+wood_jl Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 Interesting discussion, but I think by the time the Tramiels arrived, Atari's goose was already pretty thoroughly cooked and there's not much they could have done different w/the resources at hand to really turn it around Exactly. Resources were limited, the Atari name was counter to computers, etc. . The debt they took on turned out to be crippling for a couple of years, and unfortunately I think it hobbled the STs and crippled them in the videogame space (along with the delay in getting the 7800 to market). Indeed, perhaps. In hindsight, I do think that entering the home computer space with the STs was actually a mistake. They probably should have focused all of their capital and energies on getting a kickass videogame system out the door, along with some decent software. The 7800 certainly doesn't fit my definition of kickass, either - in many respects it's inferior to the 5200, whose biggest shortcoming was probably its crappy joysticks. I think (alternatively) that the ST (initially) was their only hope of success, and they pulled it off fairly well, at least in the beginning (1985). How was that a mistake? At the time, what alternative did they have, other than selling 800XLs that were not selling, prior to their arrival? In lieu of designing the ST, I'd have developed an enhanced 5200 for release in '85 or thereabouts, backward compatible with the original, but featuring a full 64K of RAM, stereo POKEY (or even better, AMY), and new graphics modes, all only accessible to cartridges with the right encryption key (a la the 7800). Amazingly, I see the ST up against the Mac, but you think they should have just fielded the 5200 against the Mac, instead. Interesting perspective. I'll just wait for further development along those lines. Anyoone agree? Should have been 5200 vs. Mac rather than 520ST vs. Mac. Who knew? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 If you really wanted to "save" Atari, you'd need to take a time machine back to late 1981, and fix the 1200XL and the 5200 before they launched in '82. The 5200's craptacular joysticks needed to be replaced with some that actually work well with most arcade games, and she needed to launch with at least 32K of RAM (a full 64K would have been better). Oh, and she needed a pack-in game that didn't look like garbage - I would have shipped it with Pac Man, Defender or Star Raiders (although those last two really needed a graphics tweak by that point). I would have also got a shrunken, cost-reduced 2600 out the door in '82. On the computer side, I'd have released the 1200XL with four joystick ports, not two, and with a built-in disk drive (side load, like the Apple //c would do a few years later) and probably modem. I've met several people over the years who had Atari 8-bits but who thought they were junk because they hadn't got a drive to go with 'em. Whereas the C64 was almost always sold with a drive. I'd have preempted that by only shipping computers with built-in disk drives from '82 forward. I'd have also kept the Parallel Bus (it was originally planned for the Sweet 16), but wouldn't have bothered with the expansion cage. Very few users would have ever taken advantage of such a beast. Even on the Apple //, most of the cards were added to supply basic features - like graphics, joysticks, drive controllers and modems - that the Ataris either had built-in or could access over the SIO port. But just having the illusion you could expand the thing if you needed to would have overcome some resistance. I also wouldn't have wasted time trying to build a parallel drive interface, as Atari did with the 1450XLD. I'd have just crammed the 1050's hardware onto the 1200's mainboard. Problem solved. I'd have also fixed the funked up monitor output, made the case a little deeper, and released a matching monitor to go with it. And I'd have made sure there was a full 800 compatibility mode. If you'd done all that, contained some of Atari's wild spending and focused on getting good game titles out the door, I think the company would have weathered both the game crash and the home computer price wars much, much better than they did. They might have lost money during the worst of it, but they wouldn't have hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and they'd have come out of it all with a much larger market share in both the console and home computer space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 (edited) What a mess! I have a new found respect for Jack, Amazing he was able to pull it off. Dealing with all that,putting in your own cash,most of it from what you mention. That really is puuting you money where you mouth is. A concept few other than business owners can relate to..Even sadder though that Warner was so inept and killed a great thing. Very sad indeed.. Atari should have been a permanant corporate Icon ,instead warnwer was too squemish to put it on the line.Typical of companies that have been taken over. Look what happened at Chrysler and others,great when there are assets and making money but run for the hills when the result of being mismanaged arrive.. Again, nobody is mentioning the reason why Warner was trying to get Atari off the books. It was solely due to Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempts that fueled the need to part with the majority of Atari quickly. Steve Ross didn't want to get rid of the company. That was evident in the biographies written of the man. He was the master of the deal and the architect of Time Warner Inc. which his replacements [Levin, in particular] - per his untimely death - screwed up. After all, Warner's point man on Atari, Manny Gerard, has done very well for himself in the video game industry since then... Basically, Atari in its diminished state was still not a screwup acquisition on Warner's part like Knickerbocker was. Jack's accomplishments with "Atari" are rather diminished when one considers he used the Atari assets and our Atari fandom - and with it our Dollars, Sterling, Marks, and Francs - to fuel his personal vendetta against Irving Gould and the company he founded [Commodore]. Had Atari Corp and Commodore not tried to destroy each other in their tit-for-tat struggle and had actually come to terms in their settlement of the Amiga lawsuits and combined the platforms, we might possibly have a viable [and commercial] third computer platform to this day. Then there's also Jack's viewpoint. While Jobs & Woz was motivated to put an Apple computer on every student's desktop and thus change the world for the better [and Atari's was to innovate and have lots of fun], Jack's famous motto was "basically, I'm here to make money". As for Gil and Apple, wasn't the iMac started under Gil's reign yet Jobs receives all the credit for it? This was shot in 2002 or 2003 for BBS Documentary. Haven't lived in Staten Island for almost 10 years... I'm about 75 miles north of Manhattan. Loved that documentary. Are they still trying to sell it or has it all ended up on YouTube? Then again, if Digital Research had agreed to the CP/M deal with IBM, things would have been very different on the PC OS front from the beginning. (and DR would have been far stronger in general, with the backing of IBM to stave off Apple litigation over GEM ) I want GEM back. I wish the owners of DRI would create a community foundation to get GEM up and running as a viable environment so the clowns behind KDE and Gnome can be pushed to the backburner on all other *nix platforms besides OS X. And Ubuntu's colors remind me of 70s shag carpet. Utterly terrible. Then again, I didn't think DRI's GEM was as nice to look at as Atari's versions... Morgan would have done far better, if only he had been given a reasonable amount of time. Has anyone interviewed Morgan in the past few years? I'd like to know if he wishes he could've remained at Atari and revived it instead of going back to RJR and giving his infamous testimony to Congress about how tobacco wasn't so bad... I'd imagine he'd switch places with even John Sculley at this point... So when's the Tramiel book coming out? A much less documented part of Atari's history, don't you think Curt and Marty .... ... best get a move on .... Offer to write the Tramiels accounts if they'll part with the holy Sword Quest sword. I'm with the Angry Video Game Nerd on that one, the contest must continue! In the US Amiga almost killed Commodore or at least the A1000 did as it was so very overpriced and somewhat incomplete and not ready at launch, ST had them on the run at two to one for the first few years, it wasnt until they decide to take the "jack" approach and sell it cheap, and ST were picking up in EU so supplies were down here and ST's were hard to get. Atari did however out last them Atari Corp. did outlast Commodore but when it comes to platforms surviving to this day, it looks like development on Amiga OS 4.x seems to be much further along than any work being done with TOS at this point... If you really wanted to "save" Atari, you'd need to take a time machine back to late 1981, and fix the 1200XL and the 5200 before they launched in '82. Edited February 5, 2011 by Lynxpro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 I'll just wait for further development along those lines. Anyoone agree? Should have been 5200 vs. Mac rather than 520ST vs. Mac. Who knew? What a bizarre argument. No, it should have been the (fixed) 5200 against the depleted ranks of competitors in the console space, with the 800XL hanging on in the home computer market. Atari didn't have the resources at that time to compete effectively with Apple or anybody else in ~$1k+ segment of the home computer business - as history showed - and should have concentrated its efforts on the sub-$500 home computer market and, especially, consoles. People forget that the Tramiels moved a slew of 800XLs after they took over Atari. The 800XL was a hot seller at its reduced price during Christmas of 1984, and it went on to become Atari's single most popular model by a wide margin. They didn't make a fortune off of each unit sold, but they gave the company badly needed cashflow and certainly impacted Commodore, which was by that point starting to stumble from the miserable failure of the Plus 4 and their own smashed margins (thanks to Jack's price war). If Atari had put most of their time and attention into consoles, it's almost certain that Nintendo wouldn't have been able to lock up a whopping 80% of the market within just a couple of years. Even if Atari only held onto 50% of the console market (down from their previous 70% share), that would have been worth far more to them than the puny share of the 16-bit PC market they were able to command with the ST. Consoles (and their games) were much higher-margin than budget PCs, even back then. By the end of the decade, videogames were a multi-billion dollar business again, and even a 50% share of that would dwarf what Atari ended up making off the ST and its descendants. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted February 5, 2011 Share Posted February 5, 2011 Weird, I was prohibited from editing my comment above that got posted accidentally before I finished it... If you really wanted to "save" Atari, you'd need to take a time machine back to late 1981, and fix the 1200XL and the 5200 before they launched in '82. No, you'd have to go back to 1976 and tell Nolan to hold out for $38 million or more for the buyout offer and/or call up Michael Milken and finance Atari Inc. through junk bonds and remain independent. Either way, you take those extra monies and buy MOS Technology thereby c-blocking Tramiel from purchasing the company and thus preventing his later price war at Commodore. Actually, Commodore may not have existed for long w/o MOS because the PET design came from Chuck Peddle [if I'm not mistaken] at MOS. You'd take the PET design and offer to trade it to Philips in order to settle the patent infringement lawsuits and for that intellectual property to be transferred to Atari. Philips later crashes and burns with the PET now known as the Odyssey 2 or 3. If Atari is still sold to Warners, you "create" the Activision spin-off as a cover - much like Key Games was before - and then license "Puck Man" from Namco and run with it in every territory outside of Japan and use the huge cash infusion to launch a takeover of Warner Communications itself. Of course, there's still other side projects to accomplish. You expose that Microsoft BASIC is actually DEC BASIC and have DEC sue Microsoft and Bill Gates personally into oblivion. You invest in VisiCALC and you convince them to copyright the code thereby preventing Lotus from stealing spreadsheet software later. You do the same with DRI so when IBM decides to launch the PC, it is CP/M that is selected as the OS. That would lead to a much better time line tech-wise. Now where's that chap with the Jelly Babies so I can whack him upside his head and steal his TARDIS to complete this mission... ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenski Posted February 5, 2011 Author Share Posted February 5, 2011 In hindsight, I do think that entering the home computer space with the STs was actually a mistake. They probably should have focused all of their capital and energies on getting a kickass videogame system out the door, along with some decent software. The 7800 certainly doesn't fit my definition of kickass, either - in many respects it's inferior to the 5200, whose biggest shortcoming was probably its crappy joysticks. I probably would have written off the 7800 and pumped out that cost-reduced 5200 Atari had already designed (with better joysticks), instead. In lieu of designing the ST, I'd have developed an enhanced 5200 for release in '85 or thereabouts, backward compatible with the original, but featuring a full 64K of RAM, stereo POKEY (or even better, AMY), and new graphics modes, all only accessible to cartridges with the right encryption key (a la the 7800). I would have concentrated from day one on getting the best 800 games ported over to the 5200, and then enhanced for the pumped-up 5200. I think they would have had a hit on their hands with a large library of decent titles and a joystick that wasn't complete crap, and by focusing their marketing money and staying active with developers from '84-'86 I think they could have successfully held off Nintendo from grabbing 80% of the market. Some of what you are saying reads a bit like "I'm doing well selling hotdogs, but I'm going to completely ignore all those people who have told me they want to buy a burger". I can't see how anyone could call Atari entering the 16-bit market with the ST a mistake and you can't call the ST share of the market and its impact "puny" either, and I'm someone who wouldn't have touched an ST with a barge pole back in the late eighties and early nineties. Atari not being able to compete against Apple? That is a strange comment to make as they did and actually did it rather well. I could wax lyrical about the 8-bit line and all the missed opportunities Atari had but you can't deny the importance of the Atari ST to the market or either to Atari itself. The 5200 shipped with Super Breakout initially as Atari wanted to push the four player experience and Pac-Man wasn't quite ready anyway. Regardless, it only shipped with Super Breakout for a brief period. More importantly, the Colecovision had launched and the 5200 found itself competing against that, and the Colecovision shipped with the hot Donkey Kong. A revamped 8-bit line *might* have worked but you only have to look at Commodore's experiences with the +4 to see that throwing out a new line doesn't always work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Some of what you are saying reads a bit like "I'm doing well selling hotdogs, but I'm going to completely ignore all those people who have told me they want to buy a burger". I can't see how anyone could call Atari entering the 16-bit market with the ST a mistake and you can't call the ST share of the market and its impact "puny" either, and I'm someone who wouldn't have touched an ST with a barge pole back in the late eighties and early nineties. I was a staunch ST owner back then but perhaps in hindsight Atari and Commodore should've settled their lawsuits and divided the Amiga up between the two of them. They could've had a deal where Atari had "home" computer market exclusivity on the Amiga for a good 2 years while Commodore had an exclusivity in the pro market for that same time period. That would've technically worked since Atari bolted out the gate with the 520ST at the lower price point while Commodore went with the Amiga 1000 at a considerably higher price point at the start. Imagine what could have been done had the talents of both companies had essentially worked together on this. The eventual end users would have been on a single platform and they could've better devoted their combined bile against Apple and the PC cloners. The demo scene certainly would've been different! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 Some of what you are saying reads a bit like "I'm doing well selling hotdogs, but I'm going to completely ignore all those people who have told me they want to buy a burger". No, what I'm saying is, I'm doing well selling hotdogs, there's huge demand for hotdogs, and there's little competition left in the hotdog space. Yes, there are people interested in buying burgers, but there I'd have to compete with McDonalds, Wendy's and Burger King. So why on earth would I enter a space with high entry barriers, high operating expenses and massive competition, when I stand a good chance of monopolizing the hotdog business? If Atari had stuck to consoles, by '88-'89 they easily could have had a business that generated more profit in quarter than Tramiel's Atari ever generated in a year. Nintendo was printing money. They sold 60 million NES units, most at around $200 a pop. That's (brace yourself) $12 billion worth of consoles alone - that doesn't even include the gazillion bajillion dollars Nintendo made selling the videogames to feed that monster. Tramiel's Atari was an ant compared to those numbers. Nintendo crapped more money than his Atari made. I can't see how anyone could call Atari entering the 16-bit market with the ST a mistake Is Tramiel's Atari still around? What about Nintendo? Somebody made a pretty huge mistake, and clearly it wasn't Nintendo. The Tramiels would obviously agree with this statement, since they eventually dumped the computers entirely to concentrate all of their efforts on the console business (about 5 years too late to make any impact). and you can't call the ST share of the market and its impact "puny" either Of course I can, because it's perfectly true. The ST never had more than a couple percent market share. It was insignificant. Financially it was even more insignificant, because most of the units Atari did sell, they sold cheap and at low margins. By the end of the '80s Apple was moving more units of their Macintosh, and at far higher prices (and higher margins). And Apple's market share was puny compared to that of the clones. I mean, I'm glad they made the STs, because I owned a couple of them and I couldn't have afforded a Mac. But that doesn't negate the fact the Tramiels made a piss-poor business decision to enter the home computer market with a brand new platform in 1985. They simply didn't have the resources to compete effectively with entrenched players like IBM, Apple and Microsoft outside of a very low-end (and not terribly profitable) segment. Tramiel thought he could do to Apple (and Commodore) what Commodore had done to TI, Coleco and Atari. He was wrong. As the article said, cheap didn't sell. Atari not being able to compete against Apple? That is a strange comment to make as they did and actually did it rather well Huh? Even when the Tramiels unloaded the 800XL dirt cheap, Atari still wasn't able to overtake Apple's userbase the way Commodore had (nor were they anywhere near as profitable). We won't even go into the amount of money the two companies made - Apple's revenues pummeled those of Tramiel's Atari year after year, as did their profits. In 1987, Apple had $2.6 billion in revenues and $218 million in profits, all from the computer business. Tramiel's Atari never made that kind of money - I think in their best year they had sales of around $500 million, and that included a lot of videogame revenue. In the