"That being said, a lot of people in the retro crowd seem to like the 7800 better than the Nintendo. I can't understand why. The Nintendo did better on graphics, sound, and gameplay at every turn. For an example, just look at the compromises made for Double Dragon on the 7800 vs. the NES. The NES was definitely closer to the arcade."
What? The 7800 was closer to the arcade than the NES version. The NES version was so pathetic that it couldn't have the two brothers on the screen at the same time because the NES graphics chip wasn't powerful enough, unlike the 7800's Maria chip or the Sega Master System's processor. All the non-NES fans had a field day over that release. I know, I was one of them (although I also had an NES).
Pick up a 7800 and pop in *BallBlazer* and tell me the NES could do it. It couldn't. Why? Because the NES did not do sprites well. It had the background tile graphics gimmick that it relied on in every single platform game.
Had the Tramiels simply bought back the Atari Games Corp., the 7800 would have surpassed the NES because quite frankly, nobody did arcade games better than Atari Games, up until the debut of Capcom's Street Fighter II. The Atari Games library via Tengen sold (at first) a lot of NES consoles, and then Sega Genesis consoles when Atari Games/Tengen swore off Nintendo completely. When TimeWarner forced Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. to cooperate, the Atari Games Corp. library migrated to the Atari Lynx handheld and sold quite a few Lynxes in the product's day. Unfortunately, more people bought Nintendo Gameboys because they were cheap and we are still stuck with them dominating the handheld market even though they continue to peddle wares inferior to their competitors.
"By then, Nintendo was already starting to attack the market with fresh new games."
Debatable. The ROB sure didn't sell. The NES's success in large part had to do with the fact that Nintendo monopolized the industry by restricting its third party licensees from porting and/or licensing their titles to non-NES systems; a practice they didn't drop until 1990 after several court cases (although it seemed to continue on handhelds considering the lack of 3rd party support the Atari Lynx, the NEC TurboDuo, and the Sega GameGear received) encouraged them to drop such restrictions in the console market. Its one thing to control the quality of cartridges authorized for play on a company's system; its quite another to tell any licensee not to make games for any other system (or else). Such behavior prevented the NEC TurboGrafx-16 from going anywhere here in the States whereas in Japan (under the name of "PC Engine") it was the dominant console because every company ported their games to it.
"(I mean, how many times were people going to buy Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pacman?)"
How many times did people rebuy music? From 78s, to 33 1/2s, 45s, 4 & 8 track, cassette, CD... Movies? Film, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray. People continue to buy classic boardgames like *Monopoly*. The classic videogames are becoming that institutionalized when you consider how popular the classics are on mobile phones...
I will concede that but will point out that you cannot seem to spell "Tramiel" correctly in two postings.:)
Your posting from Gamespot is not as accurate as from the book *Game Over*. Atari had the money; Atari never intended on releasing the Famicom. It was a defensive move, and Atari Inc. would have sat on the Famicom while selling the 7800. The 7800 was the hope at reviving the industry and their was a lot of interest in it. Unfortunately, Warners sold out, Atari Corp. disavowed itself of gaming (until the NES started selling in 1985 in the U.S. to much success) until it was too late and then half-heartedly sold the 7800 in 1986; two years too late to make the impact it should have. The Nintendoland summary is also inaccurate because it claims Warner (TimeWarner) had only 20% in Atari stock during that time period when in fact it was 100%.
"Research into Mind Controller devices, a Pizza Place, consoles that were never released, expensive movie/tv/comic licenses that were never released, dozens (hundreds?) of games cancelled at or near completion, massive R&D departments, etc., etc., etc. Atari overspent BIG TIME. At one point Atari estimated that the company was losing about a million dollars a day and began to close down every division possible within the company. Only a few of the games under development survived this purge, thus giving us a wealth of unreleased prototypes."
Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre - which became a big success - was sold back to Nolan Bushnell when he left Atari in 1979. Atari did not lose money on it.
