wow, Here they were much better and nicer than Best Buy. You could visit a store and see mostly the same people year after year, Best Buy you were lucky if it was the same person month to month.

Just my 2 cents for my area of the world.

 

Sorry, I was mixing complaints. I dunno how Circuit City was to its employees. I just know that they axed all their higher paid salespeople (who actually knew about the things they were selling).

 

Coleco certainly put the hurt on Atari. Lower cost, more profit. A Focus. Smart licensing on Coleco's part. Atari could have had that but instead we licensed E.T. :roll:Though I suppose it could have worked if better written. Not to mention Atari blowing tons of money of vaporware or Atari Tel or stopping R&D almost altogether and going off 20 directions at once like a company with ADD. Ahh there is the ADAM though, nice R&D on that one Ha Ha!

 

Yup, Atari screwed the pooch pretty badly. I often wonder what would have happened if they'd never entered the 8-bit computer market and used that platform as a next-gen game console as it was originally intended, to be released in 1979/80. The VCS therefore never really would have taken off (since that would put it pre-Space Invaders). But the 8-bit game console would have had incredibly strong titles, like Star Raiders and later Space Invaders and Asteroids. I think that might have killed Intellivision in the cradle. And I think Coleco might not have seen a real opportunity for entry into the market by 1982.

 

Oh, well. We'll never know. But it's certainly true that Atari wasted vast sums of cash on R&D and licensing without following up on the products, whereas Coleco did a pretty good job on that aspect. Too bad about the cheap Coleco hardware, tho.

Edited March 9, 2009 by Ransom

[thegamezmaster]

Yeah Greenburg sure was smart, can the Super Game Module and instead release the Adam. That went over real well! Way to go Arnie.

[KIWASABI]

How powerful would the Super Game Module have been in comparison to other game consoles of the time? Would it have been as good as NES or 7800?

 

By the way, since it was mentioned, Circuit City and Best Buy treated their employees pretty similarly, which wasn't horrible but wasn't great. Both companies had their sales goals and the managers got on the salespeople when they weren't meeting their sales goals. The stupid thing was that Circuit City and Best Buy weren't paying them based on commission so their only incentive to sell stuff was to look good with management (a pretty lame incentive). But Circuit City and Best Buy each paid their floor people $9.50-$10/hour which isn't too bad compared to a lot of companies out there (Sears, as I mentioned earlier, doesn't pay their employees anything).

 

-Adam

[HARMIK]

Very interesting interview, I to have the second one thanks for sharing.

[else]

How powerful would the Super Game Module have been in comparison to other game consoles of the time? Would it have been as good as NES or 7800?

 

Just as with the Adam, the SGM wasn't going to add any "power" to the Colecovision. It was just going to add cheap mass storage.

 

If you take the Expansion Module #3 version of the Adam, remove the printer and the keyboard, you are essentially left with what the SGM was going to be (only in a different case). So in many respects, the SGM was released -- only as an enhanced product called Adam....

 

Unfortunately Coleco bit off more than they could chew with the Adam product (where as the SGM would have been a much more manageable product). And the rest, is history....

Edited March 10, 2009 by else