entire history of the ST platform, Atari sold only a little over 4 million STs. Apple had moved a million Macs by 1987, and they sold for more than twice as much as an ST. I loved my 800XL - it was a much better computer than any // apart from the GS - but Atari never represented serious competition to Apple from a business perspective. Warner never got their act together, and the Tramiels carpetbombed the market with cheap XLs and XEs, moving a slew of units but not making a lot of money or building the kind of brand Apple already had by the mid-'80s. The 5200 shipped with Super Breakout initially as Atari wanted to push the four player experience and Pac-Man wasn't quite ready anyway. I find it hard to believe that Pac Man for the 5200 wasn't ready when it had already come out for the 800, but with Warner's incompetent management I suppose anything is possible. Anyhow, Super Breakout was a piss poor launch title and did absolutely nothing to sell the system. They should have released it with Pac Man, made it an exclusive to the 5200 and proceeded to sell boatloads of the thing. Yet another colossal blunder on the part of Warner. Regardless, it only shipped with Super Breakout for a brief period. Yeah, the most important brief period for any console - the launch! Fail. More importantly, the Colecovision had launched and the 5200 found itself competing against that, and the Colecovision shipped with the hot Donkey Kong. All the more reason not to launch with an ugly, antiquated game. Any imbecile could figure that out, but Atari wasn't managed by just any imbeciles. Instead, they were run by some of the greatest the world has ever known! A revamped 8-bit line *might* have worked but you only have to look at Commodore's experiences with the +4 to see that throwing out a new line doesn't always work. All the Plus 4 proved is that incompatible junk doesn't sell. Throwing out a new line "doesn't work" when it's ridiculously hosed. Do it right and you make a killing. Apple did quite well with the //GS, even though it arrived extremely late in the game. They actually moved more of them than they did Macintoshes for a year or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 (edited) Anyone wanna know about Macs and stuff, for example how Apple would have loved to kill off the Apple ][ during the 80s, this is a good read (the left book, of course!): Edited February 6, 2011 by high voltage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Laird Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 (edited) The ST was the best selling computer in the UK and Europe for many years and made Atari ALOT of money so i would hardly call that insignificant The ST also had a MASSIVE impact on the music scene too bringing midi to the masses. There are still people today who use ST based machines to make music. Edited February 6, 2011 by The_Laird Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenski Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 (edited) Couldn't be bothered. Edited February 6, 2011 by svenski Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 (edited) Instead, they were run by some of the greatest the world has ever known! it's one thing to comment on what worked and what didn't work in hindsight ... it's another to start insulting people when you weren't there to understand the circumstances they were operating under except at a high level ... Edited February 6, 2011 by DracIsBack 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenski Posted February 6, 2011 Author Share Posted February 6, 2011 Instead, they were run by some of the greatest the world has ever known! How nice of you to take a break from running your own multi-billion dollar corporation to provide commentary on on the business strategies of people you don't know, under circumstances which you were not present and with the complete benefit of 20-20 hindsight. it's one thing to comment on what worked and what didn't work in hindsight ... it's another to start insulting people when you weren't there to understand the circumstances they were operating under ... I'll leave you to return to being the greatest business leader that the world has ever known ... Exactly, calling people imbeciles especially with the benefit of hindsight, not actually being there and not stumping up your own cash is very easy to do and just insulting. I did reply but then decided not to as I can see this going downhill fast, so +1 for you Drac for bringing it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 I did reply but then decided not to as I can see this going downhill fast, so +1 for you Drac for bringing it up. And I also trimmed it down because I was more sarcastic than I really should have been. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I did reply but then decided not to as I can see this going downhill fast, so +1 for you Drac for bringing it up. And I also trimmed it down because I was more sarcastic than I really should have been. It's sort of repeating (far more simply) what Marty said earlier with spacedice. (albeit far simpler than that discussion) http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__125__p__2183904#entry2183904 http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__150__p__2185725#entry2185725 http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__150__p__2185187#entry2185187 I know it's a long thread, but if Sunspot had bothered to read through it (or skim it for the good parts at least), he'd have a lot more information on the subject rather than having to have it rehashed one again. (except for some really odd things like the 5200 vs Mac -and apparent ignorance of the A8 computers or Apple II) I also love this satirical post from a while back: "Once Nolan Bushnell sold Atari for $100 billion to Warner, Warner released E.T., which single handedly destroyed the videogame market until the NES came out. When Tramiel was offered the rights to the NES, Sega Genesis, and iPhone, he threw them all in the floor and screamed 'we make computers and these things will all fail because they suck.' Then he released the Lynx to sell batteries, and then he released the Jaguar, which lost $100 billion and was a joke from day one, and everyone knew it sucked forever and had no games." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 The ST was the best selling computer in the UK and Europe for many years and made Atari ALOT of money so i would hardly call that insignificant Atari had the best selling single models for a couple of years, IIRC. The PC's outsold them though, by a substantial margin. And they certainly didn't make A LOT of money compared to the bucks Apple was hauling in (much of it from their old 8-bit platform). The ST also had a MASSIVE impact on the music scene too bringing midi to the masses. The ST was a great MIDI box, no question. But that market was miniscule compared to, say, desktop publishing. Apple's probably pushed billions of dollars worth of equipment into that space. From a business perspective, the cash Atari made off of the music segment was insignificant. Exactly, calling people imbeciles especially with the benefit of hindsight People - including those who worked there - were calling Atari's management imbeciles at the time. It didn't take the benefit of hindsight to see that the inmates were running the asylum. I think it became painfully apparent with the 5200 and the 1200XL that the company was being run by fools. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 (edited) If you really wanted to "save" Atari, you'd need to take a time machine back to late 1981, and fix the 1200XL and the 5200 before they launched in '82. Those were the least of Atari Inc's problems. They (like ET, Pac Man, and some less obvious issues) were SYMPTOMS of the fundamental underlying problems of management issues. Those issues didn't get addressed until after James Morgan replaced Kassar in mid 1983, but by early/mid '84 he was making considerable progress. He knew of Warner's plans to sell Atari, and that wasn't a real problem (Morgan's reorganization efforts should have continued uber new ownership as such), but Warner threw a curve ball with the decision to split up and liquidate Atari Inc rather than sell it: none of the attempts at a complete sale had been successful and Warner made the decision to split the company rather abbruptly. Even then, the main issue was that Warner delegated the split in an extremely sloppy manner: not only not notifying Atari staff (or even senior management -including Morgan) of the split (bringing Morgan in at the last minute to sign things over), but Warner also did so with almost no organization or clear definition of what Tramiel would actually be buying, and no proper transition from Atari Inc consumer to Atari Corp. It was an utter mess. It's a shame Morgan (or similar) hadn't been brought in by mid '82, or better, of Warner had had someone better than Kassar from the start. (he at leas had added much better business sense than Bushnell had ever had, but he was not experienced or well suited to running a company like Atari -his husiness had been in textiles iirc, and Atari needed someone with experience in consumer products, entertainment, and preferably at least a little knowledge about the electronics/computer industry -or coin-op arcade/entertinment for that matter -advisory staff and managers of the separate divisions of Atari could fill the gaps as long as the president was reasonably capable for the position overall and additional management was the same) See these posts for some rather nice summaries on the split/transition, as I posted earlier: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__125__p__2183904#entry2183904 http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__150__p__2185725#entry2185725 http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/171887-the-tramiels/page__st__150__p__2185187#entry2185187 Of the problems leading up to the Crash in '83, the distribution system was almost certainly the most problematic (and was the main cause of the crash). The distribution network Atari Inc used (and similarly with some others on the market) ended up heavily inflating market demand and lead to oversatuartion of the young market. (the