There is no evidence that Atari overspent on R&D. They just added to their intellectual property library. The MindLink system was not a waste of money, nor was the research on holographics. I have no idea what patents Atari gained from Alan Kay's "amplification" projects, but I'm pretty sure Infogrames has squandered whatever they have in the portfolio due to their massive inaction with their Atari ownership.
"Unfortunately, the E.T. game bombed so badly that Atari buried the remaining and returned cartriges. (Supposedly in the foundation of Atari HQ.)"
E.T. was a ploy orchestrated by Steve Ross - chairman of Warner Communications - to steal Steven Spielberg away from MCA/Universal. And in that respect, it was a success because Ross hammered out a commitment by Spielberg to distribute half of his films through Warner Bros. Most critics have called shenanigans to a lot of the alleged 2600 cartridge dumping.
"Kassar screwed up the Fanicom deal. He saw Coleco present their Adam computer with Donkey Kong on it (Atari owned the rights to Donkey Kong on home computers) and tore into Nintendo. Nintendo tore into Coleco in turn (who only had console rights), but Kassar had done enough damage to the relationship that the execs who took over (after Kassar was asked to leave) had to start over from scratch. One thing lead to another, and the 7800, the Amiga 'Mickey', the Fanicom, and many other Atari projects all fell through because Atari no longer had the money to be producing new consoles OR computers."
No. Kassar did not screw up the Famicom deal. Kasser was gone. Manny Gerald was running the Company at the behest of Steve Ross when Atari was negotiating the Nintendo deal. They were within acquiring the rights when Warner had to sell Atari to defend itself from a hostile takeover from Rupert Murdoch. When Warner sold out, the deal collapsed not only for the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom but it allowed Amiga to cancel its deal with Atari and sell itself to Commodore for $25 million, which was quite a step up from $250,000, the monies Atari had funded Amiga with, and future licensing.
And no, Atari had money. Gerald was going to revive Atari Inc. and had every plan to not only acquire the Famicom rights (to sit on the product to allow the 7800 to dominate the U.S. and Europe), but to release the 7800, the 1400XL and the 1450XLD, and the near-future Amiga project(s). Unfortunately, the hostile takeover attempt by Murdoch on Warner Communications took its toll and they sold the division to Tramiel on the cheap with the intent of reacquiring the company when the pressure was off the stock. That's why Warners refused to sell Atari to Philips. Philips wanted 100% of the stock of the entire company; Warners wanted to retain 25% and that's what they did not only with the Atari consumer division with the Tramiel acquisition, but also with the Atari Games Corporation (arcade division) sale to Namco of Japan (Warners retained a 25% stake in them, and reacquired the whole thing in the early 90s).
"The only reason why Atari ever produced a home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it."
Are you high? Atari released the 400/800 8-bit computer line in 1979/1980. The XL line circa 1982/83. The later XLs w
"Atari killed Atari. Sure, they were making a pretty penny off the VCS, but they assumed the revenue and continuously overspent. The market crash thus creamed Atari, but didn't kill them."
Atari didn't overspend. The problem was that Atari made all the retailers place their orders for the holiday 1982 season many months in advance based upon the sales figures from the prior year. They banked on it and didn't expect people to stop buying games such as *Pac-Man*, *E.T.*, *Raiders of the Lost Ark*, and the *Swordquest* series. Considering those were first tier Atari titles, combined with the third party glut, contributed to the collapse of the industry along with people opting to buy computers like the Commodore 64 instead of consoles and games only for those consoles. And considering that this impacted Warners stock greatly, it put considerable pressure on them to dump Atari, even though in mid-1984 the industry was about to rebound but the bad-word-of-mouth regarding Atari forced the hands of Steve Ross to sell off the company even though the 7800 and the 1400XL and 1450XLD computers were ready for their debuts which would have kicked up the Atari sales greatly. Not to mention the Amiga hardware which was going to debut under the Atari brand in 1985, and the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom Atari was about to acquire. All of that disappeared when Warners sold a 75% stake of the Atari home computer/gaming division to Jack Tramiel & Co. Oh what could have been... and this is coming from an old Atari ST enthusiast.
