Is there any PROOF that the 7800 was test marketed in 1984?

[Lynxpro]

The bottom line, Atari shot themselves in the foot and by the time they realized they needed to play "catch up"... it was already too late. They really weren't in touch with how the home video game market was evolving. The only way the 7800 could have been better is if Atari literally spied on Nintendo to see what they were doing, then not only copy it... but improve upon it. 1986 and Atari is still hell bent on joysticks, meanwhile Nintendo embraced the gamepad for a few years already... just as one example.

 

Joypads didn't test well initially in the States [that's why the 7800 commercials touted that the console came with REAL joysticks]. Like just about every other decision Nintendo made, joypads were an economical one. It was cheaper to build them than joysticks which meant more profit for the Big N.

 

The standard NES - without the various MMC chips bundled in cartridges and passed on as an added cost to the consumer - is NOT more powerful than the 7800. Not in color palette, RAM, the number of sprites displayed, flickering, clock speed, etc. FACT.

[7800]

"Joypads didn't test well initially in the States [that's why the 7800 commercials touted that the console came with REAL joysticks]".

 

Maybe so, but gamepads clearly became the US standard once Nintendo (and Sega) arrived in the states.

 

"Like just about every other decision Nintendo made, joypads were an economical one. It was cheaper to build them than joysticks which meant more profit for the Big N."

 

That might be true, but I also believe that Nintendo thought the gamepad was a better choice over the aging joystick. And let's not forget why the 7800 was late to the game to begin with... Tramiel + cost cutting = Nintendo's foothold on the home video game market.

 

"The standard NES - without the various MMC chips bundled in cartridges and passed on as an added cost to the consumer - is NOT more powerful than the 7800. Not in color palette, RAM, the number of sprites displayed, flickering, clock speed, etc. FACT."

 

Sounds good to me, I wasn't debating this at all.

[atarian63]

LOL, actually the arguments were often outside of AA.

 

 

 

Well, many of the most famous Atari console games were based on Japanese arcades. So they had taken cues before. I'm still of the opinion that western developers weren't as good as the Japanese back then in making platformers, but with money spent Atari could have make similar games. As I said before, the company wasted tens of millions of dollars, lost multiples of that too. There was no money left. Not with Warner, and not with Tramiel incoming.

 

 

 

Good point on the VS. NES cabs. Wasn't just that, but think of the Capcom, Nintendo, Konami, arcade ports Atari wouldn't have had.

 

 

 

I hear ya, I was given a couple 8-bit 400's back then, but we eventually threw them in the trash because I had 10 times as many 2600 games, and playing that almost exclusively.

 

 

 

I really don't think so. By 1986-87, gamers were sick of Pac-Man, Asteroids, and the like. The Activision, Absolute, and similar 3rd party 7800 games were vastly inferior to NES games by that point. Plus, given that Atari turned down SEGA as well (to sell the Genesis), SEGA would have come in anyway with their great 16-bit system and clobbered Atari too.

 

Well you would be wrong then! Did you own an Atari dealership back then? I did! Buy yourself a clue before you comment on an industry that you were not in

[atarian63]

I'm still not convinced that the 7800 would have even outsold the 2600 Jr. Anything is possible, but I really doubt Nintendo would not have gone forward. It's quite possible consumers would have left the 7800 on the shelves, infuriated retailers, and then who knows when they would have accepted another video game console? Which is what I said before. My feeling is Nintendo was coming one way or the other. When Atari balked, they came on their own. It's simply business. Especially with Mattel and Coleco gone. The NES was a better system than the 7800 in too many ways to have been stopped.

 

It was not seen as superior or even interesting at launch,took about a year to get going,my customer were more interested in atari products,c64 and atari st Edited May 18, 2014 by atarian63

[+Mitch]

If you want to know what Atari was thinking in 1984 check this out.

 

Mitch

[Greg2600]

It was not seen as superior or even interesting at launch,took about a year to get going,my customer were more interested in atari products,c64 and atari st

 

It's widely agreed the NES didn't take off until late '87. My point was that by the time NES got going, it would have succeeded against a Tramiel-7800 or somebody else's 7800, for the reasons I listed.

