Would Atari had been better off if Bushnell hadn´t sold it?

[Matt_B]

52 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

Yes, it has been mentioned that talented people would have been more likely to stay. Jay Miner and the Activision guys have explicitly been mentioned.

 

But I think the importance of this has been underestimated. Activision is today a $64 billion company (although half of that is the result of a merger with Blizzard). Even if the console business had failed under Bushnell, Atari would still have been better off with Bushnell, if the game development/publishing business had performed as well as Activision has.

 

Making more great games would also have increased their chances of being able to succeed in the console hardware industry.

If they'd performed as well as Activision did, they'd have gone bust in 1990 and Bobby Kotick would have bought the name for a song. ?

 

Seriously, read the history. All the Activision founders left the company in the mid-80s. Miller and Whitehead formed Accolade in 1984. Jim Levy got the boot for the ill-considered purchase of Infocom in 1986, and David Crane left soon after, to work with Garry Kitchen's Absolute Entertainment.

 

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-history-of-activision

 

The Activision that exists today was basically built by Kotick from the ground up; he kept a handful of employees but the rest were sacked. All the subsequent growth - and incidentally the culture that's now drawing a lot of criticism - was down to the mergers and acquisitions under his leadership.

[Lord Mushroom]

9 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

The Activision that exists today was basically built by Kotick from the ground up; he kept a handful of employees but the rest were sacked.

I actually knew this, and it doesn´t change anything. It just means Activision has periodically been run well, and periodically poorly. And the end result is the Activision we have today.

 

If Bushnell at some point had run the company into the ground, and then a new owner makes it very successful, then Atari would have been better off if Bushnell hadn´t sold to Warner.

[high voltage]

7 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Btw, any luck on finding those scans/documents on the Nintendo retailer threats?

Not yet....I'm searching my HDDs

[high voltage]

 

The hardware changed, that's all.

[Matt_B]

11 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I actually knew this, and it doesn´t change anything. It just means Activision has periodically been run well, and periodically poorly. And the end result is the Activision we have today.

 

If Bushnell at some point had run the company into the ground, and then a new owner makes it very successful, then Atari would have been better off if Bushnell hadn´t sold to Warner.

In that case, the best thing that could possibly have happened to Atari was for Steve Jobs to buy the company in 1977, fire all the staff, cancel all the products and rebrand Apple using the Atari name. They'd be the most valuable company in the world by now without ever having released a games console or computer. ?

 

Seriously, I'd hope that you can see the flaw in your argument there. Companies aren't just about their brands, but also the people who create the products that bear them. Changing ownership without any continuity of staff might serve the brand but you're looking at a different people making different products and, if those are the things that matter to you, it might as well be a different company.

 

It's especially ironic in the case of Activision, as the company was created precisely because the people who were making the games didn't get the credit they deserved both in terms of remuneration and identification with the product. Yet look at them now. Ah well, at least David Crane is still making games.

 

 

[leech]

2 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Well those both wouldn't work then.

 

I guess what I meant is was Chucky Cheese the longest thing he had before it failed or/and the brand beame just a name?

 

But I guess that still would be Atari since Atari corp lasted until 1996.

 

Seems most of his stuff didn't work past the 80's. Outside the ventures he did after the 80's ended of course. But none of those lasted long either it seems.

 

 

 

 

Ha, yeah that is why I was saying it seemed like he would build up an idea until it was successful,  and then sell it off for it to fail under new ownership... then there is Jack Tramiel who created Commodore qnd it lasted a long long time... until he was forced out by greed and failure.  The fact he bought Atari from Warner as it was failing so badly they practically begged him to buy the whole thing... but he just wanted the home division...

 

I wanted to ask/verify.  I saw something that said Bushnell was basically prevented to work in the video game industry for 7 years after he left Atari?  I mean that is pretty freaking harsh!  And also why Chuck E Cheese existed.

