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Atari's Landfill Adventures, I now have the proof it's true.


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Industry stocks crashed in '82 as industry earnings started dropping dramatically. The plunge in industry earnings continued throughout '83. This was tracked by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc. Market != earnings. As stated, the market never went away and was there through '85. The industry all but did however.

Definition: Earnings are the net benefits of a corporation's operation.

 

Atari's earnings for 1982 predicted a 50% increase over the previous year.

 

On 7 December 1982 Atari reported only a 10% to 15% INCREASE in expected earnings.

 

Earnings DID NOT started dropping dramatically. Just the increase dropped dramatically and that's why the stock crashed. That's how the stock market works.

 

Parker Brothers took $30 million in sales away from Atari with just the Empire strikes back.

 

But you're right, no need to go in circles with you, will never buy any of your books anyway.

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http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/19/business/the-game-turns-serious-at-atari.html

 

 

"The situation at Atari is by no means dire. The video game industry in general and Atari in particular are still growing, although profit margins are shriveling from intense competition. And Warner still expects to report a 10 to 15 percent increase for all of 1982, an improvement that would delight many other companies during a recession.

 

THE gain, however, is just not what people had come to expect from Warner and from Atari, which in the first nine months of 1982 contributed half of Warner's $2.9 billion in revenues and two thirds of its $471 million in operating profits."

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The wannabe self promoting wizard with moneyed interest (buy my book, if you want to believe in the truth!) says earnings and stocks dropped in 1982.

 

Here is the truth:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/23/business/coleco-industries-inc-reports-earnings-for-qtr-to-sept-30.html

 

 

"These hot products turned Coleco into a Wall Street darling. In August 1982, the company's stock languished at about $7 a share. But by June 1983, it was trading at a whopping $65. Then it fell off a cliff, plunging more than -50% from June to August 1983, as sales of its products dramatically slowed. By March 1984, Coleco stock sat at $10 a share, and in 1988, the company filed for bankruptcy."

 

Yes, problems at Atari also affected other stocks short-term, that's how the stock market works. But Mr. Weisenheimer then uses this to back up his story rather than showing the complete data.

 

The crash happened mid 1983.

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The wannabe self promoting wizard with moneyed interest (buy my book, if you want to believe in the truth!) says earnings and stocks dropped in 1982.

 

Dude, just let it go. When you've done countless interviews and years of research in order to write and publish an 800 page book, then you'll have room to talk... :ponder:

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Dude, just let it go. When you've done countless interviews and years of research in order to write and publish an 800 page book, then you'll have room to talk... :ponder:

 

Interviews are methodical the worst way to get an accurate analysis of what happened. Everyone tells his version of the history and then the author mixes it all together to his own version.

 

Even interviews back from 1983 are just plain wrong. Ron Dubren claims in an interview with Electronic Fun that he came up with the concept for "Name this game" and presented it to US Games in July 1982 and they accepted it in August. The truth is it was already on a price list from 06/06/1982 from US Games handed out at the CES. The price list and the press kit doesn't lie, Ron Dubren did.

 

It gets worse the bigger the ego of the interviewees and the authors are.

 

Atari was doing well the first 3 quarters of 1982: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/19/business/warner-communications-inc-reports-earnings-for-qtr-to-sept-30.html

 

But for the holiday season 1982 they had nothing but stinkers (E.T., Raiders of the lost Ark) while others like Parker and Coleco took their business away (Star Wars, Frogger, Donkey Kong). That's why they issues a profit warning.

 

The problems at Atari and Mattel had nothing to do with the problems of the overall industry. The problems at Atari were caused by the new competition. Overall the industry had an awesome year.

 

The huge overstock retailers still had after the holiday season caused the problems. They ordered way too much stock, even of real stinkers like Skeet Shoot. That caused the decline in orders early 1983 and the crash mid 1983.

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:-) I'd take a rather different angle than point raised above:

 

'Interviews are methodical the worst way to get an accurate analysis of what happened. Everyone tells his version of the history and then the author mixes it all together to his own version'

 

 

I can only speak for myself here and stuff i do is a drop in the ocean of good work 'real' figures like Marty G carry out, i just do interviews for the love of the subject material, enjoy putting questions to folk and it's all done in my spare time, never took money for any of them, but 1 reason i leave them in the very 'raw' form they are, is so they are presented, warts and all as they come in.

 

I've never edited an answer in any form to say inflate hardware sales figures or because i hated or loved a game or person's answer made me look stupid in an earlier claim i'd made etc.

