Happy 25th 7800 - Sales Figures Attached...

[+wood_jl]

I think the picture of the company Tramiel actually pulled back from the grave is becoming clearer.

 

Tramiel didn't pull any company back from the grave, Atari Inc. died. Atari Corp. is a completely different corporate entity based off of Tramel Technology's absorption of the Atari Consumer properties. Where the confusion lies, is he took on Atari Inc.'s debt as part of the deal (and there was a lot of it), so Warner could remove it from the books. And yes, Tramiel did an amazing job clearing up that debt and turning it in to a profitable company (at least until he retired and Sam took over).

 

 

 

Don't make him sound like such a hero.

 

Don't make him sound like such a villain. What's with the obsessive "Tramiel hating?" How long ago was 1984, and you're still angry? Why???????

 

He "bought" the company in an accounting maneuver to improve Warner's stock in order to fight off Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover [of Warner]. People keep on omitting this from the Atari historical account on these forums. Tramiel's purchase was with about $350 million in promissory notes, i.e. monopoly money equal to the number of 800XLs sitting in the warehouses at the time valued at $80 per unit.

 

Sounds like he got a hell of a bargain, and didn't even have to come up with the cash. The only thing we can deduce is he was a smart guy, eh?

 

Warner had no intention of selling off the company in full which is why Ross rejected Philips offer to purchase 100% of the company. Ross insisted on keeping a 25% stake in the new company and Warner did so [well, sometimes dipping to 22% and sometimes above 25%] throughout the history of Atari Corp. even when [Time] Warner was also hedging their bets by investing in 3DO. [To this day, Warner is hedging bets; they are one of the investors in OnLive which will probably turn out to be a gimmick].

 

And you know this how? Where do you get this information, seriously? Source?

 

Tramiel did not spend his own cash on the acquisition.

 

He didn't have to. Why should he have? Are you trying to make some point that he should have?

 

He did sink in something like $10 million during the rough development time of the ST according to what I've read elsewhere but the "repayments" to Warner came from Atari's profits - not Tramiel's checkbook

 

Once again, why should it have come from his checkbook? Is there a point to be made about the fact that it did not? Repayments from Atari's profits only possible because Tramiel made it profitable again.

 

- which came from you and me buying Atari products since we were good Atarians. Tramiel finally paid off the Warner debt when the Atari Corp. IPO happened.

 

Or you could say, from anybody buying Atari products for whatever reason, most likely because they were decent products at reasonable prices - as Tramiel dictated.

 

Had Rupert Murdoch not been an a$$ - who ultimately bought 20th Century Fox - Warner would not have dumped Atari Inc. [thus it wouldn't have "died"] and Morgan probably could've turned the company around on his own. Instead, we got the sucky history that happened and James Morgan will forever be remembered by the public as the tobacco executive who told Congress that cigarettes were about as addictive as gummy bears.

 

Once again, you know this how? Where do you get the information that you base this speculation on? Source?

[DracIsBack]

Are the sales figures for worldwide or just US/North America?

 

US. (which is not "North America" ). If you look closely at the accounts, they're all US accounts.

[Lynxpro]

Don't make him sound like such a villain. What's with the obsessive "Tramiel hating?" How long ago was 1984, and you're still angry? Why???????

 

 

Because I feel he ruined the company even worse than Warner did. The same reason why people will be talking about the successive management teams that led to the downfall oF GM and all of the investment firms, or how Nick Leeson (sic) is blamed for taking down Bearings Bank in the UK.

 

 

Warner had no intention of selling off the company in full which is why Ross rejected Philips offer to purchase 100% of the company. Ross insisted on keeping a 25% stake in the new company and Warner did so [well, sometimes dipping to 22% and sometimes above 25%] throughout the history of Atari Corp. even when [Time] Warner was also hedging their bets by investing in 3DO. [To this day, Warner is hedging bets; they are one of the investors in OnLive which will probably turn out to be a gimmick].

 

And you know this how? Where do you get this information, seriously? Source?

 

 

Game Over, Infoworld's Essential Guide to the Atari, any trade from that day. Time Warner Annual Reports [initial investor in 3DO]. If you look up OnLive's info today, you will see that Warner Bros. Games [Time Warner] is an investor.

 

 

Tramiel did not spend his own cash on the acquisition.

 

He didn't have to. Why should he have? Are you trying to make some point that he should have?

 

He did sink in something like $10 million during the rough development time of the ST according to what I've read elsewhere but the "repayments" to Warner came from Atari's profits - not Tramiel's checkbook

 

Once again, why should it have come from his checkbook? Is there a point to be made about the fact that it did not? Repayments from Atari's profits only possible because Tramiel made it profitable again.

]

 

 

Yes, there is a point to be made. The point is that Tramiel didn't have to "repay" Warner debt from his own pocketbook and that he was "saddled" with it. He paid it back from Atari's profits... the same profits that Atari Inc. would've generated on its own had it remained in Warner's hands and did nothing but ship existing inventory on hand to dealers and retailers. Others have brought up how they survived on 2600 and 5200 game sales from the takeover point in June 1984 through most of 1985. Thus Tramiel did not make the company profitable, all he did was go "Chainsaw Al" on Atari Inc's payroll.