[Leeroy ST]

50 minutes ago, leech said:

Ha, yeah that is why I was saying it seemed like he would build up an idea until it was successful,  and then sell it off for it to fail under new ownership... then there is Jack Tramiel who created Commodore qnd it lasted a long long time... until he was forced out by greed and failure.  The fact he bought Atari from Warner as it was failing so badly they practically begged him to buy the whole thing... but he just wanted the home division...

 

I wanted to ask/verify.  I saw something that said Bushnell was basically prevented to work in the video game industry for 7 years after he left Atari?  I mean that is pretty freaking harsh!  And also why Chuck E Cheese existed.

You can't ban some one from working in an industry generally.

 

But there can be contractual circumstances that can restrict what you can do. 

 

Although I never heard about this 7 year restriction.

 

In fact technically Chucky cheese was involved with the industry.

[pacman000]

12 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Btw, any luck on finding those scans/documents on the Nintendo retailer threats?

Courts were looking for overt threats, but a threat need not be overt to be effective. Nintendo did check store shelves regularly, to make sure they were well-stocked. It wouldn’t take too much more effort to check for other brands, or to withhold shipments if they found some. Just claim that the new products were back ordered, & point out the store could sell the other system. The manager would get the message. 
 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-19-fi-223-story.html

[Xebec]

You know what - Bushnell *is* an awesome guy!

 

I'm glad he created things that made my childhood (and beyond) a lot of fun!

[Leeroy ST]

3 hours ago, pacman000 said:

Courts were looking for overt threats, but a threat need not be overt to be effective. Nintendo did check store shelves regularly, to make sure they were well-stocked. It wouldn’t take too much more effort to check for other brands, or to withhold shipments if they found some. Just claim that the new products were back ordered, & point out the store could sell the other system. The manager would get the message. 
 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-19-fi-223-story.html

Amazing how that 1985 myth was in 89, hyperbolic press on a roll one year earlier than I thought.

 

But yeah one of the old claims I saw here years ago but can't find the thread with the article, was that suddenly Nintendo would quickly have hardware and software available once a retailer sold most or all the competitors stock, and they "delay" restocking them until Nintendo took all or most of the extra space available with their sent product.

 

Leaving Atari and Sega with less or no space. Or a display in the back corner.

[zzip]

15 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

If the average arcade player doesn´t respond to the reduced price by playing so much more that he/she spends the same amount or more than before, total revenue for the arcade industry would fall.

Well like that article said, the "price reduction" was giving people more..   say 6 tokens for a dollar instead of 4.    That's for arcades that used tokens instead of quarters, which were a minority of arcades in my experience.   If the player decided to not use all the tokens, the arcade still gets the whole dollar.

 

I've never seen arcade machines that took coins ever be reduced less than a quarter.   So those arcades didn't  have as much flexibility to play with pricing.

 

12 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

This has already been explained to you here and in other there's.by others, you're intentionally ignoring the explanations instead of addressing them. Same with you bringing up the coin op industry without realizing it had its own separate problems. Or ignoring revenue Software charts.

No it hasn't.   There's multiple charts in here showing a clear dip in demand.  Every indicator I've seen show a dip in demand.   The other factors-  the discounting, retailers getting out of gaming, companies folding, arcades closing..  they were all a result of that.  They were expecting more double-digit growth and geared up for that, and instead sales started shrinking leaving a huge gap.

 

12 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

But you said games were hot in 83 (actually you said 82) good job contradicting yourself.

That is not what I said.   I said multiple times that games were hot in PART of 83.   I said multiple times that things seemed to go bad by fall of 83.   It's well-known that Christmas 82 sales were disappointing given how hot a year 1982 was for games.   The crash didn't start on Jan 1 of a particular year,  it happened over a period of months, and gradually got worse and worse until it bottomed out in 85.

 

13 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

 

Oh recession was also a factor? I was told to ignore that it was just mass lack of demand. Hmmm....

The recession was 1980-1982 which was when video games were booming.   The economy was in recovery 83-84 when videogames were crashing.   Unenployment rate peaked in 82 at 10.8%,  fell to 8.3% in 83 and 7.3% in 84.    So if the recession had an impact on gaming, it should have had a bigger impact in the bleaker years of 81 and 82.

