1978
As 1978
started, Atari was having trouble on several fronts. While the VCS had sold well
during Christmas 1977 (upwards of 350,000 - 400,000 units), sales were stunted
because of production problems that had the VCS units delivered late to
retailers, resulting in a $25 million dollar loss for the period. vi
Atari was also hobbled with warehouses filled with unsold dedicated Pong units, the stagnation of the
coin-op business, and an increasing divide between Warner brass and existing
Atari management.
Even so,
Bushnell was positive that, with the VCS, Atari had a winner on its hands.
It just needed to find enough talent to make games for the system.
"I see us as having
built a record player and now it's up to our creative people to decide how many
records there will be." vii
- Nolan Bushnell
In his
mind, if he could make it work, the sky would be the limit for Atari's game system.
The profit potential for a system like the VCS was one of Bushnell's crowning
achievements for Atari.
"The thought of taking
something that cost $3 and selling it for $20, or selling it for $40, I take
great pride in that as a concept." viii
- Nolan Bushnell
At the same
time, Bushnell found himself butting heads with Warner's executive VP, Manny
Gerard. Bushnell and Joe Keenan disappeared from Atari for some time after the
VCS was released, but popped back in at times to give their opinions on the business.
This frustrated Gerard.
"You can't disappear and walk in six months later and say 'let's do
this.'" ix
- Manny Gerard
Also, Gerard
was positive that Atari was spending far too much effort on engineering and
R&D and not enough time trying to sell and market its products.
"They had no sales, no
advertising, no marketing, nothing but R&D." x
- Manny Gerard
"We had a very powerful
engineering team working on a lot of projects -- a lot more than Manny thought
we should have." xi
- Nolan Bushnell
In February
1978, Manny Gerard encouraged Bushnell to find some help marketing Atari's
products. When Bushnell was slow to respond, Gerard suggested Harvard educated Ray
Kassar, an ex-marketing VP from Burlington textiles. Kassar was exactly the
button-down, straight-laced businessman that Bushnell was not. Kassar began as
a consultant, with his directive from Warner to find out if Atari should be dumped altogether. What he found was not encouraging.
"It was a disaster." xii
- Ray Kassar
However,
Kassar was impressed with one thing at Atari: the VCS xiii.
Instead of recommending liquidation to Warner, he set out to develop an
integrated marketing plan that would save Atari.
At the same
time, Bushnell and president Joe Keenan found themselves struggling to hold on
to the company that they had created. Instead of leading Atari in new
directions that would build the business even further, Bushnell was constantly
clashing with Manny Gerard and Ray Kassar over the future of Atari's products
and especially R&D.
"Where we became unglued was
when Manny started killing the research projects. I saw that as building a very
fragile company." xiv
- Nolan Bushnell
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Thanks for the great article, although I must say that I find the claim that the VIC-20 was more powerful than an Atari 400 a bit tough to swallow... ;-)
-Clay
Thanks. That probably should read "arguably more powerful" or "perceived as more powerful". In retrospect, it wasn't.
-Steve
Having worked at Time Warner, back in the SF Rush / Rise of the Robots era, I totally recognize the pattern that has also poisoned most large developers :)
Sorry to be a pingeek but I think there's a misplaced comma: Superman the pinball, more like 3500-5000 units sold according to the ipdb. 10 K sales from the late 70's on was blockbuster.
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/7749/fairchildchannelfcartrihz0.jpg
Channel F's Videocart 12 was baseball, released in 1977.
Good catch, but I believe it says that it was the first "single player" baseball game. I believe the Fairchild game (which I played many times at my friend's house BTW...but my favorite game was Alien Invasion) required two-players. I was trying to highlight the A.I. of the VCS game.
-Steve
We'd like to translate a decent articles "The History of Atari: 1971-1977" (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2000/the_history_of_atari_19711977.php?pag
e=1) and "Atari: The Golden Years -- A History, 1978-1981" (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3766/atari_the_golden_years__a_.php) into Polish language and publish it on a popular portal jakilinux.org (and/or osnews.pl). Do you mind us doing so? Obviously proper attribution would be paid to you as the author.
Please let us know what you think about such re-publication. (My e-mail address is tprimke_at_gmail_dot_com.)