 

 

 

Had Rupert Murdoch not been an a$$ - who ultimately bought 20th Century Fox - Warner would not have dumped Atari Inc. [thus it wouldn't have "died"] and Morgan probably could've turned the company around on his own. Instead, we got the sucky history that happened and James Morgan will forever be remembered by the public as the tobacco executive who told Congress that cigarettes were about as addictive as gummy bears.

Once again, you know this how? Where do you get the information that you base this speculation on? Source?

 

 

How do you not know this? You can look up the business trades from the past and find this info. You can find it in Steve Ross's bio. You can find it in "Infoworld's Essential Guide to the Atari" (written in 1984) and covered even further in "Game Over". You can find other information in the old Atari Corp. Annual Reviews.

 

I suggest you also do a Google Search on James Morgan if you do not know the role he ultimately played in Congress's hearings on the Tobacco Industry in the 90s.

 

 

Don't make him sound like such a hero.

 

Wasn't aware anyone was, but how about this - don't have such a complex about the man that you have to go from old thread to old thread on some sort of crusade. Regardless of your personal issues, he still did what we said he did.

 

 

It's not a crusade; it's correcting information that I see as I go through the forums. Just as I continually see postings that Warner wanted to get rid of Atari in whole [100%] which was not the case or the assertion that Tramiel turned Atari around or that he had always planned on bringing Atari back to the gaming industry when his comments from day one prove otherwise...

Edited March 22, 2010 by Lynxpro

[Retro Rogue]

Don't make him sound like such a hero.

 

Wasn't aware anyone was, but how about this - don't have such a complex about the man that you have to go from old thread to old thread on some sort of crusade. Regardless of your personal issues, he still did what we said he did.

 

 

It's not a crusade; it's correcting information that I see as I go through the forums.

 

All you've done is repeat nothing new when it comes to info, and/or continually give opinion. There has been no correction, just loud assertions.

 

 

Just as I continually see postings that Warner wanted to get rid of Atari in whole [100%]

 

The company they brought in to evaluate all their holdings (including Atari) that January recommended it.

 

which was not the case or the assertion that Tramiel turned Atari around

 

 

*bzzzzt* He brought it in to the black by '86/'87. That's a matter of record.

 

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/access/55745774.html?dids=55745774:55745774&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+28%2C+1987&author=Mark+Lewyn%3BKathy+Rebello&pub=USA+TODAY+%28pre-1997+Fulltext%29&desc=Jack+Tramiel&pqatl=google

 

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pM8hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5Z4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1194,598392&dq=atari+jack+tramiel+in+to+the+black&hl=en

 

For those not familiar with the term, it specifically is defined as "Of or relating to the profitability of a firm or the operations of a firm. The term derives from the color of ink used to enter a profit figure on a financial statement." or "When discussion the current state of personal or corporate finances and assets, the phrase “in the black” is often used to refer to a state that is considered to be positive. Essentially to be in the black is to mean that the individual, corporation, or non-profit organization currently has more assets than liabilities."

 

 

or that he had always planned on bringing Atari back to the gaming industry when his comments from day one prove otherwise...

 

*bzzzt* It proves your understanding of commentary and what was actually going on is otherwise. As stated, we have the internal emails, documentation, etc., etc. The 2600jr project was started up again immediately in August. The 7800 negotiations for payment and MARIA ownership between Warner/Atari Corp./GCC also started up in August and concluded by the Spring. That is when GCC finally received payment, and ownership was transferred to Jack. That's also when negotiations started between Jack and GCC regarding payment and ownership for the launch games.

Edited March 22, 2010 by wgungfu

[Curt Vendel]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

[Shawn]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

 

Do you have any of the Canadian sales figures from Atari? I'd be intrested in seeing how each system did here up in the GWN.

[DracIsBack]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

 

Do you have any of the Canadian sales figures from Atari? I'd be intrested in seeing how each system did here up in the GWN.

 

My gut says:

 

2600jr did well ... saw them everywhere and for a long time. Consumers, Toy City,, Toys R Us K Mart, Zellers etc.

 

7800 was so so. Saw them KMart, Toy City, Toys R Us but not for as long.

 

XE. Really poor. Only ever saw them at Zellers and only for one season.

[atarian63]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

 

Do you have any of the Canadian sales figures from Atari? I'd be intrested in seeing how each system did here up in the GWN.

 

My gut says:

 

2600jr did well ... saw them everywhere and for a long time. Consumers, Toy City,, Toys R Us K Mart, Zellers etc.

 

7800 was so so. Saw them KMart, Toy City, Toys R Us but not for as long.

 

XE. Really poor. Only ever saw them at Zellers and only for one season.

That would be a fair view of how it was. Seems like what I saw here and other cities as well back then.

[Shawn]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

 

Do you have any of the Canadian sales figures from Atari? I'd be intrested in seeing how each system did here up in the GWN.

 

My gut says:

 

2600jr did well ... saw them everywhere and for a long time. Consumers, Toy City,, Toys R Us K Mart, Zellers etc.