 

13 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

It was close to a year between the intentional temporary half of production for Adam and them discontinuing the CV. Which was still selling after until stock was gone.

 

They didn't leave "the game industry" they left "Electronics" because of the losses of the Adam. A story that's pretty well known. Between the Adam losses and only having the CV toys non-electronic and other were 90% of Colecos sales. Which at the time was high because their toys and CBK were huge. So they doubled down on that, which ended up becoming a bad bet later the same year. Of course CV wasn't selling like it was in 84 given some retailers backed off games, but the demand was there.

 

Here's the truth:   if Colecovision was a successful product but Coleco was mess, it would have been spun off.   Someone would have been happy to buy that product line, minus Adam, and continue it.   It's telling that nobody did.  By late 84 Coleco had no real competition in the console space, but they still couldn't make it work.  (5200 cancelled, 7800 in limbo,  NES not yet on market.)   It still only sold between 2 million and 6 million consoles, depending on which figures you believe,  not exactly a runaway success.

[pacman000]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Here's the truth:   if Colecovision was a successful product but Coleco was mess, it would have been spun off.   Someone would have been happy to buy that product line, minus Adam, and continue it.   It's telling that nobody did.  By late 84 Coleco had no real competition in the console space, but they still couldn't make it work.  (5200 cancelled, 7800 in limbo,  NES not yet on market.)   It still only sold between 2 million and 6 million consoles, depending on which figures you believe,  not exactly a runaway success.

If there was a general perception that video games were on their way out, would companies still have considered buying it?

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Seriously, I'd hope that you can see the flaw in your argument there. Companies aren't just about their brands, but also the people who create the products that bear them. Changing ownership without any continuity of staff might serve the brand but you're looking at a different people making different products and, if those are the things that matter to you, it might as well be a different company.

I don´t see a flaw in my argument. Atari would have been very different if they had produced other stuff, but it would still have been Atari. The question in this thread is whether or not Atari would have been better off, not if they would have sold more consoles/computers/games.

[Lord Mushroom]

11 hours ago, leech said:

I wanted to ask/verify.  I saw something that said Bushnell was basically prevented to work in the video game industry for 7 years after he left Atari?

That is correct.

 

11 hours ago, leech said:

I mean that is pretty freaking harsh!  And also why Chuck E Cheese existed.

I think he would have made Chuck E Cheese anyway. Chuck E Cheese was created while Warner owned Atari and Bushnell ran it.

 

Although, it Bushnell hadn´t left/been fired from Atari, he might not have had the time to develop it.

[Lord Mushroom]

10 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

In fact technically Chucky cheese was involved with the industry.

I am sure the contract banned him only from doing things which would compete with Atari (make games and consoles). Chucky E Cheese didn´t compete with Atari. It was rather a customer.

[zzip]

2 minutes ago, pacman000 said:

If there was a general perception that video games were on their way out, would companies still have considered buying it?

That's exactly it.   There was that perception.   At that point it all looked like it had all been a fad that ran its course.   If they saw that there was light at the end of the tunnel and consoles would recover, I think these companies would have done the appropriate belt-tightening, and rode out the storm.  Or someone else would buy these console operations on the cheap and be able to run them without the debt burden the former owners had.  

 

That's kinda what Jack did with Atari.   Only problem is he believed his own "consoles are dead, computers are the future" line and they invested accordingly.   Only problem:  the new 16-bit computers were very expensive compared to consoles, and that allowed the console concept to make a return.   And Atari fell behind the competition in the console space.

[Lord Mushroom]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Well like that article said, the "price reduction" was giving people more..   say 6 tokens for a dollar instead of 4.    That's for arcades that used tokens instead of quarters, which were a minority of arcades in my experience.   If the player decided to not use all the tokens, the arcade still gets the whole dollar.

What I am saying is that the number of tokens you get for a dollar influences how many dollars you spend (how frequently you buy tokens).

[Leeroy ST]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

No it hasn't.   There's multiple charts in here showing a clear dip in demand.  

