What if...

[carmel_andrews]

I don't think that tramiel would have stayed at commodore a day longer then he did, even tramiel could see that there was definately a 'slight shift' away from the 'tramiel philosophy' I think he used the fact that gould blocked plans for tramiels sons to attain management positions within CBM as an excuse to resign and walk away...i think there were other issues going on

 

I don't even think atari dominated the budget end very well, considering that coleco vision and others were still ofloading unsold inventories of their software/hardware (post crash), and since the software for coleco and inty were'nt selling for much more then the 2600 versions (remembering that both companies had taken market share away from atari)...and that nintendo was chipping away big time at the other end of atari's market share...ultimately the 2600 only survived during tramiel's peroids due to tramiel focusing atari's unsold inventories onto the euro/uk markets whewre it faced less competiton

 

Warners only wanted out because their shareholders forced them to sell, the fact that they retained a stakeholding in atari (consumer) proves that they still had a vested interest in the burgeoning tech market, what scenario could have happened is that warners allow tramiel to sell his ST technology via atari and warners find various 3rd parties to manufacture and continue R&D on existing atari products/technology and allow these 3rd parties access to atari's distribution network, that way there was little risk for warners and tramiel would have got his wish to using a known name as a vehicle to marketing/selling and producing/distributing the ST

 

Perhaps if tramiel wasn't interested in the 7800 from the word go, he should have made an arrangement that warners licence back the 7800 (and probably atari's other gaming products) and get into bed with GCC (the originators of the 7800, and since warners still had access to the atari name and distrubtion channels, GCC could have just concentrated on manufacturing and further 7800 developemnts and leave warners (or 3rd party) to worry about the marketing/sales and distrubtion (as well as software licensing/development)

 

As for the 'competition' argument, atari wasnt competing with anyone after tramiel bought the company, atari's games systems didn't compete with the nintendo's or the later sega's of the world, whilst the ST was popular in europe initally, that stalled once amiga and the pc clones started picking up speed sales wise...i think the ST started to tail off just aroungd the time atari launched the STe or just after (but defo very early 90's) the STe really only served the needs of existing ST users and like the 7800, only sold to existing users and the very few stragglers who got lost in the amiga/pc mellee..the falcon/TT was just about the same, only realy selling to existing st users

 

Atari suffered from the problem of 'narrowly defined markets', commedore did have that problem but to a lesser extent at least with the amiga commodore at least did a half decent attempt at marketing/selling the technology at the non games market (at least in the first few years), i just could'nt figure out what atari were doing to the St (or the A8 for that matter), was the ST a serious computer or was it a glorified games system (even the initial talk of the atari panther was referred to as an 'st based games system')

 

Tramiel may have been one of the computer industries most experienced 'managers' whilst at CBM, it's a crime and a damn shame that he didn't lend or engender even a spec of that experience whilst he had atari, poor product positioning, poor marketing and basically raping/prostituting the very name of atari to within an inch if its life (just as much as info/atari had) not forgetting the fact that he just totally misread both the market and what consumers wanted

 

He said at commdore that he was offering technology that consimers wanted at a price even scrooge could afford....that may have been so, but that simply never happened at atari...the 7800 was late and had been superseeded by not only nintendo's numbers but by systems like the PC engne by the time of it's release, the ST was already yesterday's technology on it's release (thanks to the amiga) the STe, TT, Falcon where too little too late.... as for the A8, well if the sales for the xegs are anything to go by, why did they bother

 

people were wanting tomorrow's technology at a reasonable price, all tramiels atari had/was offering was yesterday's technology at RBP (to using the project name for the ST)

[kool kitty89]

He said at commdore that he was offering technology that consimers wanted at a price even scrooge could afford....that may have been so, but that simply never happened at atari...the 7800 was late and had been superseeded by not only nintendo's numbers but by systems like the PC engne by the time of it's release, the ST was already yesterday's technology on it's release (thanks to the amiga) the STe, TT, Falcon where too little too late.... as for the A8, well if the sales for the xegs are anything to go by, why did they bother