"The Video Game crash of 1977, however, caused the Channel F to exit the market, leaving Atari with a 100% market share. That share would later be challenged by the more expensive Intellivision and Colecovision, but those two consoles would suffer heavily in the '83 market crash, again giving Atari the lead."
I still stand by my 90% industry stake based upon the 1981 sales figures... it was between 80% and 90%. The 90% closer when you count Atari's coin-op (aka "arcade") division and arcade games in the total videogame industry at the time. Atari was fighting against the Mattel Intellivision in 1981, and Coleco with the ColecoVision in 1982. Not to mention with itself in trying to get 2600 owners to upgrade to the 5200, much like Microsoft today with convincing businesses to upgrade to the latest edition of Microsoft Office.
"The 7800, BTW, also had a lockout system to prevent a situation like the '83 crash."
I know. I have/had a 7800. I had read how great it was in the book "Infoworld's Essential Guide to the Atari" from 1984 on to when it finally was released in 1986. I mistakenly concluded that Tramiel's Atari Corp. had finally reacquired the Atari Games arcade division and we 7800 owners would be treated to ports of the "modern" games of *Gauntlet* and *Paperboy* and I was heartbroken to discover that they were still separate companies and Tengen would be releasing the "Atari" titles on the NES instead.
The other problem with the 7800 was the lack of the Pokey audio chip. For the life of me - aside from cost - I don't understand why they didn't include that chip standard in the machine instead of packing it in the cartridges for games like *Ballblazer* to beef up the audio. Standard audio was the true weakness of the Atari 7800. It certainly wasn't the Maria graphics chip, which ate the NES's graphics chip for brunch. Single Player *Double Dragon* on the NES still cracks me up when compared to the arcade experience on the Atari 7800 and the Sega Master System. Although the Maria chip did run hot...me thinks it thought it was the ancestor to the Pentium in the heat department...
"Coleco also paid royalties on their VCS emulator / expansion module. Atari made tons of money off of the bad games since they got a royalty from everyone basically. The myth got started because the settlements were non-disclosed. Atari was the first collectors of licesenses and they didn't care how bad the games were as long as they got their cut. And Atari had some of the most tennacious lawyers in the business. A month wouldn't go by before some lawsuit was announced from Atari-Warner. What - you think Atari became as large as they did so fast because of sales of Pac Man and ET?"
Uhm, excuse me. Atari had a 90% stake in the industry before 1982, which was before the 2600 versions of Pac-Man and E.T. debuted. Atari sued because it held a ton of intellectual property which was something they learned to do because Ralph Baer and Sanders/Philips sued all the game companies based upon the intellectual property they had from the original Odyssey system. So if you want to blame the litigation trend on anyone, dump it on the doorstep of Ralph Baer because he couldn't handle the fact that his games essentially sucked and Atari did it better. Activision paid royalties to Atari because most of the early Activision games were created when the programmers had worked at Atari and took the stuff with them when they defected and founded Activision. Why do you think tech companies like Apple today insist upon coding rights to anything an employee of theirs created during their employment at Apple even if it was on their off-hours?
The whole debacle on E.T. was because of Warner Communications. You can read about it in the biography of Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Communications who was the first media person to see the value of videogames and multimedia (he bought Atari back in 1976), and later spearheaded the merger of Time and Warner before dying of prostate cancer. Ross wanted to get Steven Spielberg away from Lew Wasserman of MCA/Universal. So Ross did things like befriending Steven, having Warner pay for his house and moving costs, and then instructing Atari Inc. from above (and above Atari's objections) to pay Spielberg $25 million for the videogame rights to E.T. The gamble worked because Spielberg then decided to make half his movies for Warner Bros. and the other half still for MCA/Universal based upon personal loyalty to Wasserman. However, the gamble contributed to the collapse of Atari and the game industry (because E.T. sucked due to its rushed production) which hurt Warner's stock and triggered Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempt which in turn prompted Warner to jump the gun and sell Atari way too cheaply just to get its bad news from continuing to depress the Warner share value.
