had the 7800 launched in 1984....

[Retro Rogue]

If the 7800 had been released under Warner in 1984, It Totally would of won over the NES. it would of been improved to the point that the graphics would have been superior due to Warner's deep pockets.

 

 

What deep pockets? Warner's pockets at the time were Atari itself. When they initially bought Atari, they may have been the provider. But that switched by the very early 80's, and the majority of Warner's income and stock value was coming from Atari.

[gdement]

Was it this one? That's legit. Any of the documents on Curt's site are the real deal.

I think that was it. Thanks for the link, it was fun to read that again.

 

=========

This part was surprising:

4. that there would be no disclosure to Atari of the

programming specs for the PPU and the CPU.

:!:

But that got amended in the next round:

K. Atari will have the right to program for this system

with the full assistance of Nintendo.

 

 

Here's the part that in a nutshell shows why the deal fell through:

I was asked to become as completely informed about the MARIA chip

as possible so that a reasoned choice could be made between the

two machines. To that end, I have spoken with the folks at General

Computer several times by telephone and have made two trips to

their offices in Cambridge, Mass. It appears to be a superior

machine, but the MARIA chip is not yet finished. First silicon is

not expected until mid-July (if there are no further schedule

delays). Also, since this chip is a VTI device there is some

question as to the manufacturability/testability/cost of the chip.

In other words, it will not be until mid-July (mid-August if the

first silicon is faulty) that we will be able to make a fully

informed choice between the Nintendo and the MARIA machines.

Therefore, it was decided by Executive Management that in any

negotiations with Nintendo we would need to string out the

signing until at least mid-July.

 

We were committed to respond quickly to Nintendo, however, as to

whether we were interested or not. So, Alan Henricks did contact

Nintendo with the word that we were interesting in continuing the

discussions; and the next negotiating meeting was arranged for May

17th in Kyoto.

So basically Atari needed to delay for time and Nintendo wanted to move quickly. Based on earlier comments in the memo I don't think the Famicom was finished yet either, but it was apparently further along.

If the deal was cheap enough I imagine Atari would have just taken the NES and picked between it vs Maria later. But Nintendo was insisting on minimum order quantities.

[carmel_andrews]

I also seem to remember hearing (and reading) that a certain nintendo game coleco had the rights to, held up negotiations between nintendo and atari even further and from what i remember is was during this peroid that Kassar left (due to allegations of insider dealing) and things changed at atari as the new CEO wanted to evaluate things and probably didn't have time to consider the nintendo deal

[Atarifever]

Oh nos! All of these facts are getting in the way of internet legends. It's almost like Atari didn't just say "no" in order to be stupid! Imagine. What will 12 year olds who read IGN talk about now?

[Polybius]

If the 7800 had been released under Warner in 1984, It Totally would of won over the NES. it would of been improved to the point that the graphics would have been superior due to Warner's deep pockets.

 

 

What deep pockets? Warner's pockets at the time were Atari itself. When they initially bought Atari, they may have been the provider. But that switched by the very early 80's, and the majority of Warner's income and stock value was coming from Atari.

 

Well, they still had more than Tramilel.

[kool kitty89]

Then how does the ribbon cable come into play?

There is no ribbon cable inside or outside the 7800.

 

I was referring to the ribbon cable on the 2600. (connecting the cartridge connector to the main board) I'm not sure if it was present from the 4-swithers onward, but is definitely featured on the 6-switcher. (and different, incompatible, ones were used in the Sunnyvale produced ones and Hong Kong ones -male vs female ends iirc -just a flat cable on the Sunnyvale one, incidental, but the hong kong cable also had seperate wires bonded together rather than a single flat plastic strip)

[Retro Rogue]

If the 7800 had been released under Warner in 1984, It Totally would of won over the NES. it would of been improved to the point that the graphics would have been superior due to Warner's deep pockets.

 

 

What deep pockets? Warner's pockets at the time were Atari itself. When they initially bought Atari, they may have been the provider. But that switched by the very early 80's, and the majority of Warner's income and stock value was coming from Atari.

 

Well, they still had more than Tramilel.

 

 

That's because they made Tramiel take all their Atari debt as part of they deal. They weren't about to pump more of money they didn't have towards it.

[carmel_andrews]

Oh nos! All of these facts are getting in the way of internet legends. It's almost like Atari didn't just say "no" in order to be stupid! Imagine. What will 12 year olds who read IGN talk about now?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't think anyone under the age of say 25 was even interested in atari's old toys/computers (apart from the ones that know about atariage...they at least have good taste and are intelligent)