Atari closures

[JeffVav]

I'm guessing this isn't the right forum for this, but there doesn't seem to be a forum here that this would obviously fit...

 

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/02/09/ne...ws_6118310.html

 

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/0.../ap1816699.html

 

I find this quite sad. What's really distressing to me is that the guys I've worked with in the Beverly office have all been exceptional. They care about their work. And, a number of the "better sellers" for Christmas 2004 cited in the links above were actually developed in coordination with Beverly, including our own Atari Anthology. These guys were an important part of the Atari spirit, IMHO. Of course, in reality many were Microprose veterans who rode out the various changes of hands of the company, but they were indeed veterans who still had that old school aura.

[NovaXpress]

It sucks, but we knew it was headed this way. Consolidation means fewer games and fewer jobs. A lot of talent is going to be looking for a new line of work.

 

This is the shit that's inevitable when you have publicly traded companies. This is all happening because Atari revenue is down just 3.4 million from the previous year (last year being a dead season for console releases of course, therefore it was inevitable that sales would be down slightly). So the dumb investors shit their pants and Atari has to make stupid decisions in order to boost up that revenue. They cut jobs like every other company looking for a quick fix.

 

In the long run they'll suffer for it as their games turn to shit, but for now it'll probably make some dickweed day trader happy for a couple months before he flips the stock over for some Ebay. And in the end, isn't that all that really matters?

[StanJr]

It sucks, but we knew it was headed this way. Consolidation means fewer games and fewer jobs. A lot of talent is going to be looking for a new line of work.

 

This is the shit that's inevitable when you have publicly traded companies. This is all happening because Atari revenue is down just 3.4 million from the previous year (last year being a dead season for console releases of course, therefore it was inevitable that sales would be down slightly). So the dumb investors shit their pants and Atari has to make stupid decisions in order to boost up that revenue. They cut jobs like every other company looking for a quick fix.  

 

In the long run they'll suffer for it as their games turn to shit, but for now it'll probably make some dickweed day trader happy for a couple months before he flips the stock over for some Ebay. And in the end, isn't that all that really matters?

 

 

yaaaa! Captialism!

[NovaXpress]

I wish investors would think long-term instead of pissing their pants because a stock fluctuates a little. My entire investment philosophy is build around the long run, I wish more people thought that way. If I was an Atari investor, I'd rather they just stay the course right now and see what happens with the new system launches.

[StanJr]

I wish investors would think long-term instead of pissing their pants because a stock fluctuates a little. My entire investment philosophy is build around the long run, I wish more people thought that way. If I was an Atari investor, I'd rather they just stay the course right now and see what happens with the new system launches.

 

yaaa Instant Gratification Generation! (brought to you by Capitalism!)

[Mindfield]

Most investors are flighty little flibbertigibbets. The slightest sign of downtrend in a stock will send them running across the trading floor shouting "Sell! Sell!" I suppose that's the real difference between an investor and a day trader. Frankly, I don't think anyone who can't read the market well enough to be able to forecast the obvious (like slow periods in the industry which are not indicative of any one specific company's possible problems) should be allowed on the trading floor, 'cos this is exactly what happens when amateurs and short termers get into the mix.

[jeepnut24]

Not to be a pessimist, but lately ATARI current generation titles have been crap.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Of course, in reality many were Microprose veterans who rode out the various changes of hands of the company, but they were indeed veterans who still had that old school aura.

 

Uihjah! Interesting information. A while back I was assuming that U.S. Atari was "made" mostly out of Accolade: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=63601 but you seem to be pretty sure now that it was actually Microprose?

 

I had thought it would've been a cool cosmic accident when former Atari programmers starting a company (Activision), then starting another company (Accolade) then decades later became Atari again

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[rolenta]

A while back I was assuming that U.S. Atari was "made" mostly out of Accolade: but you seem to be pretty sure now that it was actually Microprose?

 

I don't know who made up the Beverly building recently but it was originally the headquarters of Hasbro Interactive (and before that Parkers Brothers). After Hasbro bought Atari, the Atari division was based out of Beverly. I guess the same happened when Hasbro Interactive bought Microprose.

[JeffVav]

A while back I was assuming that U.S. Atari was "made" mostly out of Accolade: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=63601 but you seem to be pretty sure now that it was actually Microprose?

 

Just talking about the guys I interacted with, in particular. Atari Beverly wasn't exclusively old Microprose people. I seem to recall a few years ago they were separate buildings, but they shut down the Microprose part and rolled some of those people into the building with the Hasbro side. That's a vague memory, though.

[hex65000]

I know corporate responsibility is out of fashion, but after reading that business-speak blob in one of the other threads I can't help to notice that they blamed everything under the sun for their woes. For once I'd like to see one of these impotentates just admit it, " We F####D up. Our new strategy is to fix it and release something that people really want. Now excuse me while I ritually slay 5 of the people from marketing. "

 

Instead it's console shortages, and an overly competitive 4th quarter market. The latter I can almost swallow, but the former sounds like ummmm... bunk. It sounds as if the argument is that since consumers couldn't buy new decks, we couldn't sell a thing to save our lives. You can make that a plausable argument, but it's not like Sony hasn't put a PS2 in the homes of every man woman and sheep by now. As for the Flashback unit, the price point turned me off severely, the tech behind it is obviously flawed, but for 40 bucks you can almost buy one of those N-64 and a bunch of crap games specials from EB and come out better. Or you could buy both of the Midway Arcade Treasures packs and still fare slightly better. The Flashback is worth $20 or less to me, and I'm sure to some of the folks here possibly much less.