Remember...before Netscape, Atari was the fastest growing company in the history of American business. In 1980, Atari wanted to build a $500 million campus to consolidate itself in a central location in Silicon Valley instead of being spread through 75 different buildings at the time. Warner rejected the Company's request.
Had Warners administered Atari a little more independently, today, the computer and videogame industries would be dramatically different, in my humble opinion. We certainly would not be running Microsoft Windows on the majority of computers sold today, for one...
"Atari won a lawsuit against Sega in the mid-90s. I think it had to do with the fact that Atari had a copyright on certain types of scrolling backgrounds in games. Sega used a lot of scrolling backgrounds in their late 80s / early 90s games."
Patents. Atari settled with Sega. Atari had done the same thing to Nintendo, for close to $200 million as well.
Whether that kept Atari Corp. afloat or not, that's a point of debate amongst us Atarians. For most, the Company was ran into the ground. The Tramiels should have sold Atari Corp. back to TimeWarner back in 1991/92 when TimeWarner wanted them in order to combine Atari Corp.'s tech for the Lynx and the upcoming Jaguar with TimeWarner's recently re-acquried Atari Games Corp. (Atari Games arcade and Tengen in the homes) to re-create a unified Atari which would have been powerful enough to retake the industry. Alas, they did not sell out and the rest is a dismal history of incompetence.
"And you want to invest one billion dollars in these guys? Sometimes you have to look beyond the balance sheet and use some common sense. When was the last time Microsoft invested one billion in anything?"
Cough, Xbox division. Cough.... MSN. Web/MSN TV. Comcast. UltimateTV. Microsoft Foundation software. With such a track record, they should be bankrolling *Rocky 6*...
"Atari took no precautions to prevent third party games. The judge ruled that Atari didn't have a legal leg to stand on."
That's because there was no such thing as a third party video game company when the Atari 2600 VCS originally debuted in 1977. The renegade Atari employees who created Activision founded the third-party industry. The same industry that pretty much caused the 1982-84 videogame industry collapse that ruined Atari which it never truly recovered from which is why "carpet-bagging" companies like Sony and Microsoft now control the industry. Nintendo put a lock-out chip in the NES to prevent games like *Custer's Revenge* from ever appearing on their console. They wanted to restrict the third parties to ensure quality. At least that's what they told the public; the monopoly power was an alleged side-effect of that behavior. It should be remembered that Atari gained a 90% controlling interest in the earlier gaming industry without such tactics.
"But then Nintendo took Atari to court for creating third-party games for the NES and somehow got the opposite result. I do wish there were penalties for paying off judges in the United States."