[Retro Rogue]

Hey all, not really on AA much anymore. Mainly in the Atari Museum Facebook groups for discussions. Saw these two posts with some inaccurate claims and thought I'd quickly respond.

 

 

 

Yes I did, and Atari Inc went belly up and sold to Jack Tramiel. Those marketers, and Warner Bros. money were gone. Just take a gander at the paltry $ Tramiel spent marketing the 7800, XEGS, ST, Lynx, and Jaguar. A pittance. Not blaming the guy, but he did not have the bank account to do that. I mean, what are we debating, whether the maelstrom known as Atari Inc. would have survived, or Tramiel's Atari? By the time poor Jack bought the leftovers, it was over with. Retailers were not happy with Atari, and if Nintendo still have come in with their exclusivity agreements, what games would the 7800 had any differently?

 

Warner Bros. were selling Atari one way or the other. Heck, they probably would have sold them even if they had the distribution agreement for the NES with Nintendo. Who knows how Nintendo would have reacted to that?

 

 

Warner did not sell Atari Inc. and it never went belly up, it was never given a chance to go belly up (or a chance turn around via Morgan's NATCO plans). Warner sold the Consumer Division assets to Jack Tramiel. It was an assets only purchase of a specific division. No people, not an entire company. Atari Inc. itself was immediately named Atari Games Inc., and over the rest of '84 was slowly paired down to just the Coin Division, at which point it had majority interest sold to NAMCO and was renamed Atari Games Corp.

 

As Curt's already shown via internal documentation, Jack actually spent a significant amount marketing the 7800, ST, etc. Far more than people realized. Likewise, Jack was already gone at the time of the Lynx and Jaguar. Additionally, the Atari Corp. that marketed the Jaguar was a far different Atari Corp. than the one during the 7800. Like night and day as far as resources and assets.

 

 

The bottom line, Atari shot themselves in the foot and by the time they realized they needed to play "catch up"... it was already too late.

 

Never happened. First off, you're talking about two different Ataris. The one that developed the 7800 with GCC was Atari Inc. The one that released it in January '86 was Atari Corp. There was no "shooting in the foot" and "catch up" that a usually told myth. Jack's Atari Corp. fully intended to release the 7800 for Christmas '84 and (according to internal GCC docs) actually upped the order for units from what Atari Inc. originally wanted. He also kept some game programmers on via contract through September '84. The issue was GCC's contract was with Warner, not Atari Inc. When Jack purchased the Atari Inc. Consumer Division assets, the 7800 did not come with the deal (and neither did several other projects/contracts including the Amiga/Mickey project). GCC wanted Warner to pay up for all the money they were still owed for development of the console and launch titles, and Warner in turn wanted Jack to pay. Jack felt Warner should have paid and he should have gotten the console as part of the deal. Likewise, he was in no position to pay haven take on all of the Consumer Division's portion of Atari Inc.'s debt. As we'll show in the second book, Atari Corp. - Business Is War, Atari Corp. was in extremely bad financial shape into 1985, with Jack sinking a lot of his own money in to keep things going. The trio were in on again/off again negotiations until spring '85 when Jack was finally in a position to capitulate and pay GCC for the MARIA development, and then been negotiations for the ten launch titles. That in turn was completed by August, at which point Jack began looking for people to head up a consumer video game division in Atari Corp. to launch the 7800. Way before the test marketing of the NES. He finally lured Mike Katz away from Epyx who agreed in September to do it, and the official announcement came out mid November. It had zero to do with being a response to the test marketing of the NES - which hadn't even happened yet.