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I can start to 'relate' to the work Marty does in 1 small regard, just how time consuming it is, just to find a contact your after, secure an interview, try and get in the questions you feel will generate the best answers etc and all the while your all too aware that the subject material your asking about happened years and years ago.Like i said earlier, other Freelancers have experienced issues, System 3 recal history of having released Myth on the ST-It was never finished, closest you'd get is a demo on Zero magazine.Jez San can now only recal Creature Shock being one og Argonaughts 1st CD games, he admits beyond that his memory is hazy..yet go back say 10 years when he chats to EDGE, he could recal never doing ANY Jaguar work, as format was too big a risk.

 

I could'nt evn fathom what a mammoth task Marty etc face trying to piece together what really happened and why within Atari, after so long, with so many people involved, each with a differing recollection i'm sure.

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But to be fair and balanced here, Andre81 is correct-when interviewing your dealing with a 'MK 1 Human Being' at the other end giving the answers and that person is same as rest of us, has his own memory of events, perhaps has a different angle he'd like to get across, many simply don't want to talk about time in industry, full stop.I've a good few replies like that myself, which is fine.

 

All 'anyone' can hope to do, is get as much info, from as many sources as possible, put it out there, let the reader decide.

 

If they decide to believe the Earth opened up and swallowed vast warehouses of unsold Atari 2600 carts etc, being closing in a biblical manner, because it was printed in RetroNinjaGamerhardcore extremes Retro section or on 12 different websites, so must be true... good for them.

 

None of us are ever going to change it, nor should we try.

 

I've never seen a company quite get the reaction ATARI has though, when ever anything related to it is 'discussed' online.

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If they decide to believe the Earth opened up and swallowed vast warehouses of unsold Atari 2600 carts etc, being closing in a biblical manner, because it was printed in RetroNinjaGamerhardcore extremes Retro section or on 12 different websites, so must be true... good for them.

 

Do you have a link for this? Sounds like a highly entertaining read! :grin:

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All 'anyone' can hope to do, is get as much info, from as many sources as possible, put it out there, let the reader decide.

 

EXACTLY! Everything else than boring numbers and data are just opinions and conclusions. When I say the 3rd party vendors were the cause for the crash it's just a conclusion, a theory, because it's a "what would have happened if" game. We'll never know, because that has happened in a parallel universe.

 

The best you can do is to gather as much data as possible. But except a few die hards no one would buy a book full with financial reports, sales figures and charts.

 

But methodically it would be the best to contact the press relations department of those stores still in business (Sears, K-Mart, etc.) and ask if they have any sales figures for the 1980-1985 period.

 

Here is some more boring data:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/10/business/mattel-inc-reports-earnings-for-qtr-to-july-31.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/10/business/mattel-inc-reports-earnings-for-qtr-to-oct-30.html

 

Sales and earning of Mattel went up for the first 3 quarters of 1982. It was the 4th quarter where they no longer could compete.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/18/business/mattel-inc-reports-earnings-for-qtr-to-jan-29.html

 

But Mattel never really managed to be profitable. Sales $479,721,000 and net income $28,333,000, that's a mere 5%. At the same time Coleco made 10%!

 

If you don't manage to be highly profitable in a boom period then of course the slightest decline will hit you hard. And that's the same the wallstreet analysts said back then. Too high fixed costs, unsound corporate structure etc. Number of employees at Atari went up from 6,000 to 10,000 in 1982. Spread across 50 buildings.

 

And history repeats. Zynga just went through exactly the same as Atari. They thought there would be no end to social gaming on Facebook until they had to lay off their employees.

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Right that's it, I never gonna mention 'the crash' of 84 ever again.

 

For Garry Kitchen the crash indeed happened in 1984. In 1983 he was busy programming such blockbusters as Keystone Kapers. In 1983 Activision still released many new games. It was 1984 when they stopped making new games. So when he say in an interview that the crash happened in 1984 that is absolutely true for him. You just need to put it into the perspective of an programmer at Activision.

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:-) Hell yeah, see i had it all planned, i was going to 'pitch' an EPIC re-make of the 'true' (disclaimer:not based on actual events) story of Atari and the entire videogames crash (i was blissfully unaware of being A)a kid and B) in the UK at the time....

 

The special effects alone, ohhh man...would of been mind-blowing:Behold the very ground opening up like a gaping maw, swallowing warhouses, garbage trucks, manufacturing plants etc, anything E.T 2600 related and then sealing themselves shut and the landscape was...as if they'd NEVER EXISTED...(cue defending silence and camera moves to.....)