Different Atari. The Atari that took Activision to court (mainly because Activision was made up of ex-Atari programmers whose games had mainly been coded on "Company" aka Atari time before they left). That was the unified Atari Inc. which encompassed both the arcade division and the consumer (home videogames and computers) divisions. Post-1984 Atari was split into two different companies when Warner sold out to try to stop Rupert Murdoch (who later bought Fox) from taking over Warner. The consumer division became Atari Corp., owned by Jack Tramiel (well, 75% owned by them and 25% by Warner, later known as TimeWarner), and the arcade division called Atari Games Corporation (75% owned by Namco of Japan and 25% by Warner). Atari Games Corp. owned the rights to the name "Atari" for arcades only; Atari Corp. controlled the rights to the brand for home videogames and computers. Thus when Atari Games wanted to get into the home gaming business, they named their division "Tengen" and signed up to become an NES licensee. They then reverse engineered the NES authorization chip and tried to be an independent third party developer because they claimed Nintendo shorted them authorized cartridges to the benefit of Nintendo's other favored third party developers. TimeWarner jumped back in and bought out Namco, and then proceeded to try to get Atari Games and Atari Corp. to work together (and they tried reacquiring Atari Corp. too) which led to the cross licensing of post-1984 Atari Games Corp. arcade titles which then appeared for the Atari Lynx game system. Atari Games Corp. sued Nintendo for monopolizing the home videogame industry in America (which they did) based upon the exclusive contracts regarding supplying authorized cartridges whereas Atari Corp. sued Nintendo on antitrust grounds for prohibiting the NES licensees from porting their titles to non-Nintendo game systems (such as the Atari 7800, the Sega Master System, and the NEC TurboGrafx-16). Somehow Atari Corp. lost their side of the case, and then proceeded to hit Nintendo upside their heads over patent infringement and they settled for nearly $200 million.
Funny how modern day Nintendo fanbois forget how vile Nintendo conducted its business back in the mid 80s to the early 90s...and its also helps to remember that once Nintendo was essentially forced to clean up its act, it lost its industry dominance to first Sega, and then Sony.
As for Atari, its the name of Infogrames American division. It is comprised of all of the American interests of Infogrames as well as the properties that Hasbro Interactive had acquired before selling out to Infogrames (including the brand, titles, and intellectual property of the former Atari Corp as of 1996). The Atari Games Corp. was sold off to WMS Industries in 1996/97 when TimeWarner rejected a bid by Nolan (King Pong, founder of Atari) Bushnell to take over the company. WMS spun off its videogame interests (the former Williams and Bally-Midway arcade companies and the formerly TradeWest home game company) into what is now known as Midway Games. Which is why you'll see such (post-1984) Atari specific classic arcade games such as "Gauntlet" comprised (and or updated) in Midway's Greatest Hits titles even though they weren't Midway titles back in the day...
"Lastly, about AOL's so called "exclusive" content.. what is so exclusive about it? What information does google not have for free out on the web for users that AOL has? Is it worth 5%?? It just seems like AOL is buying old garbage waiting to be thrown out on trash day. The AOL for broadband scheme is a complete and utter joke. First off AOL doesnt offer broadband, they just offer their neat little toy interface to go along with your broadband connection.. and all that for $9.95...and for what?"
About as much as what Apple offers.Mac subscribers in the grand scheme of things. Yet people don't really complain about that here on Slashdot...
"Is AOL really worth the $20 billion this investment (assuming its true) would value them at? It would value them at about 1/4 the entire value of TWX. Seems kinda high to me. Then again, its not as if I'm an expert at asset valuation..."
AOL ISP. AIM. MapQuest. DigitalCities. MovieFone. Netscape brand. Etc.
And had AOL been successful as becoming the premiere branded ISP for the cable companies, AOL would still have a high market valuation. Let us not forget that it was the TimeWarner brass who chose not to challenge the Comcast acquisition of AT&T Broadband all the while AOL could not make headways as a broadband ISP option for Comcast customers... Or even within the TimeWarner empire with TimeWarner Cable...
"Maybe Microsoft led them to this. Monkey Boy strikes again, to the tune of one Billion Google dollars? Nice."
Had Microsoft's MSN gotten ahold of the search feature for AOL(.com), it would have cost Google more than $1 billion. First, they would've lost $400 million annually from the deal, not to mention the fact that if Google lost a large number of searches, the rest of its advertising profits would also dramatically decrease and thereby the stock would fall. At the very least, this was a defensive move, and one that I am glad they executed. Don't forget, Microsoft's #2 motive in getting AOL's Search was to also shore up its MSN division (which is also sinking), almost as much of an incentive as hurting Google's pocketbook.
"Is this how they get around their "Don't be evil" (phoney) mantra? By buying and outsourcing all the evil to a company that's very good at being evil?"