[A Black Falcon]

Never happened. First off, you're talking about two different Ataris. The one that developed the 7800 with GCC was Atari Inc. The one that released it in January '86 was Atari Corp. There was no "shooting in the foot" and "catch up" that a usually told myth. Jack's Atari Corp. fully intended to release the 7800 for Christmas '84 and (according to internal GCC docs) actually upped the order for units from what Atari Inc. originally wanted. He also kept some game programmers on via contract through September '84. The issue was GCC's contract was with Warner, not Atari Inc. When Jack purchased the Atari Inc. Consumer Division assets, the 7800 did not come with the deal (and neither did several other projects/contracts including the Amiga/Mickey project). GCC wanted Warner to pay up for all the money they were still owed for development of the console and launch titles, and Warner in turn wanted Jack to pay. Jack felt Warner should have paid and he should have gotten the console as part of the deal. Likewise, he was in no position to pay haven take on all of the Consumer Division's portion of Atari Inc.'s debt. As we'll show in the second book, Atari Corp. - Business Is War, Atari Corp. was in extremely bad financial shape into 1985, with Jack sinking a lot of his own money in to keep things going. The trio were in on again/off again negotiations until spring '85 when Jack was finally in a position to capitulate and pay GCC for the MARIA development, and then been negotiations for the ten launch titles. That in turn was completed by August, at which point Jack began looking for people to head up a consumer video game division in Atari Corp. to launch the 7800. Way before the test marketing of the NES. He finally lured Mike Katz away from Epyx who agreed in September to do it, and the official announcement came out mid November. It had zero to do with being a response to the test marketing of the NES - which hadn't even happened yet.

As I said earlier in the thread, the problem I have with this story is that I can't think of even one possible decent excuse for why, if this is all true, there wasn't one single new, post-GCC 1984-launch, game released for the 7800 until sometime in 1987. You say here that he got Katz in September 1985? So when was the 7800's re-launch then, sometime in early or mid '86? And then... absolutely nothing for the better part of a year, until finally in 1987 they re-launch all of the 1984/1986 games with the spring-loaded cart edge connectors removed, and finally start releasing a few new games. It's completely bizarre, you can't release nothing new for a year and expect your console to compete! Atari was lucky that the 7800 did as well as it did. Nostalgia and very low prices managed to bring them some success even while the software library was thin and dated.

 

The only excuse that this thread has really come up for to explain it is, I think, just that Jack Tramiel was just that cheap... but I just find this so weird. I can't think of any other even remotely major console which was released and then had no new games for the better part of a year, and managed to sell okay-ish anyway!

Edited May 19, 2014 by A Black Falcon

[Retro Rogue]

As I said earlier in the thread, the problem I have with this story is that I can't think of even one possible decent excuse for why, if this is all true, there wasn't one single new, post-GCC 1984-launch, game released for the 7800 until sometime in 1987. You say here that he got Katz in September 1985? So when was the 7800's re-launch then, sometime in early or mid '86? And then... absolutely nothing for the better part of a year, until finally in 1987 they re-launch all of the 1984/1986 games with the spring-loaded cart edge connectors removed, and finally start releasing a few new games. It's completely bizarre, you can't release nothing new for a year and expect your console to compete! Atari was lucky that the 7800 did as well as it did. Nostalgia and very low prices managed to bring them some success even while the software library was thin and dated.

 

The only excuse that this thread has really come up for to explain it is, I think, just that Jack Tramiel was just that cheap... but I just find this so weird. I can't think of any other even remotely major console which was released and then had no new games for the better part of a year, and managed to sell okay-ish anyway!

 

 

Just because you aren't familiar with why doesn't make this info suddenly suspect. Nor does it leave the only reason being that Jack was cheap. This is all from internal documentation and direct interviews. After Katz came on board his first job was to start getting the consumer video game group going. That included evaluating previous inventory and getting it ready for the re-introduction that January, getting things going for new production (most of the people who were involved with it at GCC were no longer there so they needed to get people that could handle that), getting the 2600 JR out the door that Christmas, looking for new games to license for the 7800 (most of the "hot" titles as Katz put it were already snapped up by Nintendo which is what lead him to go looking for titles that were formerly on computers only), and hire or contract new programmers to program the new games once those were secured (the bulk of which was done under the direction of Tom Sloper), which by that time you're well into 1986. Then you're talking a good 6-10 months development time per game, usually with a single programmer working on a game because of the low budget (Atari Corp. had literally just come into the black in 1986. I.E. it had some positive cash flow. They weren't flush with cash and didn't have significant resources until into '87). Most of the other new games were in development during '86 and were actually announced then to retailers.