Best regards,
Tomek
Moreover, it is very unlikely that the Atari 3200 was to be based on the same chipset as the Intellivision. The Intellivision was mostly a knee-jerk reaction to the Atari 2600 from Mattel, and therefore consisted of an pre-built, off-the-shelf game system created by chip maker General Instruments. In fact, it was an actual sku item on their 1978 parts catalog. It was later customized a little, mainly to allow for more ROM and custom graphic tiles, but it was generally an off-the-shelf product.
Therefore it seems unlikely that Atari would plan to replace their aging custom-designed Atari 2600 with an off-the-shelf product, whose technology, although having some more capabilities, was just as old.
-dZ.
Thanks for that!
I'd say that from your description, the Intellivision processor could have still been one of the chips that Bushnell had tied-up in development, especially if GI was one of the companies he used. Remember, the idea that the Intellivision was based on one of those processors did not come from myself, but from a direct quote that Bushnell gave to me in an interview. Still, it's a very gray area and this why that part of the story is painted as "not definite".
-Steve
Thanks for your response. You are right, the GI microprocessor could still have been the planned successor to the Atari 2600. However, I still think it unlikely due its many limitations (weird architecture, 10-bit memory addressing, etc.).
My point was that the only reason Mattel used it was not because it was considerably better, but because they needed a quick release, and chose the General Instrument's pre-built system in haste in order to jump into the new Video Game market.
The entire Intellivision console was indeed superior, with better graphics resolution and 3-channel DSP'ed sound (although the graphics were tile-based instead of pixel-based, limiting its practicality; not to mention the ill-conceived Disc Controller!), but its microprocessor and chip technology were the products of early 1970s technology, hardly state-of-the-art; and unlikely the first choice for a successor.
But, of course, we can't ever know, and I do concede it's possible.
I do agree that competition from Mattel could have been avoided if only Atari had adhered to Bushnell's strategy.
All in all, a very interesting and satisfying article; one that brought back wonderful memories. Please keep up with the thoughtful historical accounts of our wonderful technological roots.
Thank you,
-dZ.
P.S. Why, yes, I did (and currently) own a Mattel Intellivision, thank you.
Perhaps Gamasutra can showcase the Mattel Intellivision on a future article and fulfill my well of nostalgia, as it has already done with the Atari VCS, the Commodore 64, and Video Game arcades in general.
-dZ.
No problem! Thanks for adding to the discussion. I agree, the Intellivision story needs to be told. I'd love to try to tackle it someday, especially since it all went down near my home town (they used to frequent the local arcade here while making games), Keith Robinson from the Blue Sky Rangers draws a cartoon for the local paper, and Intellivision Productions is in the same office building as my favorite Sunday breakfast coffee shop)...plus, I currently work for Mattel.
mason,
I'm happy you noticed. The quotes, to me, are the most important part.
It was Atari that really changed my life. Starting with COMBAT. My brother and I played that till the wee morning hours and although it was simplistic. I never had so much fun in my life. That would be followed by Space Invaders. Asteroids, Adventure, which was the first game that gave me the sense I could explore a world in a game. I liked the Sword Quest series as well.
Seeing a TV ad for Atari. Going to store and seeing the box art for each game. Buying a game and taking it home and opening it up. Taking the cart out and putting it into your Atari. That was pure bliss when I was growing up.
Atari is my childhood. I love Nintendo as well, but I'm not the Nintendo generation. I'm the Atari generation. Atari forever!
We re-developed 2-3 years ago Intellivision cartridges as Keith acquired the rights to unreleased games and wanted to release them for the retro crowd.
The carts are not simple ROMs, but use a time multiplexed bus for address and data, and the Intellivision hardware is definitely odd...
We've also re-developed a 2600 clone, for a product that hasn't been released (distributor problem), so I can answer a lot of questions about the 2600 hardware and some of its history if you want to do a followup.
you can contact me at: my first name that you can see on this post @ retrogamesllc.com
>>box art for each game. Buying a game and taking it home
>>and opening it up. Taking the cart out and putting it into
>>your Atari. That was pure bliss when I was growing up.
Ryan,
That is exactly what I can't shake Atari from my mind. Somehow i want to recreate those moments, but it is very difficult these days.
-Steve