Yeah, because AOL is SOOOOO evil. They were so evil that they bankrolled TiVo when it was starting out. So evil that even after Netscape became a non-entity, they ponied up money to spin Mozilla off as a non-profit so that development could still happen without pesky TimeWarner shareholders demanding it be closed down. So evil that they partnered with iTunes so that people could use iTunes through their AOL user name, thereby improving the audience of iTunes. So evil that they aided the antitrust litigation against Microsoft. So evil that they partnered with Apple over iChat. So evil that they provided a great deal of bandwidth for popular podcasts like *This Week in Tech* so that the podcasters didn't have to pay for the bandwidth.
Yep, that's really evil in my book.
I really wish Google took over a larger chunk of AOL, myself. Tie MapQuest to GoogleMaps. GoogleTalk to AIM. AOL through a Google sponsored Firefox web browser. DigitalCities and MovieFone directly tied to AdSense. WinAmp spun off as an open source non-profit entity. Not to mention leveraging the AOL brand for commercial wifi.
Oh, not to mention getting back to that Steve Case goal of smashing Microsoft which the rest of TimeWarner had objections to...
Although the need to Skypecast for the last season won't be as great since the DVD box set is being released on R1 DVD format for USA/Canada on Valentine's Day. Although it'll clock in at $99 US MSRP.
"Microsoft has announced an intention to kill Google. (All right, Ballmer said so to a guy who was leaving to go to Google. Same difference.) Microsoft has made some announcements of stuff to compete with Google."
Not to mention coaxing TimeWarner to dump Google in favor of MSN for AOL's Search pages. Say goodbye to 11% of Google's profit right there...
Re:But Wikipedia does NOT organize the world's inf
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Google to Buy Opera?
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"Now, if Google bought the OED, or the Britannica, then we'd have something to chat about. Plus, I'd be willing to look at (and click on) AdSense ads in exchange for a regular romp through the OED. Yum... 2-page word definitions!"
I'd prefer Google bought out WestLaw or LexisNexis, myself. Link it directly into a Google version of OpenOffice, and they'd rid law firms everywhere of legacy WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. Private litigation as well as local, State, and Federal legal costs would also be cut since they would not have to be out the cost of subscribing to whichever service Google bought out.
I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't jumped on that yet. There's gotta be some money to be made in tying KeyCite to AdSense.
"Cellphones are going to become increasingly important in connecting to the internet, and Google probably wants to make sure they're not squeezed out by MS and PocketIE. Opera has a pretty good footprint in the PDA / Cellphone world. If Google wants them this will be why."
Yet Nokia is collaborating with Apple on using Safari on their mobile phones as we speak. . .
Of course Nokia doesn't make every mobile phone in the world. It certainly does not make my Motorola RAZR, which makes me happy because I'd rather not have my head soak up as much radiation as if I stuck my head inside a microwave oven.
"Seriously though - seems like a waste of money when they can just branch off from Mozilla. You know, with that sort of being the whole POINT of the license that Mozilla is under."
Perhaps they'll [Google] figure out a way to license the Opera code over to the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation to implement into Firefox without violating any licensing contracts Opera already had with companies such as Adobe and Nokia.
I'm surprised nobody has jumped out and claimed Google is going to acquire Divx just because they assume Google is about to now that the Google Toolbar is an optional install straight off the Divx 6.1 codec download package...
"Great idea! Joss could take people out to colonize the rim. Meanwhile, here in the central planets, we could form an alliance so that everyone could enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of true civilization!"
Yeah, but judging from *Serenity*'s box office take, Joss would only be taking ten "Browncoats" along for the voyage with him...:)
If you have Cingular Wireless (soon to be rebranded *AT&T*), dump them in favor of T-Mobile. You can carry over your GSM phones to T-Mobile, and you won't be stuck in a 2 year contract. Ditching Cingular is a double-whammy to both AT&T and BellSouth since Cingular is co-owned (60% AT&T, 40% BellSouth) by them.