 

 

As far as how well the 7800 did, it was the number two console in the US during it's lifetime beating out the Master System. Which was one of the reasons SEGA approached Atari Corp. in 1988 to release the Mega Drive/Genesis here as an Atari branded product. It even got as far as setting up a programming group for it in the new Chicago division, but fell apart when Jack insisted on wanting world wide rights instead of just North America. Katz left shortly after to retire, but then came out of retirement to head up the Genesis during it's first year here.

[DracIsBack]

 

Maybe so, but gamepads clearly became the US standard once Nintendo (and Sega) arrived in the states.

 

 

 

 

 

Can't argue that, though what's that old saying about "Hindsight being 20-20?"

[7800]

 

It's widely agreed the NES didn't take off until late '87. My point was that by the time NES got going, it would have succeeded against a Tramiel-7800 or somebody else's 7800, for the reasons I listed.

This is exactly what I was thinking too. Whether it was Atari inc. or Atari Corp., the decisions made... is why the 7800 didn't come out on top. The 7800 was ready to go in 1984, but was put on the back burner until 1986 for debatable reasons. Within that time period, Nintendo was making strategic decisions that put them in the pole position (pun intended), Regardless of how long it took the NES to get up to speed. I think If Atari made better choices earlier, the 7800 would have dominated the market... at least for a little while.

[7800]

 

 

Nintendo did a famous disruptive approach. They simply changed the types of games being played. They did it again with the Wii years later.

 

Before the NES came out, Atari considered its competition to be consoles like the Colecovision and computer consoles like the Commodore 64. A lot of the 7800's initial line-up seems to reflect this approach of "Colecovision like games, but even better graphics" and "the types of games you can play on a computer, without the cost".

 

They weren't thinking that they needed Super Mario, Castlevania, Zelda etc.

 

To me, the technical stuff has always been far less important than the fact that Atari didn't react well to this disruptive trend and wasn't willing to invest. Games like the above take time and money to develop. Atari's response at first was to put their money into the XEGS for two years ... then to start to make NES style games when that didn't work. Except by then, they had a lot less shelf space.

This! As I said in another post... if Atari did some recon and got a feel for what Japanese video game manufacturers were doing, things would have been so much better for Atari and the 7800... assuming they took cues from systems like the Famicom.

[The Usotsuki]

"We must become the Japanese" ?

[Greg2600]

Hey all, not really on AA much anymore. Mainly in the Atari Museum Facebook groups for discussions. Saw these two posts with some inaccurate claims and thought I'd quickly respond.

 

Warner did not sell Atari Inc. and it never went belly up, it was never given a chance to go belly up (or a chance turn around via Morgan's NATCO plans). Warner sold the Consumer Division assets to Jack Tramiel. It was an assets only purchase of a specific division. No people, not an entire company. Atari Inc. itself was immediately named Atari Games Inc., and over the rest of '84 was slowly paired down to just the Coin Division, at which point it had majority interest sold to NAMCO and was renamed Atari Games Corp.

 

As Curt's already shown via internal documentation, Jack actually spent a significant amount marketing the 7800, ST, etc. Far more than people realized. Likewise, Jack was already gone at the time of the Lynx and Jaguar. Additionally, the Atari Corp. that marketed the Jaguar was a far different Atari Corp. than the one during the 7800. Like night and day as far as resources and assets.

 

Never happened. First off, you're talking about two different Ataris. The one that developed the 7800 with GCC was Atari Inc. The one that released it in January '86 was Atari Corp. There was no "shooting in the foot" and "catch up" that a usually told myth. Jack's Atari Corp. fully intended to release the 7800 for Christmas '84 and (according to internal GCC docs) actually upped the order for units from what Atari Inc. originally wanted. He also kept some game programmers on via contract through September '84. The issue was GCC's contract was with Warner, not Atari Inc. When Jack purchased the Atari Inc. Consumer Division assets, the 7800 did not come with the deal (and neither did several other projects/contracts including the Amiga/Mickey project). GCC wanted Warner to pay up for all the money they were still owed for development of the console and launch titles, and Warner in turn wanted Jack to pay. Jack felt Warner should have paid and he should have gotten the console as part of the deal. Likewise, he was in no position to pay haven take on all of the Consumer Division's portion of Atari Inc.'s debt. As we'll show in the second book, Atari Corp. - Business Is War, Atari Corp. was in extremely bad financial shape into 1985, with Jack sinking a lot of his own money in to keep things going. The trio were in on again/off again negotiations until spring '85 when Jack was finally in a position to capitulate and pay GCC for the MARIA development, and then been negotiations for the ten launch titles. That in turn was completed by August, at which point Jack began looking for people to head up a consumer video game division in Atari Corp. to launch the 7800. Way before the test marketing of the NES. He finally lured Mike Katz away from Epyx who agreed in September to do it, and the official announcement came out mid November. It had zero to do with being a response to the test marketing of the NES - which hadn't even happened yet.