so-called "glut" of hardware and games) Among other things were various mistakes and missed opportunities for the computers and consoles in a variety of areas. (some of which came up in this thread earlier) On the hardware side of things, the 3200 would have been a much better design to stick with than the 5200 shortcut they used. (the computers could have been managed and marketed much better as well, and in different ways for the US and Euro markets) On the computer side of things, not releasing the 600 in 1982 was a big mistake. (waiting until '82 to get cost reduced versions of the 8-bits was a bit late as well -much more so in the Euro markets where the FCC was a non-issue -ie could have pushed for a single board design with no shielding ASAP) The 5200's craptacular joysticks needed to be replaced with some that actually work well with most arcade games, and she needed to launch with at least 32K of RAM (a full 64K would have been better). Oh, and she needed a pack-in game that didn't look like garbage - I would have shipped it with Pac Man, Defender or Star Raiders (although those last two really needed a graphics tweak by that point). Less RAM if anything . . . RAM is expensive, though the 16k of the 5200 was affordable since it was DRAM (and promoted better consolidation further down the road). If they did stick with the 5200 (vs 3200 or such), the design could have been far more cost effective from the start: it should have have a much smaller motherboard (smaller than the 600 prototype, let alone 1200XL), 2 controller ports (given the A8s were chopped down to 2), sleek bot compact form factor, remove the expansion port but add more expansion signals to the cart slot, etc, etc. (they should have started with 2 8k DRAM chips too: 2k chips were still cheaper by a bit, but the board space saved and the long-term advantages would outweigh that) The 3200 concept is a much better idea in general IMO. (maybe switch to DRAM like the A8/5200 -especially if they could embed the interface logic, but otherwise it's a pretty nice concept -a better short cut than the 5200 could have been using GTIA+TIA in place of the planned STIA) I would have also got a shrunken, cost-reduced 2600 out the door in '82. Already happened with the 4 switch models followed by the "Vader." (smaller motherboards, generally cut cost, etc) On the computer side, I'd have released the 1200XL with four joystick ports, not two, and with a built-in disk drive (side load, like the Apple //c would do a few years later) and probably modem. I've met several people over the years who had Atari 8-bits but who thought they were junk because they hadn't got a drive to go with 'em. Whereas the C64 was almost always sold with a drive. I'd have preempted that by only shipping computers with built-in disk drives from '82 forward. I'd have also kept the Parallel Bus (it was originally planned for the Sweet 16), but wouldn't have bothered with the expansion cage. Very few users would have ever taken advantage of such a beast. Even on the Apple //, most of the cards were added to supply basic features - like graphics, joysticks, drive controllers and modems - that the Ataris either had built-in or could access over the SIO port. But just having the illusion you could expand the thing if you needed to would have overcome some resistance. There's tons more where that came from, and there's a lot of things they could have done better still than the above. The 2 joystick were fine, as was the removal of the cart slot: Asteroids was the sole game supporting 3 or 4 player simultaneous, perhaps allow an add-on for 2 more ports. (you'd have to disable the upper 16k of RAM though since the PIA's select lines were used to enable that address range I believe) Definitely remove the 2nd cart slot though . . . maybe 4 ports would have made sense if they stuck to 48k for the time being and waited a bit before going beyond that. (there were problems with the OS being compatible with some older software, and a dedicated IC for memory mapping could have been implemented to use bank switching for RAM beyond 48k -namely using the 4k "hole" that was used for nothing else -and thus also leaving the entire 10k OS ROM addressed and no wasted 2k of RAM for I/O -all XLs and the 65XE are really 62k rather than 64k, with 2k wasted -the 130 is 126k as such; using the 4k "hole" would probably be the best to avoid incompatibility as well) It certainly would have been more foolproof if the 1200/600 had literally been single board, consolidated/cost reduced versions of the 400/800 with built-in BASIC ROM and additional expansion support. (better expansion support could also have meant implementing that >48k mapper logic on expansion module -which the 4rd party mosaic board already had for the 400/800 -it was a hack that clipped onto the pins on the underside of the motherboard and mapped added DRAM in 4k banks) One of the problems of the A8 line from the start was lack of expansion support aside from RAM cards. The 600 and some 1200 prototypes included the PBI, but the final 1200XL did not (a closed box) while the 600 was stupidly canceled. Both should have been launched with PBI and immediate plans for an expansion box module (like the 1090XL) as well as simpler modules/add-osn plugging directly onto the PBI port. (Tandy's CoCo used a very similar system via the cart slot, and actually a female cart type expansion port might have been a cleaner approach: thus they could have the expansion system accept the very same cards/carts as the bare PBI port could -Tandy had a multi-cart add-on module for such) The drive thing was marketing, one of the biggest problems of the A8 line was lack of strong and consistent marketing, I believe. (at least in the US market) The A8 drives kicked the VIC/C64's ass with a nice 19.2k baud (without fast loaders) vs a piddly 2.4k baud for CBM drives. (as slower than some cassette drives, like the CoCo in double speed mode or Spectrum) But were there ever any ads promoting that feature? . . . No. I also wouldn't have wasted time trying to build a parallel drive interface, as Atari did with the 1450XLD. I'd have just crammed the 1050's hardware onto the 1200's mainboard. Problem solved. I'd have also fixed the funked up monitor output, made the case a little deeper, and released a matching monitor to go with it. And I'd have made sure there was a full 800 compatibility mode. Drives were pretty bulky for the time, and honestly the 1450XLD may not have been the best route to go either. A more professional looking desktop model was a good idea, and supporting built-in disk drive(s) was also nice, investing in a parallel interface would reduce cost (and increase profrmance -though the external drives weren't even close to maxing out SIO -you would avoid SIO contention issues though, especially when using a modem) so that was a good investment as well, but I think they should have pushed for desk top models sooner. (a mistake that would be repeated by Atari Corp with the ST line -they also repeated the closed-box mistake with that) They should have had a corded keyboard for desktop models too, not a built-in one. Much later, when half-height drives became common, it might have even been a good idea to have a built-in drive on the console models. (console meaning all-in-one keyboard form factor) Europe was a separate issue entirely though, and I'm not going to start that up again now. If you'd done all that, contained some of Atari's wild spending and focused on getting good game titles out the door, I think the company would have weathered both the game crash and the home computer price wars much, much better than they did. They might have lost money during the worst of it, but they wouldn't have hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and they'd have come out of it all with a much larger market share in both the console and home computer space. The cash bleeding came from the inflated market problems (saturation and overproduction) and related crash. They needed new management and the needed it ASAP, preferably from the start, but mid '82 was sort of the limit for avoiding catastrophe. One of the reasons for the crash was that Atari had been TOO competitive and had a virtual monopoly that dragged down the entire market: had competition been a bit healthier from the start, that might have balanced things better as well. (and perhaps reduced inflation too -if the competition had better distribution and related figures) On another note: Atari also missed out on pushing for vertical integration, ie finding a relatively small chip fab that they could buy/merge with and cut out the middle man. (accelerating development, cutting manufacturing costs, etc) I've brought this up before, but I think Synertek may have been the most immediate option for that. (Atari heavily used them for custom chips and 2nd sourcing MOS CPUs and I/O chips and they do fall into the "small" side as far as manufacturers go) Warner/Atari should have been pushing for that as soon as they had the ability to do so. (in the case of Synertek, Honeywell bought them just after 1979, so Atari would have had to act before that . . . or at least get into negotiations for such) CBM's purchase of MOS in 1976 should have spurred such to a fair degree, and Warner/Atari should have been in a reasonable position to push for such by '79. (at least enough to enter into negotiations for a merger with Synertek, or a tight partnership with provisions for a merger later on -given how dependent Synertek was on Atari's business, it would have been win win for both parties -the crash and Atari's problems -with related loss of production demand- pretty much killed Synertek and Honeywell shut them down in '85) Again, nobody is mentioning the reason why Warner was trying to get Atari off the books. It was solely due to Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempts that fueled the need to part with the majority of Atari quickly. Steve Ross didn't want to get rid of the company. That was evident in the biographies written of the man. He was the master of the deal and the architect of Time Warner Inc. which his replacements [Levin, in particular] - per his untimely death - screwed up. After all, Warner's point