 

7800 was so so. Saw them KMart, Toy City, Toys R Us but not for as long.

 

XE. Really poor. Only ever saw them at Zellers and only for one season.

 

I never saw a 7800 on store shelf ever. Hell I didn't even knew it existed untill about 2003, same goes for the 5200.

[King_Salamon]

I recall seeing the 7800 at KMart and pretty much only there... they had a demo unit so you could play Pole Position II there... and I recall Desert Falcon at one point. I don't remember seeing 7800 games in a Consumers Catalogue (oh how I enjoyed those catalogues!)... mind you at the time my gaming life revolved around the NES.

 

XE.... never once saw one in a retail store. I got once for Christmas one year because my dad bought it for me off of the home shopping network! And at that point they were pretty cheap with a small bundle of carts. Ahh good times! But this shows how much power Atari's name held in the early 90's! My dad recognized and purchased something for me based on the brand!

[Lynxpro]

The company they brought in to evaluate all their holdings (including Atari) that January recommended it.

 

 

A consulting firm hired by Warner Communications to assess Atari Inc. and their published opinions does not equal Warner Communications nor their intent. The fact is, Steve Ross nixed the Philips offer for 100% of Atari Inc. because he wanted to keep an equity stake in the continuing operations so he could get Atari back cheaply once the threat from Rupert Murdoch was over. Are you disputing Warner Communications' continuous 22% - 27% ownership stake in Atari Corp which was fact? Are you disputing Ross having Time Warner reacquire the Atari Games Corp while he was still alive? The intent was there.

 

 

 

*bzzzzt* He brought it in to the black by '86/'87. That's a matter of record.

 

 

By selling off excess inventory from Atari Inc., eliminating 9,000 employees, and bringing down the quality of Atari [Corp.] products down to Commodore's level of quality [mushy keyboards, black & white cartridge stickers, eliminating the cartridge doors, you name it]. Had Warner kept Atari and James Morgan in place, Atari Inc. could've done even better than that since there was a demand for the 1400XL, the 1450XLD, and the 7800. There may be evidence that Tramiel did plan to sell the 7800 ultimately in 84/85, but where's the excuse for what he did with canceling the 1400XL and 1450XLD for the inferior [Commodore'ish] XE line?

 

 

 

*bzzzt* It proves your understanding of commentary and what was actually going on is otherwise. As stated, we have the internal emails, documentation, etc., etc. The 2600jr project was started up again immediately in August. The 7800 negotiations for payment and MARIA ownership between Warner/Atari Corp./GCC also started up in August and concluded by the Spring. That is when GCC finally received payment, and ownership was transferred to Jack. That's also when negotiations started between Jack and GCC regarding payment and ownership for the launch games.

 

 

The 2600jr proves nothing. Tramiel's Atari Corp. inherited all of the 2600 cartridges that Atari Inc. produced that were sitting in their warehouses. Since the value of the Atari Inc. purchase by Tramiel was valued exactly at the number of 800XLs sitting in the warehouses valued at $80 each means that anything else Atari Corp. sold that had been made by Atari Inc. was profit. Accounting tricks prove nothing except they Enron'ed their way to being in the black. The 2600jr project would be a means of continuing to sell off that existing inventory, or as people later point out, the same reason why the XEGS came into being [to sell off excess 8-bit components sitting around collecting dust in the warehouses]. Had Tramiel actually been interested in reviving the video game industry, he would've went about it a different way. I mean, Tramiel had Federated selling off AtariSoft carts of "Picnic Paranoid" for the TI99/4A in the stores in 1987. I wouldn't interpret that as meaning that Tramiel intended on capturing and reviving the TI99/4A gaming scene just for s***s and giggles.

 

There's also another angle as to why Tramiel may have been interested in securing the rights to the 7800 even without having an intent to sell it... To deprive anyone else of the right to "prove" that he was wrong about video games being dead. Had GCC and Warner retained the rights to the 7800, they could've licensed it to the Atari Games Corp and although that company was prohibited from using the name "Atari" in the home market, they could've named it the "Tengen 7800" and then sold it successfully and made Tramiel look foolish for passing them up for a cool $10 million because the industry was supposedly "dead". This is not hard to assume from a person whose psyche drives them/him to destroy the profit margin on their most successful product - the Commodore 64 - and ruin the entire industry just to get "revenge" on Texas Instruments for a perceived slight they committed against him personally a decade before.

 

 

And anyone can say anything with email. The alleged story of Tramiel raking the 7800 on the floor in front of Brad Saville is recounted by Jerry Jessop to Wired. In that same article, Michael Katz states that Tramiel turned down the Sega Mega Drive. Turned down. All of that behavior is consistent with what was written about the man from "The Home Computer Wars" which was written back in like 1984.

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/history_pr.htm

[Lynxpro]

I want to follow up on that prior posting concerning Steve Ross's intent to re-acquire Atari. It has been some time since I read "Game Over" but I seemed to recall Manny Gerard stating as such in the author's interview with him.