 

 

I do appreciate the information. I understand that it was an assets purchase, but the major factor (to me) was that the braintrust (though somewhat nutty) of early 80's Atari had already left, leaving little more than assets. Frankly, I think this only further proves that the 7800 was doomed to fail vs. the NES. If Jack truly wasn't hand-cuffed in marketing for its launch, then the question is why did consumers overwhelmingly choose the NES within a year or so of the 7800 launch? Goes back to my point, the NES, through Nintendo's exclusivity agreements, had the monopoly on both the most sought-after arcade ports AND the best console-specific games. Partly due to the total breakdown of the American console development infrastructure thanks to the "Crash."

 

Again, I thought the discussion here was if the 7800 were released in 1984, would it have made a difference, and I'm still solid that it would not have. I believe Atari's mistake was not doing the Nintendo distribution deal, because as I said that's where the games were going to come from.

[Retro Rogue]

The 7800 was ready to go in 1984, but was put on the back burner until 1986 for debatable reasons.

 

I'm not sure where you get "debatable," what I gave is based on verifiable facts. We interviewed the people involved from both Atari Corp. and GCC, and verified and vetted by internal documentation. That includes when Jack paid GCC, documentation on the GCC side about the planned Christmas '84 launch with Jack, etc. What the issue here is, is that for years a story of "mothballing because of not wanting to be in games" was floating around and regurgitated on websites and taken as fact because of something Curt put out years ago regarding an unverifiable story of Jack supposedly throwing the 7800 off his desk. That's since been chalked up by Curt and myself as a story told by a bitter ex-employee that doesn't actually match up with any of the given facts. I.E. it didn't survive vetting.

[7800]

 

Again, I thought the discussion here was if the 7800 were released in 1984, would it have made a difference, and I'm still solid that it would not have. I believe Atari's mistake was not doing the Nintendo distribution deal, because as I said that's where the games were going to come from.

...and the decision to forgo POKEY sound in favor of TIA.

[Greg2600]

...and the decision to forgo POKEY sound in favor of TIA.

 

Well the original plan was an affordable "Gumby" chip to go on cartridges, but that never got done.

[A Black Falcon]

Just because you aren't familiar with why doesn't make this info suddenly suspect. Nor does it leave the only reason being that Jack was cheap.

I don't see any other good reasons being mentioned, though...

 

This is all from internal documentation and direct interviews. After Katz came on board his first job

Katz came in in mid/late '85, you said, yes?

 

was to start getting the consumer video game group going. That included evaluating previous inventory and getting it ready for the re-introduction that January,

January '86 then? And did the 7800 actually (re-)release then, do you know that for sure?

 

getting things going for new production (most of the people who were involved with it at GCC were no longer there so they needed to get people that could handle that), getting the 2600 JR out the door that Christmas,

So the 2600 Jr. released in December '85, you're saying? Or are you skipping to Dec. '86? I'm not clear.

 

looking for new games to license for the 7800 (most of the "hot" titles as Katz put it were already snapped up by Nintendo which is what lead him to go looking for titles that were formerly on computers only), and hire or contract new programmers to program the new games once those were secured (the bulk of which was done under the direction of Tom Sloper), which by that time you're well into 1986.