man on Atari, Manny Gerard, has done very well for himself in the video game industry since then... Basically, Atari in its diminished state was still not a screwup acquisition on Warner's part like Knickerbocker was. That was part of it, but the sale/split took place after the takeover had been averted. There are 2 contributing factors for Warner still pushing for Atari's sale: 1. the attempted takeover prompted Warner to consult a firm to assess their assets and said firm suggested that Warner sell Atari Inc 2. deflecting the takeover had cost Warner dearly and they were rather desperate However, the sale of Atari was not the problem: it was Warner's execution. Ideally, the company would have been sold as a whole and continued Morgan's reorganization (and that's what Morgan was counting on), but that didn't happen. Even so, with the split, things could have worked out OK if Warner had facilitated a normal transition with everything laid out and comprehensive plans to split things cleanly and smoothly transition to Atari Games and Atari Corp (TTL with Atari consumer folded into it). As such, Morgan should still have been able to complete reorganization and maybe even stay on under Tramiel, but it was a total mess instead. Warner did not notify Atari Inc staff (including Morgan) of the change in plans with the split (Morgan was brought in at the very last minute to sign things) and Tramiel himself had been taken off guard by the proposition (he had earlier declined the full sale of Atari Inc -as had several others, but Warner contacted him out of the blue with the offer to split Atari Inc). To make things even worse: this all took place over 4th of July weekend, and hapless staff came back to total chaos in the wake of Warner's botched handling of the split. Again, Marty put it pretty eloquently: The really bad part isn't even the sale or liquidation, but the absolutely horribly way Warner handled it... and the timing on top of all that. Warner made no notification of a possible sale to any Atari Inc staff (even Morgan) until literally minutes before the final documents were being signed and they brought Morgan in to finalize everything. On top of that the deal went through over 4th of July vacation, so you had staff coming back from a long weekend with no idea what the hell was going on and not understanding that the company they'd worked for effectively no longer existed and that Warner had laid off everyone. Yes, not to mention putting the have a job/don't have a job on Jack's head because it was either you're going to the new Atari Corporation or you're looking for employment elsewhere. Which when I talked to Leonard he stated how they all felt horrible about it going in. Knowing they were going to have to do that with a bulk of the Atari Inc. people. And most of the people didn't have a clue after that July 4th weekend that they were laid off because of how Warner handled it - no announcement to the employees, no nothing. They thought they were returning to work at Atari Inc. busines as usual with no idea the buildings, assets, etc. now belonged to TTL. Warner just let everything sit there and put it in Jack's lap for a transition, simply handing over the keys. Literally everything - employees, buildings, ongoing contracts, etc., etc. Which is why Jack and company had to spend the entire rest of the month of July going over what they all inherited, and who they were going to hire over. (Jack and company literally had people helping tally everthing down to the last refrigerator). People came in after that weekend only to find complete anarchy and people being called in to interviews. And now as far as they knew, Jack had taken over Atari Inc. and was now their boss because of the way Warner handled it. The first few days until Jack started locking down all the consumer buildings (including warehouses) were madness, people were driving up and loading up U-Hauls and vans full of stuff. Likewise a number of people started wiping out their directories on the mainframe. With a reasonably prudent, organized, and proactive transitional plan, Warner probably could have avoided the mess that resulted in mid 1984 (and lingers for months). Sure, some things would still have been changed or lost due to the split, but it could have been far less harmful than it was. (if they really wanted to maintain reasonable stability, they probably should have not only notified upper management of a possible sale weeks/months in advance, but set up a more gradual transition to Atari Corp, depending on what Tramiel would agree to -ideally it seems like it would have been very good for Morgan to stay on in management, perhaps under Tramiel, at least until things got smoothed out) Ideally there should have been some form of normal transition - where all assets are mapped out, employees are explained the situation so they have time to start looking for jobs elsewhere, and a clear explination of how the Inc. assets are being split. As it was because of how Warner did it, Atari Corp and Atari Games were in litigation for years after arguing who owned what patents and such. -------------- Jack's accomplishments with "Atari" are rather diminished when one considers he used the Atari assets and our Atari fandom - and with it our Dollars, Sterling, Marks, and Francs - to fuel his personal vendetta against Irving Gould and the company he founded [Commodore]. Had Atari Corp and Commodore not tried to destroy each other in their tit-for-tat struggle and had actually come to terms in their settlement of the Amiga lawsuits and combined the platforms, we might possibly have a viable [and commercial] third computer platform to this day. Then there's also Jack's viewpoint. While Jobs & Woz was motivated to put an Apple computer on every student's desktop and thus change the world for the better [and Atari's was to innovate and have lots of fun], Jack's famous motto was "basically, I'm here to make money". That doesn't seem to have been the case though. Tramiel was not interested in getting CBM back as such, he was mainly interested in filling a hole in the market he felt the Japanese would exploit (as they had with typewriters, adding machines, and calculators -all things Jack had experienced directly) while also providing his sons with a solid legacy to take over. He did just that and stepped down in late '88 (transitioned Sam in in '87/88), and that was probably a mistake since Sam doesn't seem to have been anywhere near the businessman his father was. (plus they lost Katz at the same time, so no more of that rather exceptional management of the entertainment division -his replacements seemed rather inconsistent by comparison) And another quote from Marty: And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore. Truthfully, Leonard didn't have much to do with the daily operations, he was more involved with the products themselves. And I'm not sure that Sam would have been able to change things if he didn't have the heart attack. Every since he had taken over, the company itself was on a downward spiral. When Jack turned the company over to him, he had mananged to bring the company out of the red and in to the black - shedding all the debt they took on from Warner in the purchase. That was his dream after all, to be able to hand something solid over to his sons and retire. Sam managed to take it from a multi-division multi-product company to a single product company by the time Jack came back in. If they would have fought to the last $$$, there would have been nothing left of a legacy for his kids, hence the reverse merger to get out while they still could. Truthfully, I would rather have had Jack not retire back in the late 80's and have him stick around for the oncoming Wintel onslaught to see how he would have dealt with that. I can't picture just turning tail and closing down the computer division like that. ---------- Things hadn't been perfect under Jack, but what he managed is certainly impressive, especially after what Warner ended up doing with the split. (of course, besides what he might have done had he stayed at Atari Corp into the 90s, there's if he'd stayed at CBM ) Then again, if Digital Research had agreed to the CP/M deal with IBM, things would have been very different on the PC OS front from the beginning. (and DR would have been far stronger in general, with the backing of IBM to stave off Apple litigation over GEM ) I want GEM back. I wish the owners of DRI would create a community foundation to get GEM up and running as a viable environment so the clowns behind KDE and Gnome can be pushed to the backburner on all other *nix platforms besides OS X. And Ubuntu's colors remind me of 70s shag carpet. Utterly terrible. Then again, I didn't think DRI's GEM was as nice to look at as Atari's versions... Does that include the original pre-Apple-lawsuit GEM? Another thing to consider is what GEM would have been exactly if IBM had adopted CP/M. GEM was an independent OS from CP/M, so making it mesh with CP/M would have been a bit different. (ie a derivative running on top of CP/M and able to execute CP/M programs in shell windows) Atari Corp. did outlast Commodore but when it comes to platforms surviving to this day, it looks like development on Amiga OS 4.x seems to be much further along than any work being done with TOS at this point... If Jack had stayed at Atari Corp, who knows what might have happened. Then again, if CBM had been managed capable (by Jack or otherwise), things on that side likely would have been even more successful in the US and Europe. (quite possibly no crap like the C-16, Plus/4, C64GS, etc, and maybe even something better than the C128, or pushing a cut-down Amiga into that role instead, let alone something more like the C65 -on the C-16 side, a 16k version of the C64 would have been a good fit . . . in fact, had they pushed a 16k model of the C64 from the start, that could have put an even bigger hurt on competition -by the time the C16 was released, it was far less necessary as the C64 had fallen towards the lower-end range already) If Atari had put most of their time and attention into consoles, it's almost certain that Nintendo wouldn't have been able to lock up a whopping 80% of the market within just a couple