 

Aside from helping to found an investment bank, Manny Gerard remained interested in video games long after Warner/Atari. It turns out he was an investor in Harmonix [and served as a director]:

 

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=40711507

[gdement]

This is not hard to assume from a person whose psyche drives them/him to destroy the profit margin on their most successful product - the Commodore 64 - and ruin the entire industry just to get "revenge" on Texas Instruments for a perceived slight they committed against him personally a decade before.

I haven't heard the backstory, but I have trouble believing his low-cost strategy was just for "revenge". He clearly saw cheap pricing as the key to dominance in the low end PC market. It was a young market with lots of players, and they couldn't all survive - it was a market share war, and near-term profits would have to suffer.

 

Tramiel did an interview on "The Computer Chronicles", which can be downloaded at archive.org. I don't remember the name of the episode, but I think it related to the launch of the ST.

In it, he mentioned that part of his motivation for low pricing on the C64 was to discourage the Japanese from entering North America. Presumably he was worried about the MSX.

He was focused on market share and defeating competitors, with the idea that profits would come later.

[Lynxpro]

This is not hard to assume from a person whose psyche drives them/him to destroy the profit margin on their most successful product - the Commodore 64 - and ruin the entire industry just to get "revenge" on Texas Instruments for a perceived slight they committed against him personally a decade before.

I haven't heard the backstory, but I have trouble believing his low-cost strategy was just for "revenge". He clearly saw cheap pricing as the key to dominance in the low end PC market. It was a young market with lots of players, and they couldn't all survive - it was a market share war, and near-term profits would have to suffer.

 

 

The revenge part is covered elsewhere in plenty of places, such as the various books over the years on the history of Commodore. Back in the 70s, Commodore sold calculators, especially in Europe. They used a TI chip. Then TI decides to sell their own calculators and cut out all the middle men and thus TI was selling their actual calculators cheaper than what they sold their chip for to Commodore and any other calculator maker. It almost drove Commodore in the ground and that was when Tramiel decided he needed his own chip fab company so he could drive down costs through vertical integration for his calculator war rematch with TI.

 

Commodore purchased MOS for this very reason. It has been alleged that Tramiel was able to buy MOS by delaying payment on all the invoices Commodore had outstanding with MOS which apparently led MOS to having major financing problems. But this is an alleged charge; I have not seen anything online that proves this one way or another although I suspect it is highly possible. The calculator rematch did not happen; Chuck Peddle at MOS convinced Jack that that market was DOA and computers would be the place to be [another example of misreading the healthy of an industry on the part of Tramiel? Hmmm].

 

It has been said by contemporaries that the main reason why he kept slashing the price of the C64 was to get revenge on TI and he did... TI withdrew from the home computer industry bloodied**. Of course, it destabilized the industry - which ironically could've led to the MSX computers becoming a success here - and made the C64 a commodity product and consequently Irving Gould showed Tramiel out the door - of his own company - over it as well as Jack's insistence that his sons have meaningful management positions at Commodore.

 

The rest is [debated] history.

 

 

**TI's Bill Cosby Power-Up didn't seem to work for them.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Lynxpro

[Retro Rogue]

A consulting firm hired by Warner Communications to assess Atari Inc. and their published opinions does not equal Warner Communications nor their intent.

 

Actually, as with any evaluation firm that's brought in for a reason - it precisely states the intent. And the exact intent as to why they started looking for buyers, without cluing in Jim Morgan to their intent for all those months, nor allowing him to complete the reorganization they hired him for. Atari Inc. had become a liability, not an asset anymore, plain and simple. Warner Communication's stock was so tied to Atari Inc. at that point, it needed to be done - just as the firm recommended for those very reasons.

 

 

The fact is, Steve Ross nixed the Philips offer for 100% of Atari Inc. because he wanted to keep an equity stake in the continuing operations so he could get Atari back cheaply once the threat from Rupert Murdoch was over.

 

Please don't portray your personal synthesized opinion as fact. You're pulling in two different things together, and trying to portray them as being directly linked.

 

Are you disputing Warner Communications' continuous 22% - 27% ownership stake in Atari Corp which was fact? Are you disputing Ross having Time Warner reacquire the Atari Games Corp while he was still alive? The intent was there.

 

No, you're reading in that intent. Unless you've talked directly to Ross, which I highly doubt, or have direct quotes from him and management. That's the whole reason we try and go by direct interviews, internal documents, and the like. To much "history" has gone by hearsay and misinformed published opinions taken as facts. The stock ownership came in lieu of Tramiel sinking any money in to the purchase and Warner's continued advances of money throughout the rest of '84, all well documented. We've already established Tramiel's penchant for stock in Atari Corp. vs. actual money.

 

By selling off excess inventory from Atari Inc.,

 

Which is a good thing.

 

eliminating 9,000 employees,

 

Sorry, but a bulk of the employees were eliminated before the purchase. The rest *were not included in the purchase*. We have the purchase agreement and what it spells out. There's a reason Atari Inc. consumer employees had to be interviewed to be rehired under Atari corp. The confusion came from the fact that employees didn't have a clue what was going on, and thought they still had jobs coming in after the long 4th of July weekend.