 

people were wanting tomorrow's technology at a reasonable price, all tramiels atari had/was offering was yesterday's technology at RBP (to using the project name for the ST)

 

The 7800 still made its full launch more than a year ahead of the PC Engine, only a couple months after the NES's full launch (not the late '85 test market), and roughly simultaneously with the Master System's US release. Even at a relatively late date it could have competed had it had sufficient support (especially from a software standpoint) and marketing, but it had neither. (and considdering this it sold rather well, but Curt's figures, probably better than the Master System in the US -not sure on the SMS figures though)

 

Still it was late and that certainly put it at a disadvantage (mainly with a lack of developers signed on and lack of 1st party developments), had it had a similarly modest a year or so earlier things could have been significantly different, it may have had enought time to build up in interest prior to the NES rising in dominance, looking at the current situation the 7800 was doing relatively well within a year of launch and that's with Tramie's advertizing and limited library of games. (had he been interested, it still could have taken a while to get things set after taking over, of course this wasn't the case)

 

With the proposed Warner keeping Atari's consumer gmaes devision and licencing the name to Tramiel, there probably still would have been a bit of a delay, or at least some alterations to prior plans on launching the 7800. Assuming they still had a significant amount of the debt after the deal with Tramiel, Warner would have to be frugal with marketing as well as having to deal with unfreindly retailers. (again, mail-order is a good alternate strategy). They'd also have to downsize things significantly to cut costs back. (stop bleeding money)

 

There's plenty of other variables in such a scenario though, would Warner/Atari still focus on games as they had been and drop the computer portions entirely? (maybe just continue to support the existing 8-bit line) Should they use a previous computer project as the basis of a future game console (Sierra perhaps?) or should they offer to sell this off to Tramiel if he was interested in any of the projects. (if it was as compeditive as sometimes asserted and practical cost-wise, the Sierra design could have been a far more competitive choice than the ST, and had been fully prototyped before being shelved, while the ST was still being designed)

If Tramiel did take some of the aformentioned comupter projects (which should further alliviate Atari/Warner's debt), should they continue with the 7800 as the basis for their next console (or portions like MARIA), and continue with backwards compatibility on the next console? (even in the form of an adaptor accessory like the Genesis had for the Master System)

[carmel_andrews]

I think the lack of 3rd party development was mainly down to an issue that tramiel had with GCC, which i dunno if it was resolved (i.e the original idea under warners was the GCC would handle 3rd party software licensing etc and atari would handle manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution etc)

 

Also under warners, atari never really ventured outside their core market (the US), whilst this did change under tramiel and because tramiel delayed the euro/UK launch of the 7800 till at least end of 86/start of 87, by then systems like the sms and the nintendo already had deals in place with the major UK/euro games publishers, and this had a negative affect on atari

 

In the US from what i could see, games publishers didn't want to risk launching any 7800 games because of the bad reputation atari had with the retail/dealer markets in the US (not forgetting the restrictive software licensing deals nintendo were doing with th egames publishers in the US) and they feared that any 7800 games made just would'nt sell or that retailers would purposefully push them so one side, prefering instead to sell on systems that were getting those customers in and buying

 

The only way the 7800 would have been successful is for warners to speed up R&D somehow, have enough confidence in any product/technology R&D were developing and bring it to market, perhaps if atari had developed the 7800 themselves and released it during the 5200's timeframe (instead of the 5200) it would have definately stood a chance as companies were still falling over themselves to developing product for atari and i think that just as the 2600 barely survived the game crash, so would have the 7800 and also more importantly would still have games in development and i don't think tramiel would have stepped on the 7800 like he did

 

