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Hope Fading at Atari
hisham writes "On the heels of the bad news on SGI's financial health, another former giant of the tech world announces concerns of bankruptcy: 'Bad times got worse at Atari as the company posted a loss and a 35% decline in sales in the important holiday quarter.' The CFO has resigned, and the company released a statement saying 'the uncertainties caused by these conditions raise substantial doubt about [Atari's] ability to continue as a going concern.' An icon of videogame history; if things turn sour, it will be sad to see Atari go (again)."
OK, if this Atari goes under, won't some other company just buy them out and call themselves Atari? Should we really mourn the loss of a company that's already gone?
I've never considered Infogrames to be an icon of anything. Let's face it ... the real Atari died a loooong time ago. From Wikipedia's Atari article:
In March 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million--less than a fifth of what Warner Communications had paid 22 years earlier. This transaction primarily involved the brand and intellectual property, which now fell under the Atari Interactive division of Hasbro Interactive. The brand name changed hands again in December 2000, when French software publisher Infogrames took over Hasbro Interactive.
do you go out of business when all you do is license your old games, sell your old console, and license your logo to t-shirt makers? They have got to have like $113 in R&D spent per month, where the hell did the money go?
They quit Atari and founded Activision. Why? Because the new owners were morons, and stiffled their creativity with stupid things like dress code, to say the least.
More info on Activision
Atari is like the Doctor (Doctor Who), this incarnation might die but it will be back after it regenerates. And thanks to all the confusion and due to my namesake and former shareholder in the older Atari, I will clear up the misconceptions.
The original Atari was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. After the lack of success with Bushnell's adaptation of the MIT "Spacewar" game as an arcade title called "Computer Space" manufactured by Nutting Associates, Bushnell wanted to make an easier electronic arcade game. Atari's "Pong" came next, programmed by the great Al Alcorn. True, it was an updated version of a game that Ralph Baer created (but his version sucked) and it became an overnight sensation.
Prior to 1976, Steve Jobs worked for Atari and Jobs would sneak in Steve Wozniak to help him do designs in return for Wozniak getting to play as much "Night Driver" as possible. Depending upon the account told, Wozniak was or was not an actual employee of Atari. The pair took parts from Atari and used it to work on what later became the Apple I.
By 1976, Atari was an established arcade player but it needed funding to finish designing what became the Atari 2600 VCS, the world's most successful home videogame system. Bushnell sold the company to Warner Communications, thanks to its charismatic chairman, Steve Ross. Money had been so tight that Bushnell had to pass on Steve Jobs' offer to fund and own what became Apple Computer, Inc., but Bushnell hooked Jobs up with the venture capitalist that had helped him, and the rest is Apple history. Bushnell stayed on with Atari until 1979 when he left because he did not see eye-to-eye with the Warner brass. Both were equally at fault in the equation; Bushnell for insisting that the 2600 VCS didn't have a much longer shelf life, and Warners for not backing Bushnell's suggestion to quickly fund the development of its replacement. Add to the fact that Bushnell had never backed the creation of the Atari Pinball division which Warner wanted, which later closed, and you have more of the picture of what happened. When Bushnell left, he bought back a new Atari division that he personally created, known as (Chuck E. Cheese's) Pizza Time Theatre.
In 1980, Atari's brass wanted to consolidate all their U.S. operations into a single Silicon Valley campus...which would have cost $500 million. Warner buckled. So instead, Atari went on to sprawl throughout the Valley into 72 different buildings, which was a cost waste. 1979/1980 also saw Atari's debut with the Jay Miner engineered Atari 8-bit computer line, the 400 and 800 computers which ran rings around the Apples, the Commodores, and all other home computers of that time in the graphics and sound departments. Miner later left when the Atari brass refused to fund the project he was pushing for which was creating a home computer based up Motorola's new microprocessor, the Motorola 68000. Miner went on to create what became the Amiga, which like the Apple Macintosh and the later Atari ST, was powered by that very same Motorola 68000.
79/80 also saw Atari programmers split over a disagreement with Atari boss Ray Kasser. They went on to found Activision, the world's first third party videogame developer. However, since most of their first games were coded during their time when they were paid Atari employees, Atari sued and the settlement dictated that Atari got a portion of the profits off each of their games sold. There was no model for third party licensing/restrictions at this time - with the exception of VHS and Beta in the home video industry - and Atari had between 80% and 90% of the home video game market AND the arcade (AND a sizeable portion of the home computer market) and thus had Atari attempted anything as such the government would have stepped in and broken up the company just as they were about to do to AT&T. Now compare the Atari monopoly to the later Nintendo monopoly. Atari's monopoly was a "natural monopoly". Atari had no control on any third party manufacturers. The only claim that
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