 

and bringing down the quality of Atari [Corp.] products down to Commodore's level of quality [mushy keyboards, black & white cartridge stickers, eliminating the cartridge doors, you name it].

 

Again, revealing you're letting your personal feelings cloud your judgment and where this ridiculous continuous cross-thread commentary is coming from. Great, in *your opinion* the quality was brought down (which was something being complained about under Warner as well - go figure). That once again has nothing to do with as stated, he brought the company in to the black. PERIOD.

 

Had Warner kept Atari and James Morgan in place, Atari Inc. could've done even better than that since there was a demand for the 1400XL, the 1450XLD, and the 7800.

 

1) I agree about Morgan, I think that would have been the better route.

 

2) What demand? Do you have some kind of internal documentation on demographic and response material? And everyone knows there were to many issues with the 1450XLD, hence the continual delay.

 

3) While the New York test sampling was considered successful, the Summer '84 CES reviews were horrible and lambasted it as more of the same. Likewise, any future for the 7800 was questionable considering Atari Inc. was going to be releasing the Amiga based game console that Christmas.

 

 

There may be evidence that Tramiel did plan to sell the 7800 ultimately in 84/85, but where's the excuse for what he did with canceling the 1400XL and 1450XLD for the inferior [Commodore'ish] XE line?

 

See above. They wanted to hit the ground running, and there would have been to much development time yet to sink in to get both bug free and out the door. They had full plans for the entire XL line, including continuing with the 800xl in several formats.

 

 

 

The 2600jr proves nothing.

 

"The facts mean nothing."

 

 

Tramiel's Atari Corp. inherited all of the 2600 cartridges that Atari Inc. produced that were sitting in their warehouses. Since the value of the Atari Inc. purchase by Tramiel was valued exactly at the number of 800XLs sitting in the warehouses valued at $80 each means that anything else Atari Corp. sold that had been made by Atari Inc. was profit.

 

That's playing with numbers. Matched against the mass debt taken on as well, they had a long way to go before claiming any "profit". That's where the entire term comes from for bringing something "in the black". Likewise, Atari Inc. had the large stock because of the demand issues - which you're completely and conveniently wiping out with the above statements.

 

Accounting tricks prove nothing except they Enron'ed their way to being in the black.

 

You're the only one doing tricks around around. Why do you think everyone keeps pointing out your hate for Jack and the clouded reasoning it's causing is obvious? I'm only interested in verifiable facts, not opinions based on hate or love for the man.

 

The 2600jr project would be a means of continuing to sell off that existing inventory,

 

*bzzzt* That's once again pure speculation on your part. Atari Corp., and the market (distributors, vendors, etc.), had a full stock of unsold 2600's which were being sold all through '84 and '85. Producing more consoles was the last thing anyone needed to do to sell old stock. There's a *reason* the old stock wasn't moving and the magic number price point was finally reached in Fall/Winter of '85, which caused the strong console sales - all of which were pre-Atari Corp. manufactured consoles.

 

 

There's also another angle as to why Tramiel may have been interested in securing the rights to the 7800 even without having an intent to sell it... To deprive anyone else of the right to "prove" that he was wrong about video games being dead.

 

That's just ridiculous conjecture. Once again, direct from all interviews and internal documentation, which myself and Curt have discussed ad nausea, they fully intended on continuing with video games which was the strong base market of Atari (stronger than computers). It's like you're throwing basic business sense out the window in such an effort to try and convey your personal opinions of Jack.

 

Had GCC and Warner retained the rights to the 7800, they could've licensed it to the Atari Games Corp and although that company was prohibited from using the name "Atari" in the home market, they could've named it the "Tengen 7800" and then sold it successfully and made Tramiel look foolish for passing them up for a cool $10 million because the industry was supposedly "dead". This is not hard to assume from a person whose psyche drives them/him to destroy the profit margin on their most successful product - the Commodore 64 - and ruin the entire industry just to get "revenge" on Texas Instruments for a perceived slight they committed against him personally a decade before.

 

Completely skewering the timeline with that bit of fantasy. This was all going on during the '84-'85 timeline, Tengen wasn't even a tinkle in Atari Games Corp.'s eye. They had just laid out the terms with Atari Games not being able to use the Atari name on consoles and computer platforms, there would have been zero reason at that time for Tramiel to worry about any of that. You're just taking a lot of liberties with that one.

 

And anyone can say anything with email.

 

LOL, these are entire swaths of project reports and updates, business updates, and the like. Literal internal documentation. Not some little personal email or for instance - a posting on a discussion board.

 

The alleged story of Tramiel raking the 7800 on the floor in front of Brad Saville is recounted by Jerry Jessop to Wired. In that same article, Michael Katz states that Tramiel turned down the Sega Mega Drive. Turned down. All of that behavior is consistent with what was written about the man from "The Home Computer Wars" which was written back in like 1984.