... They released the system in January '86 by what you know, then, but didn't actually get around to getting any contracts for teams to work on more games until "well into" the year, and none of those games were finished until the next year? This is exactly the kind of inexplicably bizarre thing I was talking about! I just don't get it at all, that's not how any major platform has been handled. I mean, sure, of course you're right that Nintendo had locked down all the best games, and of course finding developers willing to work for as cheaply as Jack required might have taken a while, but those are all things you should have done BEFORE releasing your console! Not months after!

 

Then you're talking a good 6-10 months development time per game, usually with a single programmer working on a game because of the low budget (Atari Corp. had literally just come into the black in 1986. I.E. it had some positive cash flow. They weren't flush with cash and didn't have significant resources until into '87). Most of the other new games were in development during '86 and were actually announced then to retailers.

Mostly see above, but seriously, "Jack is cheap" sounds like the best explanation for this to me. Going by what you're saying, due to wanting to make a profit Jack was too cheap to actually put money into game development for his console when it was needed (ie starting before release), so they delayed doing so until some time after release waiting for a time when Atari had some money, and the result was zero game releases for the 7800 for the entire rest of the year after it released, in a year where apparently it released in January. At least they may have managed to release some of those 2600 games in 1986 (I've had a hard time finding definite dates for them...), but even if they did, though people with 7800s of course played plenty of 2600 games on them, those aren't 7800 games. Maybe you could get away with this in the '80s, when people didn't have an internet to check gaming news on, but still it's crazy, and it's kind of surprising that the system sold as well as it did then despite having no new games for quite a while after launch. Post-launch game release draughts are common, but that's one of the worst I know of in a system which didn't fail immediately.

 

cat234001.jpg

Interesting picture. That looks like most of Atari's 1987 library there, and they're announcing them as 1986 releases... but of those only some of the 2600 games actually released in 1986, and the rest and all of the 7800 games were 1987. What happened? Expecting a new console to sell while you release ZERO new games for it is pretty awful.

 

As far as how well the 7800 did, it was the number two console in the US during it's lifetime beating out the Master System. Which was one of the reasons SEGA approached Atari Corp. in 1988 to release the Mega Drive/Genesis here as an Atari branded product. It even got as far as setting up a programming group for it in the new Chicago division, but fell apart when Jack insisted on wanting world wide rights instead of just North America. Katz left shortly after to retire, but then came out of retirement to head up the Genesis during it's first year here.

Yeah, this stuff I know. When those 7800 sales figures were discovered that showed how well it had sold I know a lot of people were surprised...

 

On the note of Katz though, most US Genesis fans think much more positively of Kalinske than Katz; Kalinske is the one who led Sega in its best days, while Katz's early period wasn't bringing them much marketshare compared to Nintendo's. They were beating NEC, but NEC kind of defeated itself... Anyway, Katz (as Sega of America head) has some defenders, but most probably think that Kalinske was much better.

Edited May 20, 2014 by A Black Falcon

[+wood_jl]

Mostly see above, but seriously, "Jack is cheap" sounds like the best explanation for this to me. Going by what you're saying, due to wanting to make a profit Jack was too cheap to actually put money into game development for his console when it was needed (ie starting before release), so they delayed doing so until some time after release waiting for a time when Atari had some money, and the result was zero game releases for the 7800 for the entire rest of the year after it released, in a year where apparently it released in January.

Isn't this a bit of a contradiction? In the former highlights, Jack is cheap. Jack had money, but was too cheap. In the latter highlight, they were waiting for a time when Atari had some money. So Atari had little money? Not spending money when you have no money is not cheap, is it? I think that "due to wanting to make a profit" isn't necessarily a dubious motive (kind of sounds like that's what you mean there) but the reason for any business venture, in the first place.

[A Black Falcon]

Isn't this a bit of a contradiction? In the former highlights, Jack is cheap. Jack had money, but was too cheap. In the latter highlight, they were waiting for a time when Atari had some money. So Atari had little money? Not spending money when you have no money is not cheap, is it? I think that "due to wanting to make a profit" isn't necessarily a dubious motive (kind of sounds like that's what you mean there) but the reason for any business venture, in the first place.

That's a fair point, yeah. But if you can't afford to develop games for your new system on any kind of a reasonable timetable, should you really be releasing a console now?