 

Hex.

[ What? Me bitter? ]

[Mindfield]

Give it time. I'm sure we'll soon see it at the $20 price point pretty soon.

 

And yes, I imagine blaming people for not buying new consoles is bunk. I can't really bring myself to call Flashback a console anyway -- not in the traditional sense of having interchangeable games. It's a hardwired game system -- in pretty well every sense. It's also relatively cheap -- comparing it to the rest of the console market anyway. Not quite cheap enough to be an impulse buy, but then not so expensive as to be priced out of the "Why the hell not?" market. Except the answer to that market's question is "because it sucks."

[NovaXpress]

There's always a slow down at this point in a game system's life cycle, partly because so much is being invested in the next genereation's games now that we don't have many must-buys.

 

The big 3 should stagger their releases, there's no need for them to all hit the market at once.

[hex65000]

I meant that they claimed that they couldn't sell games on the current gen consoles because for some odd reason 2 out of the 3 machines were short-supplied. I didn't realize that the flashback was overly demanded anywhere to the point there was an actual shortage of them over the holidays.

 

Hex.

[ Is kicking himself for not snatching up some Zellers carts when the chance was there... CurSes... ]

[yuppicide]

So you only made $160 billion and last time you made $190 billion. You still profited $160 billion!!

 

I wish game design was cheaper.. specially programmers. Sure they are very talented. I wish those $300k a year programmers made like $80k. They don't need all that money anyway since they spend all their time coding and playing games.

[Brad2600]

Do you know how hard coding can be?

 

 

Hell, if someone can program a game that goes on to sell millions, then they deserve whatever the hell they can get for pay.

[JeffVav]

So you only made $160 billion and last time you made $190 billion. You still profited $160 billion!!

 

Actually, that was gross, not net (i.e. before salaries, cost of goods, advertising, expenses, etc.), and that was million, not billion. They report that they'll either have broken even or lost $10 million after their costs are factored in.

 

I wish game design was cheaper.. specially programmers. Sure they are very talented. I wish those $300k a year programmers made like $80k. They  don't need all that money anyway since they spend all their time coding and playing games.

 

I don't personally know a single game programmer making $300K.

[CPUWIZ]

I wish game design was cheaper.. specially programmers. Sure they are very talented. I wish those $300k a year programmers made like $80k. They  don't need all that money anyway since they spend all their time coding and playing games.

 

I don't personally know a single game programmer making $300K.

 

I'll back that up 100%, the range for 90% of programmers is $65K to $135K. And quite frankly, you have no idea what programmers even do, yuppicide. No offense but what you read in OPM or some website, doesn't mean it's true. I am not gonna go off on a rant right now about what it takes to program a game, especially these days, I'll leave that for another time when I am annoyed. LOL

[Albert]

I wish game design was cheaper.. specially programmers. Sure they are very talented. I wish those $300k a year programmers made like $80k. They  don't need all that money anyway since they spend all their time coding and playing games.

 

I don't know any game programmers making anywhere near $300K. Most games these days are created by large teams of people and are very complex projects, probably more compex than a good portion of software out there. Games also push the envelope of software development in areas such as graphics, audio, networking, AI, and so forth. It can take years to program a single game, and programmers on these projects are often under a great deal of stress to develop new technology to make their game shine above the crowd, and often under unrealistic schedules. While it does have its rewards, it is not all roses like you're making it out to be.

 

..Al

[NovaXpress]

The programmers make too much? They're the ones doing all the labor while some suit fresh off working a shampoo account pockets tens of millions for gladhanding assholes at board meetings.

[Gregory DG]

I think they should hire Jeff Minter and some other wacky programmers to create more unique games. Games by this "Atari" easily get lost among all the others. If they want to be profitable, they need to take chances and stop playing it safe with all these terrible licence games (Can you say The Matrix?) If they would stick to the old motto, "Easy to learn, difficult to master" they'd do a lot better.

 

Jaguar was ultimately a failure, but people even outside the Atari realm still remember Tempest 2000.

[Gregory DG]

I don't know any game programmers making anywhere near $300K.

I read somewhere, (probably the latest GamePro) that said game programmers make at most ~$73,000 a year. It's the company that makes all the profit on the game. Kinda reminds me of the old Atari days when the programmers got jack and Atari made all the money.

[CPUWIZ]

I don't know any game programmers making anywhere near $300K.

I read somewhere, (probably the latest GamePro) that said game programmers make at most ~$73,000 a year. It's the company that makes all the profit on the game. Kinda reminds me of the old Atari days when the programmers got jack and Atari made all the money.

 

I suppose you didn't read my post.

[video game addict]

CPU must make more than $73K a year, but apparently less than $300K

[Goochman]

They report that they'll either have broken even or lost $10 million after their costs are factored in.

 

These is BS though also - Alot of companies (like movie houses) tack on everything from salaries, marketing, private jets for executives stock market corrections, etc.. to make a gae appear to be unprofitible since some bonuses are tied to profit.

 

However,

They didnt make 160 mill either