 

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/history_pr.htm

 

Bzzzzt. I know Jerry, he's an acquaintance of mine. He was not present during any of that. The story being recounted was part of lore and Brad Saville directly recounted the full story via the GCC reunion the Curt organized at the Vintage Computer Festival years back. And it's purely taken in the context of a disgruntled ex-employee now letting his feelings get the best of him, given the *facts* that came to light (also thanks to Curt) since then. And please, Wired has produced some of the most piss-poor research when it comes to video game history and specifically Atari. Hell, they can't even keep company names right, they incorrectly state Atari Corporation was formed in 1972 in the article, instead of Atari Inc. As for Michael Katz, there you go reading in what you want to things and trying to lay a context that's just not there. First off you're making it seemed like the Genesis thing happened at the height of it's popularity or something - it had yet to be released in Japan when they contacted Atari Corp. Secondly, tt was turned down for a specific reason, which had nothing to do with not being interested in video games. As Mike Katz also clearly stated (including when I interviewed him): "Dave Rosen came to Atari and asked if we'd be interested in taking over the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of Genesis. We came very close to making a hefty licensing deal so that Atari could jump into the 16-bit fray before Nintendo. The negotiations went pretty far down the stream, and as I recall, they fell apart when Jack and Dave Rosen couldn't agree to the terms. Then Sega decided to do it themselves." Likewise as we now know, they were already working on their own 68000 (ST based) game system at the time.

 

Honestly, between this and your ridiculous ill-informed Ralph Baer rant, I'm beginning to think it's much more productive to move on as Curt called for, and just simply ignore your posts. Arguing with the Black Night from Monty Python is fun the first few times, but becomes tiresome after a while. In fact now I know it, so I think this is it.

Edited March 23, 2010 by wgungfu

[Dan Iacovelli]

if you don't want to ague, then don't, the more you do the more he will post.

if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say it all as the saying goes.

Edited March 23, 2010 by Dan Iacovelli

[kool kitty89]

It has been said by contemporaries that the main reason why he kept slashing the price of the C64 was to get revenge on TI and he did... TI withdrew from the home computer industry bloodied**. Of course, it destabilized the industry - which ironically could've led to the MSX computers becoming a success here - and made the C64 a commodity product and consequently Irving Gould showed Tramiel out the door - of his own company - over it as well as Jack's insistence that his sons have meaningful management positions at Commodore.

Hmm, just how would having a significantly more capable (hardware wise), extremely cost competitive, and proliferous 8-bit home computer (C64) facilitate the MSX in the market, even if the harsh market competition had upset the industry?

Now, one of the driving forces behind Jack's actions was not specifc to the MSX, but the Japanese in general, and since the MSX wasn't even created until mid 1983, that wouldn't have even been one of the Japanese products to worry about. (NEC's popular PC-8801 series and Fujitsu's FM-7 would have been the possibilities at that point)

 

 

A consulting firm hired by Warner Communications to assess Atari Inc. and their published opinions does not equal Warner Communications nor their intent.

 

Actually, as with any evaluation firm that's brought in for a reason - it precisely states the intent. And the exact intent as to why they started looking for buyers, without cluing in Jim Morgan to their intent for all those months, nor allowing him to complete the reorganization they hired him for. Atari Inc. had become a liability, not an asset anymore, plain and simple. Warner Communication's stock was so tied to Atari Inc. at that point, it needed to be done - just as the firm recommended for those very reasons.

How much impact do you think Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt affected Warner's decision to sell Atari Inc (do you think they'd have sold it regardless or did it force their hand)?

Might that have had anything to do with Atari Inc. or even Morgan being clued in on a possible sale?

 

Sorry, but a bulk of the employees were eliminated before the purchase. The rest *were not included in the purchase*. We have the purchase agreement and what it spells out. There's a reason Atari Inc. consumer employees had to be interviewed to be rehired under Atari corp. The confusion came from the fact that employees didn't have a clue what was going on, and thought they still had jobs coming in after the long 4th of July weekend.

And who know how things might have been handled had Atari Inc and Morgan been notified of a possible sale well ahead of time. (preparations and provisions could have been made, less confusion and disgruntled employees, fewer projects getting lost, etc)

 

*bzzzt* That's once again pure speculation on your part. Atari Corp., and the market (distributors, vendors, etc.), had a full stock of unsold 2600's which were being sold all through '84 and '85. Producing more consoles was the last thing anyone needed to do to sell old stock. There's a *reason* the old stock wasn't moving and the magic number price point was finally reached in Fall/Winter of '85, which caused the strong console sales - all of which were pre-Atari Corp. manufactured consoles.

Oh, the Jr wasn't released until '86, for some reason I'd gotten the idea that it was released in mid '85. I guess that quote from Katz referring to sales in '85 showing the industry was alive and well referred to the older model 2600s being sold. (the comment on limited production capacity made me think they had already been actively producing new units -perhaps it meant they'd finally run to the end of the old 2600 hardware stock)

 

Ah, here it is: http://tnca.myrmid.com/art9.htm

"last fall, with no advertising or promotional effort on our part, we sold plenty of 2600s. We could have sold hundreds of thousands more if we had the production capacity. It proved to us that the industry is alive and well."