 

 

The very Ocean parting as Behold!!! Ninentdo strode across the very seabed, NES hardware and games clasped to it's back, England comes into view (cue epic wailing and gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair etc from the games starved UK gamers, why has thout forsaken us, oh Lord? (Nintendo)...goes the cries, cue GASPS...a woman (old) falls to her knees, men openly weeping in beards etc as Nintendo arrives to save the UK.

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In retrospect you could see the crash coming as early as December 1981. From the Videogaming Illustrated from August 1982:

 

"All in all, Skeet Shoot wasn't a spectacular game to start off with," concedes Emmitt Crawford, Apollo's director of public relations. He acknowledges that the graphics were flat, little more than a bor flinging pellets at a small saucer. To make matters worse, a high percentage of the cartridges had to be recalled due to image roll. But Skeet Shoot managed to cash in on the lucrative Christmas buying season and, more important, made dealers and consumers alike aware of the new company.

 

One month after the inauspicious debut of Skeet Shoot, the company released the better-conceived, more topical Spacechase. This time, both the graphics and subject were worth writing home about. As commander of three Mark 16 starcruisers, the player is required to beat back alien raiders who, materializing from hyperspace, mercilessly fire neutron missiles and heat-seeking proton missiles as they attack from all sides. With its scrolling planet surface and fast-paced action, Spacechase was an immediate hit. Crawford says it's presently back-ordered to the tune of nearly 200,000 cartridges "and," he marvels, "even Skeet Shoot is still hanging in there," with several thousand orders waiting to be filled as Apollo's production schedule allows.

 

 

(Source: http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/vg_ill/videogaming_ill_aug82.pdf)

 

A director of public relations who admits that his game sucks but is still on backorder should have been a warning that the video game industry is waiting for a disaster to happen.

 

So again, 1982 was the cause of the crash. Retailers ordered a ton of crap and everyone had a party in 1982. The hangover started 1983 when all this crap was still sitting in the warehouses.

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Where was i?

Ahh yes, leading roles would have gone to Charleston Heston, Kirk Douglas, Rachel Welch (would of had a fur bikini scene, or 12, come what may)...Sigh was never to be...
Now, how about that 'Bitter Revenge Thriller' i had planned for Sony, battered, bruised and betrayed by Nintendo over the SNES CD Drive, they thought they were beat..THEY WERE WRONG....
The Jaguar story..i'm thinking...socket puppets?
No?.....
Kickstarter projects due when hell freezes over/once in a blue moon.
All concepts Copyright L@stdragonproductions 2015.
:-)
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:-) Hell yeah, see i had it all planned, i was going to 'pitch' an EPIC re-make of the 'true' (disclaimer:not based on actual events) story of Atari and the entire videogames crash (i was blissfully unaware of being A)a kid and B) in the UK at the time....

 

The special effects alone, ohhh man...would of been mind-blowing:Behold the very ground opening up like a gaping maw, swallowing warhouses, garbage trucks, manufacturing plants etc, anything E.T 2600 related and then sealing themselves shut and the landscape was...as if they'd NEVER EXISTED...(cue defending silence and camera moves to.....)

 

 

The very Ocean parting as Behold!!! Ninentdo strode across the very seabed, NES hardware and games clasped to it's back, England comes into view (cue epic wailing and gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair etc from the games starved UK gamers, why has thout forsaken us, oh Lord? (Nintendo)...goes the cries, cue GASPS...a woman (old) falls to her knees, men openly weeping in beards etc as Nintendo arrives to save the UK.

I wonder if that's what happened to "Red Sea Crossing" :ponder:

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And history repeats. Zynga just went through exactly the same as Atari. They thought there would be no end to social gaming on Facebook until they had to lay off their employees.

Shit like Zynga make me glad I never got sucked in to social media. Imagine if the ET cart had a time limit and you swiped your credit card for additional time... :roll:

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Interviews are methodical the worst way to get an accurate analysis of what happened. Everyone tells his version of the history and then the author mixes it all together to his own version.

 

I strongly agree, but with the caveat that sometimes oral history is (unfortunately) the ONLY source available, when contemporary documentation simply does not exist. Human memory is very falible, and, as noted, especially when ego is concerned.

 

Media accounts are not a terribly reliable source either, but, again, often there is nothing else readily/publicly available.