No there isn't.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

indicator I've seen show a dip in demand.   The other factors-  the discounting, retailers getting out of gaming, companies folding, arcades closing..  they were all a result of that.  

No they weren't and this was already explained to you and not just in this thread, by multiple others.

 

Despite the undeniable proof the price wars and lack of money being made primarily contributed to the industries value decline and retailer reactions you continue to pretend the primary reason was demand when that was a marginal issue. 3 games together that used to be $150-70 are now $30 in bins, you buy that it's good for you, but no one is making money on the other side. 

 

It's incredibly simple but your bias for Nintendo and against everything before it prevents you from seeing that. 

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

 I said multiple times that games were hot in PART of 83.   I said multiple times that things seemed to go bad by fall of 83.   It's well-known that Christmas 82 sales were disappointing given how hot a year 1982 was for games.   

You've been inconsistent on 83 based on which post, but even if we let that slide, It's clear you also brought up 82.

 

And 82 Christmas sales for Atari being laggy had nothing to do with the crash, thinking it was an indicator is silly. There were other indicators and even articles on a shakeout possibility, but those didn't attribute that to Warner misleading investors and making bad moves.

 

In Atari's case for poor sales ALL 4th quarter 1982, that was a combination of competition, Atari's bad business decisions, poor game bets, and still not making money on computers the whole year, including that quarter, despite higher sales.

 

 

And

 

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

The recession was 1980-1982 which was when video games were booming. 

I dont know what you're saying here, the article was clear on the factors involved with the decline of ARCADES at the time.

 

2 hours ago, zzip said:

Here's the truth:   if Colecovision was a successful product but Coleco was mess, it would have been spun off.   Someone would have been happy to buy that product line, minus Adam, and continue it.   

Which isn't true and isn't common.

 

I know you are upset CV survived the crash, that's very clear, but your attempts to dismiss it is baffling, or the fact it was profitable until near the summer of 85.

 

 

You are acting as if I'm saying it was selling millons in 85, all I said was the machine was still selling enough for profit. They were even planning price drops later.

 

But the bias makes you believe I'm arguing Coleco was selling like hotcakes in 85 which was never said nor implied. Sorry.

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Leeroy ST

[zzip]

12 hours ago, Matt_B said:

Seriously, I'd hope that you can see the flaw in your argument there. Companies aren't just about their brands, but also the people who create the products that bear them. Changing ownership without any continuity of staff might serve the brand but you're looking at a different people making different products and, if those are the things that matter to you, it might as well be a different company.

I think it's the company philosophy that matters more than anything.   You can change staff, but as long as you keep doing the kind of thing that made you popular in the first place, then your fans will be happy.   Most people couldn't name most of the people behind the scenes anyway.    A brand is supposed to encapsulate all that stuff that isn't easily quantified.

 

However, there are so many brands that eventually sell out.  Abandon the types products that people liked in the first place,  or produce cheaper quality versions of them.   Or whatever else.   At some point it might stop feeling like the same company you liked in the first place.  Of course it's kind of subjective when this happens.

[Leeroy ST]

12 minutes ago, zzip said:

That's kinda what Jack did with Atari.   Only problem is he believed his own "consoles are dead, computers are the future" line and they invested accordingly.   

Already debunked by people all over the place including here and guys with Atari connections like Marty and Curt, but they dont work for Nintendo so I guess they dont count. So just keep repeating the myth with no context.

 

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

That's exactly it.   There was that perception.   At that point it all looked like it had all been a fad that ran its course.   If they saw that there was light at the end of the tunnel and consoles would recover, I think these companies would have done the appropriate belt-tightening, and rode out the storm.  

Except the industry initially anticipating (but also questioning)RDIs $1000+ gaming machine, the announced 7800 which had generated interests and deals, same with NES. New investments in the 2600. It seems that people were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel hmmm.. since late 84.

 

When you pretend the situation is black and white without context of elaboration it's easy to push things that dont add up. Especially to those not paying attention or get their history from YouTube.