 

First off you're making it seemed like the Genesis thing happened at the height of it's popularity or something - it had yet to be released in Japan when they contacted Atari Corp. Secondly, tt was turned down for a specific reason, which had nothing to do with not being interested in video games. As Mike Katz also clearly stated (including when I interviewed him): "Dave Rosen came to Atari and asked if we'd be interested in taking over the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of Genesis. We came very close to making a hefty licensing deal so that Atari could jump into the 16-bit fray before Nintendo. The negotiations went pretty far down the stream, and as I recall, they fell apart when Jack and Dave Rosen couldn't agree to the terms. Then Sega decided to do it themselves." Likewise as we now know, they were already working on their own 68000 (ST based) game system at the time.

Oh, interesting, that fills in the gaps from soem other articles which seem to paraphrase that quote. Is your interview with Katz posted online? Edited March 24, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Tickled_Pink]

The Milwaukee Journal is not a software house to my knowledge.

I never said it was. For some reason what tickled me most was seeing Borland International in there.

 

That's what got me as well.

 

Maybe they were going to develop some dev tools?

[Tickled_Pink]

OKay this has been answered to adnauseam... time for everyone to move on to something else...

 

 

Curt

 

Do you have any of the Canadian sales figures from Atari? I'd be intrested in seeing how each system did here up in the GWN.

 

My gut says:

 

2600jr did well ... saw them everywhere and for a long time. Consumers, Toy City,, Toys R Us K Mart, Zellers etc.

 

7800 was so so. Saw them KMart, Toy City, Toys R Us but not for as long.

 

XE. Really poor. Only ever saw them at Zellers and only for one season.

 

I never saw a 7800 on store shelf ever. Hell I didn't even knew it existed untill about 2003, same goes for the 5200.

I can't remember seeing a 7800 in store over here either, but I did know about the 5200. It had been offered for sale in a mail order catalogue prior to its apparent intended sale in the UK (I thought it was sexier than the lingerie models ). So even though Atari UK decided not to launch it over here, there was an initial intention to do so.

[Lynxpro]

I was going to quit posting to this thread until I dug out an old article with Manny Gerard filling in the blanks in terms of the intent of Steve Ross in terms of selling off Atari Consumer but retaining a 25% stake "New Atari" but I had to reply to Kool Kitty's post and further clarify some of his (?) questions...

 

 

 

Hmm, just how would having a significantly more capable (hardware wise), extremely cost competitive, and proliferous 8-bit home computer (C64) facilitate the MSX in the market, even if the harsh market competition had upset the industry?

Now, one of the driving forces behind Jack's actions was not specifc to the MSX, but the Japanese in general, and since the MSX wasn't even created until mid 1983, that wouldn't have even been one of the Japanese products to worry about. (NEC's popular PC-8801 series and Fujitsu's FM-7 would have been the possibilities at that point)

 

 

Jack was always paranoid about the Japanese. He made many statements about it and from what I remember of "The Home Computer Wars" it had been detailed. What I meant was Commodore's price war destabilized the industry here in the US so much that the Japanese could've walked in with MSX and established it as the home computer standard had they had the ballz that Nintendo had. Commodore's price war destroyed the profit margin of 8-bit home computers which took out TI [granted, the TI99/4A was, ahem, 16-bit], Timex-Sinclair, the Radio Shack CoCo, and damn near destroyed Atari too. Commodore was left as the leader with massive sales but not very large profits and no clear successor to the C64. Apple remained because they catered to affluent buyers and the educational system. The industry was ironically ready for an "invasion" - and especially since computer saturation in homes wasn't even at 25% yet even with Commodore's sales - but it has been said the Japanese companies were too risk averse, unlike, say, Nintendo. Nintendo launched when everyone said the video game industry was dead and a relic, and they bucked the trend and conventional wisdom and brought back the industry in the minds of Joe Consumer.

 

And just because MSX machines were arguably inferior does not mean they couldn't have become the temporary standard for home computers. After all, the PC was an inferior "standard" and so was VHS, yet they both prevailed. The only time a superior product beat an inferior product and became an industry standard that I can think of was Blu-ray [vs. HD DVD].

 

Does the statement I made before that you replied to - with questions - now make more sense?

 

 

 

 

 

How much impact do you think Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt affected Warner's decision to sell Atari Inc (do you think they'd have sold it regardless or did it force their hand)? Might that have had anything to do with Atari Inc. or even Morgan being clued in on a possible sale?

 

 

It was absolutely the reason why Steve Ross sold Atari Consumer. Ross did not want Murdoch taking over "his" company [Warner Communications]. He sold Atari off - but not in full - to take the downward pressure off Warner's stock which was driving Murdoch's efforts. Warner stock rebounded after the "sale". I was just reviewing this the other night and it looks like he quickly negotiated for Chris Craft to purchase a good chunk of Warner stock to c-block Murdoch. I wasn't aware of that before; I had always read that Warner actually paid Murdoch to end the hostile takeover too. Murdoch then turned around and bought a controlling interest in 20th Century Fox. Warner was in good enough financial shape that they bought up Lorimar Telepictures in [circa] 1987 and that wasn't a small acquisition at the time. Warner's finances were good enough by 1989 that the original plan for the creation of Time Warner was to be a debt-free merger of the stocks but then Paramount had to get all "Rupert Murdoch" on them and launched a hostile takeover of Time Inc. - that drove the stock up like $90 a share in a week - which then forced the Time Inc. board to launch an outright purchase of Warner to curtail the Paramount offer. That was the start of the rather large debt Time Warner has amassed that from time to time shareholders demand that they get serious about reducing it which causes Time Warner to sell off some properties until the pressure is off and they go back on an acquisition spree.