of years. Even if Atari only held onto 50% of the console market (down from their previous 70% share), that would have been worth far more to them than the puny share of the 16-bit PC market they were able to command with the ST. Consoles (and their games) were much higher-margin than budget PCs, even back then. By the end of the decade, videogames were a multi-billion dollar business again, and even a 50% share of that would dwarf what Atari ended up making off the ST and its descendants. Atari Corp didn't have the funds to pull that off, not to mention all the delays and problems forced by Warner's poor management of the split. (given what they had to work with, they managed to pull it off exceptionally well) OTOH, had Morgan's plans continued, Atari Inc very likely would have recovered much more quickly and been stronger in all their markets. Not only did they have the XL and 7800 (and 2600 Jr) to push (with the 5200 being discontinued already -but the smart move with the 7800 module to bridge 5200 users and retain better PR), but they also had various promising 16-bit chipsets and some work on a UNIX based OS and GUI. They had planned to release the Amiga based console in late '84 as well, but that fell through with Amiga cheating them (and the split taking place a couple days later), but Atari may have already been looking at their in-house designs to apply in a similar role (Marty mentioned the Rainbow chipset may have been considered). There had also been plans for a PC/DOS compatible machine (1600XL) back in '83 that got delayed along with other projects with Morgan's reorganization. (quite necessary, but there were some unfortunate snags earlier on -which, of course, wouldn't have been the case had Atari gotten the management they needed a year or so earlier) For that matter, on the PC side of things, not pushing the PC line more (in the US) was probably a mistake. Atari had a reasonable chance at breaking into the clone market, and early results were fairly promising iirc, but it fell apart later on. (perhaps another thing Sam was responsible for) Weird, I was prohibited from editing my comment above that got posted accidentally before I finished it... If you really wanted to "save" Atari, you'd need to take a time machine back to late 1981, and fix the 1200XL and the 5200 before they launched in '82. No, you'd have to go back to 1976 and tell Nolan to hold out for $38 million or more for the buyout offer and/or call up Michael Milken and finance Atari Inc. through junk bonds and remain independent. Either way, you take those extra monies and buy MOS Technology thereby c-blocking Tramiel from purchasing the company and thus preventing his later price war at Commodore. Actually, Commodore may not have existed for long w/o MOS because the PET design came from Chuck Peddle [if I'm not mistaken] at MOS. You'd take the PET design and offer to trade it to Philips in order to settle the patent infringement lawsuits and for that intellectual property to be transferred to Atari. Philips later crashes and burns with the PET now known as the Odyssey 2 or 3. No, Nolan's management was terrible . . . he had rather poor business sense and did not make a very good president/CEO at all. He may have had a place at Atari Inc under Warner, but I don't think his personality (or ego) really favored such. It was Nolan's weak business skills that forced Atari into the position they were in in '77 in the first place. (strong management and smart business could have meant Atari not needed outside help at all) What needed to be done was getting someone better than Kassar (who was at least much better than Bushnell for the business side of things), and possibly not having Atari Inc as a direct subsidiary of Warner, but a distinct spin-off company. (unless Warner had been more prudent in its management as a subsidiary and avoided the foibles of dual management it suffered historically -stronger/more capable management on Atari Inc's end would have helped that too) If Atari is still sold to Warners, you "create" the Activision spin-off as a cover - much like Key Games was before - and then license "Puck Man" from Namco and run with it in every territory outside of Japan and use the huge cash infusion to launch a takeover of Warner Communications itself. Space Invaders was first. Another consideration was Japan: the VCS had been managed very poorly in that market by Epoch (not sure on the details, but even if not released late, it seems to have been poorly marketed and overpriced) Edited February 7, 2011 by kool kitty89 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Those were the least of Atari Inc's problems. They (like ET, Pac Man, and some less obvious issues) were SYMPTOMS of the fundamental underlying problems of management issues. Oh, I don't disagree with any of that. All of my suggestions should be prefaced with, "After you sacked their existing management..." On the hardware side of things, the 3200 would have been a much better design to stick with than the 5200 shortcut they used. Yes, I've read a bit about that. Looked pretty promising, although the big advantage you had with the 5200 was synergy with their computers. It could launch with a large library of decent games, and there was already a large number of programmers familiar with the platform. On the computer side of things, not releasing the 600 in 1982 was a big mistake. (waiting until '82 to get cost reduced versions of the 8-bits was a bit late as well -much more so in the Euro markets where the FCC was a non-issue -ie could have pushed for a single board design with no shielding ASAP) Agreed with both. The 400 and 800 probably should have been replaced in 1981, by the 600 and the original design of the 1200 if not my somewhat more optimized version including disk drive. Less RAM if anything . . . RAM is expensive, though the 16k of the 5200 was affordable since it was DRAM (and promoted better consolidation further down the road). I disagree. Even the 800s hardware was getting a little long in the tooth by 1982. I'd have chucked in as much DRAM as possible, to give the programmers something else to work with. Would have helped future-proof the design a bit. it should have have a much smaller motherboard (smaller than the 600 prototype, let alone 1200XL), Ayup. The 5200 was ridiculously huge. The 2 joystick were fine, as was the removal of the cart slot: Asteroids was the sole game supporting 3 or 4 player simultaneous, perhaps allow an add-on for 2 more ports. MULE supported 4 player. You could work it by passing the joystick around, IIRC, but it was a lot better with 4 sticks. I think other games would have come out supporting 4 sticks, but by the time development really took off on the platform the 1200XL had rolled around and Atari had yanked that feature. Definitely remove the 2nd cart slot though Yeah, that was a useless feature I'd forgotten about. Of course, remove it. One of the problems of the A8 line from the start was lack of expansion support aside from RAM cards. I've never thought that was much of an issue. They didn't need any expansion until fairly late in the game. What would you add? RAM? Dump the low memory models and only sell 64K machines. 80 col cards are the only thing they could have released that would have really needed an expansion bus. That having been said, I would have provided the PBI to provide the illusion of expandability, but as with the PBI on the 800XL, I doubt it would have ever really been used. The drive thing was marketing, one of the biggest problems of the A8 line was lack of strong and consistent marketing, I believe. (at least in the US market) True. True. Drives were pretty bulky for the time, and honestly the 1450XLD may not have been the best route to go either. A more professional looking desktop model was a good idea, and supporting built-in disk drive(s) was also nice, investing in a parallel interface would reduce cost (and increase profrmance -though the external drives weren't even close to maxing out SIO -you would avoid SIO contention issues though, especially when using a modem) so that was a good investment as well, but I think they should have pushed for desk top models sooner. (a mistake that would be repeated by Atari Corp with the ST line -they also repeated the closed-box mistake with that) They should have had a corded keyboard for desktop models too, not a built-in one. Maybe later, but in '82 for a machine that didn't even require an RGB monitor I think a separate case would have been overkill. As for an onboard drive, all drives weren't THAT bulky by '82 - I mean, the Rana drive came out for the 8-bits in 1983, and it was a third the size of the 810 (if that big). And the 1200XL could certainly have been made a couple of inches taller without spoiling its looks (especially if you made it deeper to better accommodate a monitor. Atari apparently had all sorts of trouble getting a parallel drive controller built, which is why I'd just skip it and build the serial drive controller hardware onto the motherboard. Which now that I think about it, actually brings up an interesting question - could they have rigged it so that programmers could access the 6507 to run program code in addition to controlling the drive? That might have been a useful feature, especially since otherwise that silicon just sits around unused 95% of the time. They needed new management and the needed it ASAP, preferably from the start, but mid '82 was sort of the limit for avoiding catastrophe. Totally agree with this. '82 was when the wheels pretty much flew off the bus, although the crash wouldn't hit for another 12 months or so. One of the reasons for the crash was that Atari had been TOO competitive and had a virtual monopoly that dragged down the entire market: had competition been a bit healthier from the start, that might have balanced things better as well. Possibly. I don't think they'd been too competitive though - I think they just had a ton of mindshare thanks to very successful branding and a handful of big early arcade hits, plus the massive success of the 2600. On another note: Atari also missed out on pushing for vertical integration, ie finding a relatively small chip fab that they could buy/merge with and cut out the middle man. Probably true. Although could you imagine their management trying to run a fab outfit? Shudder! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunspot42 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 If Atari had put most of their time and attention into consoles, it's almost certain that Nintendo wouldn't have been able to lock up a whopping 80% of the market within just a couple of years. Atari Corp didn't have the funds to pull that off, not to mention all the delays and problems forced by Warner's poor management of the split. (given what they had to work with, they managed to pull it off exceptionally well) Nintendo pulled it off, and they didn't enter the game with billions in cash, either. Atari spent a great deal of money (and time) designing, building and marketing the STs. Had they instead just pushed a fixed 5200 out the door (the design for which already existed, including better sticks), I think they would have maintained their dominant market position in consoles straight thru the crash and there wouldn't have been so much of a vacuum for Nintendo to exploit by '86. Alternately, they needed to get the 7800 out the door ASAP and not dither around for over a year haggling with Warners who was gonna pay for the damn thing. Penny wise and pound foolish - it cost them the lucrative console market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I can't see how anyone could call Atari entering the 16-bit market with the ST a mistake and you can't call the ST share of the market and its impact "puny" either, and I'm someone who wouldn't have touched an ST with a barge pole back in the late eighties and early nineties. I haven't seen comprehensive market share figures (reliable ones at least), but I'd gotten the impression that th eST never had a huge market share in the US, except maybe if you segmented the market into 16-bit computers (Mac, ST, Amiga, PC) specifically. (otherwise you've got the 8-bits flooding the market with the PC clones growing rapidly and taking over the market by the time the 8-bits are in heavy decline) In Europe, it was another story entirely: the ST dominated the 16-bit computer market up to the late 80s when the Amiga started to take the lead. (the '88 price shift was a major issue with the Amiga 500 dropping to 400 pounds in the UK -similar in others- and the 520 ST being forced from 300 to 400 due to DRAM price/supply issues) Sam taking over had a major impact as well and management issues at Atari Corp and CBM led to both computer lines failing in the early 90s and CBM goign bankrupt. Albeit, even with strong management/support of the ST or Amiga, PC clones would arrive in force sooner or later and dominate the US well before that (the fact that Amstrad dropped their lower-end PC line in '88 delayed that a good deal too), but establishing a licensed standard with either machine could have changed the game considerably for Atari or CBM. (better expandability and more timely evolution to both systems would also have been critical issues aside from marketing and business management) A revamped 8-bit line *might* have worked but you only have to look at Commodore's experiences with the +4 to see that throwing out a new line doesn't always work. Maybe if the A8 had been managed better earlier on and gotten really big (more like the C64), but as it was, letting it die made more sense. (if they hadn't had so much back stock, dropping it earlier on might have even been attractive) The Plus/4 was a mistake, but something more like the C65 might have been a good idea. (the C128 was tangent to that unfortunately: an efficient, fully evolutionary design would have been better, like a VIC-III with higher res modes and a larger palette -maybe true bitmap modes, and perhaps higher color depth modes as well, dual SID, faster 6502, etc, etc -instead of CP/M and the wasteful Z80, investing in a more powerful in-house OS for the 6502 would have been better) You could argue the C64 should have been VIC compatible, but one major issue with that is the use of SRAM on the VIC. (it was not really a good long-term option to support, and using DRAM in VIC modes might have had significant compatibility issues -plus the VIC was more of a stop-gap design anyway, and it could have held the C64 back) Their management of the Amiga was a mess too though. I was a staunch ST owner back then but perhaps in hindsight Atari and Commodore should've settled their lawsuits and divided the Amiga up between the two of them. They could've had a deal where Atari had "home" computer market exclusivity on the Amiga for a good 2 years while Commodore had an exclusivity in the pro market for that same time period. That would've technically worked since Atari bolted out the gate with the 520ST at the lower price point while Commodore went with the Amiga 1000 at a considerably higher price point at the start. Wasn't going to happen. The contract was dead before Atari Inc was even split (a bit of a fudge on Atari's side since they shouldn't have accepted Amiga's check). A much more interesting premise is if Atari had moved on with its own advanced computer designs (several of which were more impressive than the Amiga) and sued Amiga for breech of contract on top of that. The plan had been to have the Amiga based console out in late '84, a minimal computer (128k) in '85, and an unlimited full computer in '86, but after that fell through, the in-house options would have been the obvious alternative. (a shame the Amiga runaround delayed a definitive push for the in-house 16-bit designs) That very well may have happened after the fact had Morgan's plans continued. (Atari Inc may have already been looking into the Rainbow design as a game console and lower-cost next generation computer, but that all fell apart in the wake of the mess created by Warner's management of the split) A proper transition to Atari Corp may have pushed Tramiel to favor a derivative of one of Atari Inc's existing (fully prototyped) 16-bit designs as well as the UNIX based OS and "Snowcap" GUI they'd been developing. Hell, a favorable relationship with Atari Games could have meant licensing the new computer hardware for use in the arcade. (which would also mean arcade perfect home versions ) That, and the other "what if" is if Tramiel had stayed at CBM and managed the Amiga (and continued the C64 and such) rather than what happened after he left. (it's likely that CBM would still have picked up the Amiga -the main reason Jack hadn't on his own with TTL was a lack of funds to buy out the entire company on top of establishing the necessary manufacturing/distribution/etc -ie the things Atari Inc brought) Is Tramiel's Atari still around? What about Nintendo? Somebody made a pretty huge mistake, and clearly it wasn't Nintendo. No, that's a totally different context. It's all been explained above though: there were mistakes, but mainly made by Warner or again after Jack left. (the Sam Tramiel years) The Tramiels would obviously agree with this statement, since they eventually dumped the computers entirely to concentrate all of their efforts on the console business (about 5 years too late to make any impact). That was a mistake too and probably due mostly to Sam Tramiel's weak management. There's absolutely no reason Atari should have pushed computered: Warner hadn't pushed them hard enough, but Atari Corp managed exceptional success with the ST in the late 80s (especially in Europe) which brought the company out of debt and made it onto the fortune 500 list. (with help from the millions of 2600s and 7800s sold in the late 80s under Michael Katz' tactful management under a tight budget) Things went south just around the time Atari Corp had enough money to really push things on the market in the US. Had they played their cards right with a decent 4th gen console released in '89-91 (the sooner, the better) as well as good management of the computers, they might still be here today. (by the late 80s, the best they could hope for in the US with the ST was a niche market, but Europe had real potential for them in the mainstream for years to come -and consoles had great potential in both markets with the right marketing -remember Atari had maintained a significant lead over Sega in US market share up to '89 at least, and they had a lot more funding to work with by that point -and Europe lacked the Nontendo blockade) and you can't call the ST share of the market and its impact "puny" either Of course I can, because it's perfectly true. The ST never had more than a couple percent market share. It was insignificant. Financially it was even more insignificant, because most of the units Atari did sell, they sold cheap and at low margins. By the end of the '80s Apple was moving more units of their Macintosh, and at far higher prices (and higher margins). And Apple's market share was puny compared to that of the clones. It was the dominant 16-bit computer of the 80s in Europe, with the Amiga only coming into its own at the very end of the decade. (had Atari managed things better, they could have stayed on top too -then again, CBM could have been managed far better as well) As for the ST in the US, I haven't seen any figures that really show things one way or the other in a reliable manner, but it appears that from '85-87 the ST did have a pretty significant presence on the US market, but not a massive one. (a large part of that was the C64's continued sales, though PC clones were expanding fast) CBM screwed up much worse with the Amiga since they had the clout to push it with massive advertising and offered a lower end (ie A500) form factor from the start. Atari had to make do with limited funds initially, and later on they had shortages from the surge in European demand and the decline in management later on. They also were getting into the PC clone market, but that seems to have fallen apart under Sam as well. (by the time Atari had the money to really push the ST in the US, it's best chance was digging into a niche -European support would have bolstered that too, but Atari might have done OK as a PC clone manufacturer) I mean, I'm glad they made the STs, because I owned a couple of them and I couldn't have afforded a Mac. But that doesn't negate the