It surprises me that Atari didn't capitalise on the deal they did with sears all those years ago (i.e allowing 3rd parties to manufacture 3rd party atari compatible hardware)....after all IBM and Apple certainly saw the benefits of such a deal or there would'nt exist the concept of the PC and nor 3rd party versions of the apple 2...perhaps if atari had seen the benefits and positives from such a deal all of atari's platforms would be more successful and popular then anything (at the time) that atari were 'competing' against...i.e atari would have sewn up the hardware market, 3rd party software support and the money atari were to have coined in from all the royalties etc could have gone towards developing other more advanced atari platgforms/hardware or technologies

 

Problem was though Atari didn't like the idea of 'sharing' it's technology, now whilst to some people that might be seen as a sound and logical way of thinking...for a company who probably had already outdated technology and were losing marketshare, Atari really didn't have that much to lose by sharing it's technology and allowing 3rd parties to support the 3rd party variants as well as the official (atari) versions...OK so you wouldn't have probably had the likes of EA or Activision etc wanting to support new atari platforms, so what, their's plenty of programmers and games designers out there that probably would probably have given their right arm to code a game for atari or an atari compatible product and whatever they'd come up with would probably be of similar or same quality as something from EA or activision, after all not every games programmer or designer wants to or needs to work for the likes of activision or EA etc

[kool kitty89]

The only way the 7800 would have been successful is for warners to speed up R&D somehow, have enough confidence in any product/technology R&D were developing and bring it to market, perhaps if atari had developed the 7800 themselves and released it during the 5200's timeframe (instead of the 5200) it would have definately stood a chance as companies were still falling over themselves to developing product for atari and i think that just as the 2600 barely survived the game crash, so would have the 7800 and also more importantly would still have games in development and i don't think tramiel would have stepped on the 7800 like he did

 

Supposedly Warner's original plan was for the "10-bit" 3200 "System X" to be the successor to the 2600 and be backward compatible with the 2600 out of the box, this supposedly got scrapped due to programming difficulties so the 5200 was the quick fix to meet the mounting competition. (the 3200 had simpler contrellers as well, not sure if they were analog, but they look like the 5200's but with only 2 buttons) I think the A8-bit hadware had originally been intended as the direct successor for the 2600, but of course was reworked to compete in the home computer market. (can't remember if this is one of the things Bushnell and Warner disagreed on)

 

Still, none of these reasons prevented the 5200 from being more like the 7800 (or 3200) in certain aspects, simple controllers (either analog or digital as long as they work -plus yyou could use standard 2600 joysticks as well as the inerface is the same), use a similar cartridge design as the 7800, a 2600 compatible cartridge slot, and compatible controler ports. (you could go with either 2 or 4, 2 would probably be advantageous from a cost standpoint) Still have it derived from the A8-bit hardware (maybe they could get away with 8 kB instead of 16 as well), but have the larger ROM address space of the 5200 (or even step it up to the 7800's 48kB if possible) hen make the case and main board as compact and consolidated as possible, and of course you'd need to include the 2600's TIA and RIOT for backwards compatibility. (TIA could still be useful to compliment POKEY for sound as well) They should also have made the board as consolidated as possible and the case/overall unit as compact as possible, while still making it stylish/attractive. (both for cost savings in manufacturing, packaging, and shipping, as well as apeal to customers) Perhaps use a distinctive cartridge design to distinguish them from the 2600's (rather than being nearly identical as with the 7800),perhaps something sleeker (wedge?) to match the style, perhaps slightly wider as well so they won't fit into the 2600 slot at all.

 

Had they completed the 2600 on a chip ("JAN") for the 2600 Jr. project, a similar ASIC could be used in later revisions of the new console as well (either with the 6507 portion removed or modified to include the 6502C in place of the 6507)

 

It surprises me that Atari didn't capitalise on the deal they did with sears all those years ago (i.e allowing 3rd parties to manufacture 3rd party atari compatible hardware)....after all IBM and Apple certainly saw the benefits of such a deal or there would'nt exist the concept of the PC and nor 3rd party versions of the apple 2...perhaps if atari had seen the benefits and positives from such a deal all of atari's platforms would be more successful and popular then anything (at the time) that atari were 'competing' against...i.e atari would have sewn up the hardware market, 3rd party software support and the money atari were to have coined in from all the royalties etc could have gone towards developing other more advanced atari platgforms/hardware or technologies