 

Personally, I'm a really big fan of court records as a source -- as testimony is given under oath -- but these are few and far between.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130916203758/http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/magazine/?issue=100&page=205&theme=purple&g=invaders

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I strongly agree, but with the caveat that sometimes oral history is (unfortunately) the ONLY source available, when contemporary documentation simply does not exist. Human memory is very falible, and, as noted, especially when ego is concerned.

 

Media accounts are not a terribly reliable source either, but, again, often there is nothing else readily/publicly available.

 

Personally, I'm a really big fan of court records as a source -- as testimony is given under oath -- but these are few and far between.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130916203758/http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/magazine/?issue=100&page=205&theme=purple&g=invaders

Either way it's more misinformation about me on his part. Never said anything about going solely by interviews, just that they are important for helping to give the full background and context on something. Figures and stats alone do not do that, and they're both parts of the whole. Either one on it's own is faulty. Especially off the cuff interviews of the type you usually see in older magazines, or PR based interviews in newspapers and magazines from the time. Our vetting process and the process I've personally used for years has already been laid out there for some time now:

 

http://ataribook.com/book/example-vetted-info/

 

Yes, we go through news reports, internal documentation, legal documentation (such as court reports which we've paid a lot for), other forms of direct documentation and a large swath of direct interviews.

 

That's the wonderful thing about having someone on block here though, don't have to deal with more of the nonsense and misrepresentation of facts and people from him. Since my last post he's probably been regurgitating more googled articles now (that have been up for ages and everyone has seen before) in a cherry picking manner to try and support more skewed claims (that further show a complete unfamiliarity with industry goings on or internal goings on at these companies) rather than doing any real research. Anyone can do that kind of low level research, it's called being a casual historian. Like a fan who's into looking up baseball stats. Nothing derogatory about it and nothing wrong with it, I think it's great when people show interest. But it's nowhere near the level of deep and thorough research involved at the academic and professional historian level for him to be presenting it as such and as some sort of debateable counter. It has zero to do with any sort of "ego" on my end as I'm sure he's still claiming. There's actually a decent group of people across the globe doing game history research and documentation at the professional level I'm talking about, and we've all had some very engaging conversations and sometimes debates that have lead to new avenues of thought on a topic. That includes for myself, where yes I've had my mind changed by someone elses research. Specifically where (as is normally done at this level) they've dug up some new information or additional info that expands what was known before about a topic, and then you're able to double check with the sources (which normally include documentation, interviews, etc.) as you normally do at that level. But then as I said, we've all put in that level of research, documentation gathering and critical thinking, so it's coming from that area of mutual respect and professionalism because we all know we put in the same amount of work and seriousness it requires. They would consider it just as insulting for him to try and come at them the same way and demand that minor level of research be put in the same light, as anyone in any field of research would. Again it has zero to do with ego and everything to do with respect for the subject matter and field.

 

I could also care less if people like him buy the book (or the subsequent books). I haven't been involved in games history research for over fifteen years to make money, and we certainly didn't write the book (nor are we doing the other two books) for any silly notion that we're actually going to make any real money off it. They're purely for love of the subject and wanting to educate while helping a lot of the unsung heroes who worked at these companies to tell their stories. The fact that the current book is still at four out of five stars on Amazon with 67 reviews (which is a lot for any book on Amazon that's only two years old) and has overall been extremely well received on the merit of it's content and research (despite the first edition editing issues that we're correcting with the second edition), gives Curt and I the only "job well done" we really need to continue on making this material available to the public in this format. And we look forward to continuing to do so.

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But it's nowhere near the level of deep and thorough research involved at the academic and professional historian level . . .

Speaking of deep and thorough research, since most of the people you are interviewing are probably humans with a limited lifespan, is it possible for you to find out if any of them have any old paperwork that shows when Atari 2600 games were shipped out (month/year) before the info is lost forever? I'd also love paperwork from the retail end. Retailers had to keep some kind of record of the games that came in.

 

I know that most people probably don't care, but it seems like there are enough people who do care to keep working on and improving these pages using better info than what can be found in magazines, newsletters, and catalogs:

 

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-history-1982.html

 

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-history-1983.html

 

A lot more work has to be done to those pages and I'd like to make pages for 1981 and 1984 and any other years where a significant number of Atari 2600 cartridges were released.

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And there are a number of bits of misinformation in the "Did you know..." trivia window on the front page of AtariAge. Notably the "Atari buried 5 million ETs in a landfill in New Mexico" one that needs to be corrected.

 

I have no idea where the master list of random trivia facts is stored, but some of them need updating.

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