fact the Tramiels made a piss-poor business decision to enter the home computer market with a brand new platform in 1985. They simply didn't have the resources to compete effectively with entrenched players like IBM, Apple and Microsoft outside of a very low-end (and not terribly profitable) segment. Tramiel thought he could do to Apple (and Commodore) what Commodore had done to TI, Coleco and Atari. He was wrong. As the article said, cheap didn't sell. It did in Europe. But, again, the main issue in the US was lack of marketing due to limited funds. And no, Tramiel wasn't out to kill the competition, his main incentives were to counter the threat of the Japanese in the computer market (albeit the C64 and PC clones pretty much made that moot -at least in the US) and also to leave a legacy for his sons, which he did in late 1988. (Sam transitioned in in '87/88 and Jack retired towards the end of '88, in hindsight that was a mistake given Sam's apparent incompetence and lack of drive compared to his father) Huh? Even when the Tramiels unloaded the 800XL dirt cheap, Atari still wasn't able to overtake Apple's userbase the way Commodore had (nor were they anywhere near as profitable). We won't even go into the amount of money the two companies made - Apple's revenues pummeled those of Tramiel's Atari year after year, as did their profits. In 1987, Apple had $2.6 billion in revenues and $218 million in profits, all from the computer business. Tramiel's Atari never made that kind of money - I think in their best year they had sales of around $500 million, and that included a lot of videogame revenue. In the entire history of the ST platform, Atari sold only a little over 4 million STs. Apple had moved a million Macs by 1987, and they sold for more than twice as much as an ST. Where are you getting your figures from? I find it hard to believe that Pac Man for the 5200 wasn't ready when it had already come out for the 800, but with Warner's incompetent management I suppose anything is possible. Anyhow, Super Breakout was a piss poor launch title and did absolutely nothing to sell the system. They should have released it with Pac Man, made it an exclusive to the 5200 and proceeded to sell boatloads of the thing. Yet another colossal blunder on the part of Warner. Even if the game was ready in time, production can always have other delays. All the Plus 4 proved is that incompatible junk doesn't sell. Throwing out a new line "doesn't work" when it's ridiculously hosed. Do it right and you make a killing. Apple did quite well with the //GS, even though it arrived extremely late in the game. They actually moved more of them than they did Macintoshes for a year or so. Yes, and that also shows that Apple missed a lot of major opportunities: The Apple II had potential for being a dominant mass market standard but they: -didn't push for a cost reduced model for the low/mid-range market with a tighter profit margin (in spite of the simplistic design having incredible potential for such -it could have been more like the Spectrum in Europe except with a huge head start and much greater respect in the higher-end market) -didn't have timely evolution of the system (2 MHz models and the higher-res graphics should have come sooner, let alone a more comprehensive update to the audio and video systems like a proper 16 color bitmap mode of reasonable resolutions and at least some form of hardware sound generation or a bare DAC along with programmable interval timer(s) to aid with CPU driven audio -perhaps upgrade that to DMA sound later on like the Mac) For the latter side of things, the evolutionary developments could eventually have led into the IIGS, but probably better in some areas and maybe slightly later. (prior to that they could have had better enhancements to the pure 8-bit side of things with gradual upgrades with faster CPUs, graphics, sound, OS, etc, and could have pushed a good GUI on the 8-bit line as well) The ST was the best selling computer in the UK and Europe for many years and made Atari ALOT of money so i would hardly call that insignificant The ST also had a MASSIVE impact on the music scene too bringing midi to the masses. There are still people today who use ST based machines to make music. Yes, and that could have been their definitive niche in the US market as well: music. (something to cling to even after PCs have flooded the market) In Europe they had potential for much more in the long run, as did CBM, but both fell apart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kool kitty89 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Atari Corp didn't have the funds to pull that off, not to mention all the delays and problems forced by Warner's poor management of the split. (given what they had to work with, they managed to pull it off exceptionally well) Nintendo pulled it off, and they didn't enter the game with billions in cash, either. Atari spent a great deal of money (and time) designing, building and marketing the STs. Had they instead just pushed a fixed 5200 out the door (the design for which already existed, including better sticks), I think they would have maintained their dominant market position in consoles straight thru the crash and there wouldn't have been so much of a vacuum for Nintendo to exploit by '86. Nintendo had a LOT of advantages though: They did have some good funding by '86, they had established software support, they had a very strong position in Japan and had locked up most Japanese arcade licenses, etc, etc. Atari Inc (or Atari Corp with a proper transition) would have been in a far more favorable position, but that's not how things played out. Stop it with the 5200 stuff, the 5200 had already been dropped by the time the Tramiels were on the scene, so that was a non issue. In fact, if that hadn't been the case and the 7800 hadn't entered production and gotten hyped, it may have been attractive to drop the 7800 entirely (due to Warner's mess) and press on with a cost reduced 5200 along with the Jr. (the 5200 Jr/5100 was the tip of the ice berg as even the original hardware could have been much more consolidated, but consolidation of the older hardware itself would push that even further -CGIA would have been a big part of that if they could get it into production, though there was a pretty big back stock of A8 chips to work with as it was) OTOH, with the 5200 out of the picture and 7800 a bit of a mess: they still might have pushed for something else, like the XEGS (ie a directly compatible A8 derivative, but perhaps with 16 or 32k rather than 48/64 -32k might have been nice, especially since that would mean zero wasted RAM for cart games -carts map into the final 16k block of space that is also used by the normal 48k, so a 48k 800 only has 32k useful for 16+ kB carts -but 16k would be OK too, and they could have provided RAM expansion support too). Hell, they could probably have directly hacked the 600 or 800XL into a console form factor case plus a port for an external keyboard. (or maybe a low-cost membrane keyboard) In hindsight, that might have made more sense than the 7800 due to it also facilitating fewer distinct platforms and an established architecture for programmers to work with -and also promote support for the full A8 line as well. (one issue would be continued lack of lockout, but given the lack of 3rd party support the 7800 got, unlicensed 3rd party games would be more of a blessing than a curse ) Hmm, actually it may have been a good idea to keep console and computer designs fairly parallel, though probably more separate than above. The ST was obviously a clear break from the A8 line, so an ST derived console would be incompatible with the 8-bit consoles/computers in the practical sense, but unlike the above case (XEGS-like), they probably shouldn't have pushed any other consoles that were direct computer conversions for cost/market model reasons. (again, if pushing the 5200 had still been a good option in the wake of the Warner split mess, I'd put that over the XEGS since it had an established place on the market and was fundamentally cheaper than the A8 -or it could/should have been) So they could start with an STe based system (with tweaks to cut out all unnecessary hardware as well as boosting some capabilities to make it more favorable as a console -dual playfields and an FM synth chip probably would have done it, albeit the STe itself could have used such a boost), and going forward from that they could push parallel designs drawing off the computer and console developments in turn to reduce R&D cost overhead as well as facilitate cross development and backwards compatibility. (folding the Jaguar chipset into the ST line could have been pretty awesome for the mid '90s -and a healthier, better funded Atari would have meant a healthier Jaguar as well -fewer bugs, less conservative/more balanced design, less rushed, better support, better marketing, etc, etc) Alternately, they needed to get the 7800 out the door ASAP and not dither around for over a year haggling with Warners who was gonna pay for the damn thing. Penny wise and pound foolish - it cost them the lucrative console market. No, that was important too: Atari Corp had pretty much zero money to spare, so it WAS a big issue, plus the 7800 fumble was only one of the main problems Warner caused by the sloppy transition. Those problems (many more than the 7800 deal) took months to smooth over before normal operations could resume completely. You could just as easily argue that Warner was foolish for not backing down and paying GCC themselves. 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SpaceDice2010 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 double post Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceDice2010 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 double post again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceDice2010 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 double post yet again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceDice2010 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 never mind. these multi quotes are driving me crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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