 

 

[leech]

49 minutes ago, zzip said:

I think it's the company philosophy that matters more than anything.   You can change staff, but as long as you keep doing the kind of thing that made you popular in the first place, then your fans will be happy.   Most people couldn't name most of the people behind the scenes anyway.    A brand is supposed to encapsulate all that stuff that isn't easily quantified.

 

However, there are so many brands that eventually sell out.  Abandon the types products that people liked in the first place,  or produce cheaper quality versions of them.   Or whatever else.   At some point it might stop feeling like the same company you liked in the first place.  Of course it's kind of subjective when this happens.

The fun part about this exercise is that we saw this very thing happen with Atari.  Where they may have well just swapped names, since Tramiel canned most of Atari staff, and brought people over from Commodore.  Commodore eventually got a bunch of the ex Atari people (when they bought Amiga inc.)

[Lostdragon]

53 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Already debunked by people all over the place including here and guys with Atari connections like Marty and Curt, but they dont work for Nintendo so I guess they dont count. So just keep repeating the myth with no context.

 

 

 

 

I'm assuming here Curt and Marty only looked at the US side of things? 

 

 

When I chatted with Jon Dean  of Atari UK some years ago, he made it clear Jack had next to no interest in pushing the entertainment (games) side of the Atari platforms, making Jon's job a lot more difficult. 

 

Jack was all about pushing Atari as a serious computer company at that time. 

 

When Jack bought Atari, one of the first things Jack did, was close down Atari soft, John only survived the Tramiel cull as he was in his own words cheap and he knew the product range. 

 

[zzip]

4 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Despite the undeniable proof the price wars and lack of money being made primarily contributed to the industries value decline and retailer reactions you continue to pretend the primary reason was demand when that was a marginal issue. 3 games together that used to be $150-70 are now $30 in bins, you buy that it's good for you, but no one is making money on the other side. 

 

It's incredibly simple but your bias for Nintendo and against everything before it prevents you from seeing that. 

Now you are just making crap up.   I was an Atari fan.   I was not an NES fan.   I never even owned a Nintendo anything until someone gifted me a GBA in the early 2000s,  but yeah...  I'm biased for Nintendo, yeah ok.  

 

18 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

I know you are upset CV survived the crash, that's very clear, but your attempts to dismiss it is baffling, or the fact it was profitable until near the summer of 85.

Again more made up crap.  I would have been happy if CV survived.  I would have loved to see how the 5200 vs Colecovision generation would have played out. 

 

36 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

You are acting as if I'm saying it was selling millons in 85, all I said was the machine was still selling enough for profit. They were even planning price drops later.

 

But the bias makes you believe I'm arguing Coleco was selling like hotcakes in 85 which was never said nor implied. Sorry.

But you are the one arguing that there was no drop in demand for games.  You dismissed the Wikipedia article that said CV sales fell in 84.   You constantly state that the CV had rosy prospects.   Now you want to claim that maybe CV sales weren't that great when it suits you.  

 

49 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Already debunked by people all over the place including here

Nope, you are the only one who ever challenges me on my assessment of Jack.  

 

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

You've been inconsistent on 83 based on which post, but even if we let that slide, It's clear you also brought up 82.

That's only because you cherry-pick my comments and twist what I say.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Lord Mushroom said:

What I am saying is that the number of tokens you get for a dollar influences how many dollars you spend (how frequently you buy tokens).

Possibly.    I know as kids we left the arcade when we ran out of money, so if we had extra tokens, we'd spend them.   Nowadays, I could easily walk out of an arcade with a pocket full of quarters.   I suppose it depends on how lame the arcade is and where you are in life :) 

[leech]

18 minutes ago, zzip said:

Possibly.    I know as kids we left the arcade when we ran out of money, so if we had extra tokens, we'd spend them.   Nowadays, I could easily walk out of an arcade with a pocket full of quarters.   I suppose it depends on how lame the arcade is and where you are in life

Last time I went to qn Arcade it was a nickel one, and a goodly portion of the machines were in various states of non-working.  So at least they were just nickels instead of tokens that I left with in my pocket...

 

One of the previous times there, I was determined to win the Terminator 2 gun game... and then the power went out...