[Jinks]

That's a fair point, yeah. But if you can't afford to develop games for your new system on any kind of a reasonable timetable, should you really be releasing a console now?

Well the 2600 was old and the 5200 was a computer with terrible controls so they needed something.

[Greg2600]

Whether Jack was "cheap" or simply (wisely) cautious, still doesn't change my primary question. How would Atari have gotten the Japanese titles that powered the NES? Not to mention the incredibly popular Nintendo 1st party games, which Atari I doubt could match. Heck, Atari may well have continued their practice of producing games on competing platforms by porting to the NES!!! That would have helped 7800 sales alright.

[Trebor]

How would Atari have gotten the Japanese titles that powered the NES? Not to mention the incredibly popular Nintendo 1st party games, which Atari I doubt could match.

 

Again, respecting theory/speculation, an alternate universe where a 1984 Atari 7800 was pushed what possibly could have happened.

 

To flush out some details more, in this alternate universe, it is not being specified Nintendo would have ceased to release the NES to the US (Or/And Europe); rather, they likely would not have approached Atari with the idea to distribute (As it would not make sense since Atari was already distributing and selling the 7800).

 

Atari with a successful and well selling 7800 already in US and Euro consumers' hands, Nintendo may have reasoned a better alternative is to allow the 7800 to have ports of (some of) its first party games too, as well as Nintendo never having that exclusive rights "agreement" with third parties.

 

The NES would have still been out there, but regarding game development, Nintendo could have been to Atari, what Coleco was to Atari a few years prior, in addition to having both American and Japanese game developers porting games to the 7800. Again, there is no exclusive third party rights "agreement" and the 7800 has saturated US and Euro markets for 1-2 years.

 

In turn, the whole unlicensed Tengen games on the NES may have never been a product or notion, and a 'licensed' agreement was (always) in place instead, as part of a "side-effect" or inclusive of an already preexisting relationship and agreement(s) between Nintendo and Atari (related/associated companies).

 

The above is all "possible" - it was mutually agreed earlier that "anything is possible".

 

Nonetheless, if the viewpoint is dead-set/solid in the NES being unstoppable, and belief the 7800 being released in full force in 1984 would not have changed many other decisions made by all affected parties and stakeholders, then we're just going in circles and sure, the question and statement posed above appear unanswerable and irrefutable.

[Jaynz]

There are a lot of conflating issues about the 7800 and 'would have/could have/should have/didn't', and there always seems to be a big debate on what the 'magic bullet' would have been that would have saved Atari's fortunes in regards to this console. The thing is, there really wasn't any single fix that would have helped. Atari screwed ITSELF over the moment that they released the 2600 version of Pac-Man - and that moment is the moment things went downhill. The rose was off the bloom, and Atari's reputation (as an overall entity) never recovered. With their reputation so seriously damaged, and the crash that followed with the huge glut of 2600 titles, possibilities of the 7800's success were going to be pretty limited - even if the NES hadn't appeared AT ALL.

 

Long term success for the 7800 required Atari rebuilding itself as a market player and really not allowing for any serious mistakes. But, as we know, mistakes were made constantly by Atari's various forms from the moment Pac-Man was released until the last Jaguar moved out of the warehouse. "If only they had used Pokey", "If only they had more 'new' games", and so on. Atari was basically a screwed-up mess, and it would have required a Herculean effort to turn things around again - and it just didn't happen. The NES didn't help matters, certainly, but it's existence and even the monopolistic licensing they pulled, wasn't what sunk the company or the 7800... it was several years of bad big decisions.

[Trebor]

The NES didn't help matters, certainly, but it's existence and even the monopolistic licensing they pulled, wasn't what sunk the company or the 7800... it was several years of bad big decisions.

 

Agreed completely and goes hand-in-hand to what was mentioned.

 

Full force 1984 Atari 7800 release could have been the (start) reversal/change of a lot of decisions made by not only Atari but subsequently, other companies as well.

 

The point being made is not looking for a magic bullet/solution; rather, the chain reaction of a major decision such as a full 1984 release of the 7800 by Atari, and the possible alternative path along with decisions and outcomes that could have occurred by not only Atari and 'company allies', but its competitors as well.