 

Problem was though Atari didn't like the idea of 'sharing' it's technology, now whilst to some people that might be seen as a sound and logical way of thinking...for a company who probably had already outdated technology and were losing marketshare, Atari really didn't have that much to lose by sharing it's technology and allowing 3rd parties to support the 3rd party variants as well as the official (atari) versions...OK so you wouldn't have probably had the likes of EA or Activision etc wanting to support new atari platforms, so what, their's plenty of programmers and games designers out there that probably would probably have given their right arm to code a game for atari or an atari compatible product and whatever they'd come up with would probably be of similar or same quality as something from EA or activision, after all not every games programmer or designer wants to or needs to work for the likes of activision or EA etc

 

Are you talking about the 5200 under Warner or the 7800 under Tramiel? In the case with Sears I don't think it was just special branding, the hardware still being manufactured by Atari. In the 2600's spcific case they wouldn't have even been able to do this, at least not after competitors realized they could recreate the hardware using off the shelf parts. (Mattel/Coleco's Expansion modules, and COleco's Gemini clone) The 5200 and 7800 would be different issues.

[Retro Rogue]

Had they completed the 2600 on a chip ("JAN") for the 2600 Jr. project, a similar ASIC could be used in later revisions of the new console as well (either with the 6507 portion removed or modified to include the 6502C in place of the 6507)

 

Not sure what you mean, there were some Jr.'s released with the single chip design.

 

In the 2600's spcific case they wouldn't have even been able to do this, at least not after competitors realized they could recreate the hardware using off the shelf parts. (Mattel/Coleco's Expansion modules, and COleco's Gemini clone) The 5200 and 7800 would be different issues.

 

The 2600 is not made from entirely off the shelf parts. TIA is a custom chip, and in that case Coleco reverse engineered as AFAIK.

Edited July 11, 2009 by wgungfu

[kool kitty89]

Had they completed the 2600 on a chip ("JAN") for the 2600 Jr. project, a similar ASIC could be used in later revisions of the new console as well (either with the 6507 portion removed or modified to include the 6502C in place of the 6507)

 

Not sure what you mean, there were some Jr.'s released with the single chip design.

 

Interesting, I'd gotten that impression from this page: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...tari2600jr.html

 

Checking again, all it really said was this:

The Atari 2600Jr was planned to utilize a new chip: codenamed "JAN" which was to

 

combine the 6507, 6532 and the Atari TIA into a single chip.

 

Which doesn't mention that "JAN" was abandoned, but it seems to imply that it wasn't used.

 

The 2600 is not made from entirely off the shelf parts. TIA is a custom chip, and in that case Coleco reverse engineered as AFAIK.

 

I meant that it was possible to replicate the custom portions (specifically TIA) with off the shelf parts, but it seems I was in error, Coleco had their own chip specifically made for the clone systems, according to the interview of Curt Vendel and Steve Golson on the 7800, VTI had made the TIA clone for Coleco (and I'd immagine Mattel as well). (VTI was GCC's chip vendor and it was rather convienent for GCC as this meant that the already had a TIA compatible chip available from the same vendor as would be producing MARIA -at least according to Golson's statements in the interview)

[Retro Rogue]

Interesting, I'd gotten that impression from this page: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...tari2600jr.html

 

Checking again, all it really said was this:

The Atari 2600Jr was planned to utilize a new chip: codenamed "JAN" which was to

 

combine the 6507, 6532 and the Atari TIA into a single chip.

 

Which doesn't mention that "JAN" was abandoned, but it seems to imply that it wasn't used.

 

 

You have to realize, Curt hasn't had the time to update pages on his site for a while. Some of that stuff is really outdated, given the material constantly uncovered by himself, myself, and others in our ongoing research.