impossible mission ?

[Goochman]

AtariX, EA's bailing predated the ST and the crash. Pretty much as soon as the C64 came out EA put the pirate label on the 800 line and that started the downfall of titles.

 

With regard to sales #s I dont know - I cant believe the Apple line sold games in quantities alot higher than the 800 since at the time the machine was alot more expensive and tented to be marketed for other purposes.

 

Im not an insider so I dont know the facts.

[+davidcalgary29]

AtariX, EA's bailing predated the ST and the crash.  Pretty much as soon as the C64 came out EA put the pirate label on the 800 line and that started the downfall of titles.

 

With regard to sales #s I dont know - I cant believe the Apple line sold games in quantities alot higher than the 800 since at the time the machine was alot more expensive and tented to be marketed for other purposes.

 

Im not an insider so I dont know the facts.

 

I think a lot of the blame (if any) must go to Atari owners themselves. Most of the Atari-based periodicals rushed to cover the ST line (even though some pretty decent stuff was still coming out, and especially from Europe) at the expense of the 8-bits. Both Antic and Analog were very, very thin toward the end, but most of the best 8-bit titles were just coming out at that time. Why did I not hear about these releases then?

 

In addition, both Antic and Analog devoted large portions of their magazines from '84 on to the "piracy problem", so who could blame software developers if they took that hint and ran with it?

[AtariX]

AtariX, EA's bailing predated the ST and the crash.  Pretty much as soon as the C64 came out EA put the pirate label on the 800 line and that started the downfall of titles.

 

EA had some big name games come out for the Atari 8-bit line in 83', such as One-on-One, Lords of Conquest, Seven Cities of Gold, Racing Destruction Set, etc. The crash started in Fall of 83', the Tramiels took over in 84'. The Commodore 64/128 line had a nice 64k base to work with. The Atari line was fragmented and ranged from 16k to 128k, with 48k being the base for most games. We all know that 64k versions of Atari games held their own agianst 64k Commodore games(with the faster Atari disk drive, it was even better), but how many 64k+ Atari owners were there compared to 64k+ Commodore owners? How much money and effort did the Tramiels put into geting 3rd party developers to make 64k games for the XE line, as compared to getting games made for the ST? I think it is wrong to single out EA for bailing on the Atari 8-bit, when almost everyone did at around the same time.

[+davidcalgary29]

AtariX, EA's bailing predated the ST and the crash.  Pretty much as soon as the C64 came out EA put the pirate label on the 800 line and that started the downfall of titles.

 

EA had some big name games come out for the Atari 8-bit line in 83', such as One-on-One, Lords of Conquest, Seven Cities of Gold, Racing Destruction Set, etc. The crash started in Fall of 83', the Tramiels took over in 84'. The Commodore 64/128 line had a nice 64k base to work with. The Atari line was fragmented and ranged from 16k to 128k, with 48k being the base for most games. We all know that 64k versions of Atari games held their own agianst 64k Commodore games(with the faster Atari disk drive, it was even better), but how many 64k+ Atari owners were there compared to 64k+ Commodore owners? How much money and effort did the Tramiels put into geting 3rd party developers to make 64k games for the XE line, as compared to getting games made for the ST? I think it is wrong to single out EA for bailing on the Atari 8-bit, when almost everyone did at around the same time.

 

 

Hm. Several of those games that you mentioned were released in 1984 and 1985. If I remember correctly, most software companies welcomed the Tramiel takeover and renewed their interest in the 8-bits after the arrival of the Tramiel clan. He had, after all, built Commodore into a successful and rapidly-expanding computer corporation.

You can thank the Tramiels for the 8-bit revival in '84 and '85; the 800XL (with 64k) was very successful during this period of time.

 

Atari alone among the big computer companies also had a big in-house software team, which was also developing titles for its computers, and who wanted to compete with that?

[Goochman]

You bring up an interesting theory that the C64 had 16K more available RAM than the 48K Atari - I believe once everything shook out the C64 had approx 6K more free RAM. Tramiel was brillent with the C64 no doubt.

 

As for memory - Most folks shot for the 48K memory range - the 64K+ wasnt fully relealized until too late.

[TMR]

You bring up an interesting theory that the C64 had 16K more available RAM than the 48K Atari - I believe once everything shook out the C64 had approx 6K more free RAM.  Tramiel was brillent with the C64 no doubt.

 

The C64 can use a couple of bytes short of the full RAM, even the space under the colour map can do double duty for graphics data.

[Jetboot Jack]

Atari X - I'll tell you why EA develop GC (and Xbox for that matter) - 'cos they sell lot of units of the games. Now I'm sure you can figure its not as many as say a PS2 version, but they're healthy numbers, very healthy

 

sTeVE

[AtariX]

Atari X - I'll tell you why EA develop GC (and Xbox for that matter) - 'cos they sell lot of units of the games. Now I'm sure you can figure its not as many as say a PS2 version, but they're healthy numbers, very healthy

 

sTeVE

 

Steve- Just as long as you guys make that new Medal of Honor game set in the Pacific for the Xbox, then I'll be a happy gamer. Can't wait to storm the beaches of Guadacanal.