 

If one has followed Warner/Time Warner corporate history over the years, it is rather easy to see what the Board - and/or their various CEOs - intended to do. Gerry Levin tried to outdo his predecessor [steve Ross] which successfully led him to acquire Turner Broadcasting and ultimately AOL which was Levin's version of the Atari fiasco all over again, more or less. Personally, I think Ross was an amazing businessman. How many other people could have taken a funeral parlor chain and transformed itself into Warner Communications? Not many, although Edgar Bronfman has tried to do similar multiple times over the years but he comes up looking like a retarded version of Ross and definitely not the real Slim Shady.

 

As for Morgan, he was a casualty not only of Rupert Murdoch's actions, but also Jack Tramiel's. Tramiel fired Morgan, just as Ted Hoff was fired in 1996. Tramiel probably thought Morgan was an unnecessary expense that he himself could do a better job of, and/or Sam could.

 

 

And who know how things might have been handled had Atari Inc and Morgan been notified of a possible sale well ahead of time. (preparations and provisions could have been made, less confusion and disgruntled employees, fewer projects getting lost, etc)

 

 

True, but had they announced it earlier, other companies probably would've launched counter offers and delayed the sale which would've strengthened Murdoch's takeover attempts. Think of how Vodafone mulled a half-assed attempt at an offer for AT&T Wireless to counter Cingular's - via SBC - offer that ultimately won... [this was before SBC renamed itself "AT&T" after it had acquired the rest of "AT&T" a few years later... the constant rechristening of AT&T makes the changes of Atari ownership look rather simplistic]...

Edited March 25, 2010 by Lynxpro

[+rdemming]

Reading all this makes me wonder how well the 7800 did in Europe.

 

In The Netherlands it was not available in the shops. I only got one when 7800s got dumped at a computer exhibition around the same time the Lynx and Jaguar were dumped in the toy store. But there were no 7800 games available so I got most of my 7800 games via e-bay from the UK.

 

Does someone know in which European countries the 7800 was officially released?

 

The XE game system was released in The Netherlands but I believe it was not a success. The XE game cartridges were in the shops here but I can't remember if I ever saw an XE games system in the shops.

 

Robert

[Halfbaked]

Is there any info on UK sales?

[+kheller2]

The math looked a little off on some of the summary messages, especially since the raw data has + and - in negative columns.  So I did it again from the raw data:

 

Year    US Sales Units  US Sales Revenue        US Returns Units        US Returns Revenue      Net Revenue
1986    286,417         $6,397,460.24           742                     $43,775.20              $6,353,685.04
1987    1,313,561       $33,423,488.25          13,831                  $935,889.60             $32,487,598.65
1988    1,423,923       $37,961,062.25          38,817                  $2,464,784.58           $35,496,277.67
1989    655,353         $14,967,618.30          50,932                  $2,641,186.53           $12,326,431.77
1990    93,443          $2,015,185.96           46,861                  $1,724,274.18           $290,911.78

Total:  3,772,697       $94,764,815.00          151,183                 $7,809,910.09           $86,954,904.91

 

[Giles N]

Just buy one with:

1) Food Fight

2) Ninja Golf

3) Scrapyard Dog

4) Pole Position 2 (can you avoid it??)

5) Commando...

 

 

—

 

And then; collect whatever you’d like from

there on...

Happy spare-time!!

Edited April 15, 2020 by Giles N

[+davidcalgary29]

On 3/25/2010 at 8:27 AM, rdemming said:

Reading all this makes me wonder how well the 7800 did in Europe.

 

In The Netherlands it was not available in the shops. I only got one when 7800s got dumped at a computer exhibition around the same time the Lynx and Jaguar were dumped in the toy store. But there were no 7800 games available so I got most of my 7800 games via e-bay from the UK.

 

Does someone know in which European countries the 7800 was officially released?

 

The XE game system was released in The Netherlands but I believe it was not a success. The XE game cartridges were in the shops here but I can't remember if I ever saw an XE games system in the shops.

 

Robert

The XEGS games had a very spotty distribution in Canada. I lived very close to Atari Canada at the time and would routinely go in to check out upcoming releases. I remember very clearly seeing Ninja Golf XE on the distributed price lists, so it must have been in development at a fairly early stage before it was abandoned. I asked for other titles listed on the price list (MIDI Maze, Deflektor), but was told that they weren't available. MIDI Maze was widely leaked locally, though, as I played it at the local club in '89. I did see the dated XEGS re-releases like Ace of Aces and Hardball at the local Toys 'R Us, and bought Crimebusters and Crossbow at a local Atari shop. Atari Canada had an okay footprint in Southern Ontario though, so you did see the occasional XEGS system in non-dedicated stores.