I went from a Sony Ericsson T616 with Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless) to a Motorola RAZR with T-Mobile and I couldn't be happier in terms of the reception I'm receiving here in NorCal. I'm getting the best signal quality (in terms of no dropped calls) since before the switchover from analog to digital.
"aren't there more important things to worry about than claiming invention rights over on and off buttons and round and square pads? honestly, i've seen this interface already as a CHILD when coleco introduced a rounded dial-pad interface on the colecovision game console...anybody see coleco going after apple and others? no. why? not sure, are they all dead over there?"
Uhm, the numeric keypad on the ColecoVision/ADAM was not round. And that was not a Coleco exclusive anyway; the Intellivision and the Atari 5200 (and later the Atari Jaguar) also featured numeric keypads on their gaming controllers. So how is that relevant to the Apple vs. Creative discussion?
Slashdot Mirror
"That being said, a lot of people in the retro crowd seem to like the 7800 better than the Nintendo. I can't understand why. The Nintendo did better on graphics, sound, and gameplay at every turn. For an example, just look at the compromises made for Double Dragon on the 7800 vs. the NES. The NES was definitely closer to the arcade."
What? The 7800 was closer to the arcade than the NES version. The NES version was so pathetic that it couldn't have the two brothers on the screen at the same time because the NES graphics chip wasn't powerful enough, unlike the 7800's Maria chip or the Sega Master System's processor. All the non-NES fans had a field day over that release. I know, I was one of them (although I also had an NES).
Pick up a 7800 and pop in *BallBlazer* and tell me the NES could do it. It couldn't. Why? Because the NES did not do sprites well. It had the background tile graphics gimmick that it relied on in every single platform game.
Had the Tramiels simply bought back the Atari Games Corp., the 7800 would have surpassed the NES because quite frankly, nobody did arcade games better than Atari Games, up until the debut of Capcom's Street Fighter II. The Atari Games library via Tengen sold (at first) a lot of NES consoles, and then Sega Genesis consoles when Atari Games/Tengen swore off Nintendo completely. When TimeWarner forced Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp. to cooperate, the Atari Games Corp. library migrated to the Atari Lynx handheld and sold quite a few Lynxes in the product's day. Unfortunately, more people bought Nintendo Gameboys because they were cheap and we are still stuck with them dominating the handheld market even though they continue to peddle wares inferior to their competitors.
"By then, Nintendo was already starting to attack the market with fresh new games."
Debatable. The ROB sure didn't sell. The NES's success in large part had to do with the fact that Nintendo monopolized the industry by restricting its third party licensees from porting and/or licensing their titles to non-NES systems; a practice they didn't drop until 1990 after several court cases (although it seemed to continue on handhelds considering the lack of 3rd party support the Atari Lynx, the NEC TurboDuo, and the Sega GameGear received) encouraged them to drop such restrictions in the console market. Its one thing to control the quality of cartridges authorized for play on a company's system; its quite another to tell any licensee not to make games for any other system (or else). Such behavior prevented the NEC TurboGrafx-16 from going anywhere here in the States whereas in Japan (under the name of "PC Engine") it was the dominant console because every company ported their games to it.
"(I mean, how many times were people going to buy Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pacman?)"
How many times did people rebuy music? From 78s, to 33 1/2s, 45s, 4 & 8 track, cassette, CD... Movies? Film, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray. People continue to buy classic boardgames like *Monopoly*. The classic videogames are becoming that institutionalized when you consider how popular the classics are on mobile phones...
1. I assume you mean Manny Gerard?
:)
I will concede that but will point out that you cannot seem to spell "Tramiel" correctly in two postings.
Your posting from Gamespot is not as accurate as from the book *Game Over*. Atari had the money; Atari never intended on releasing the Famicom. It was a defensive move, and Atari Inc. would have sat on the Famicom while selling the 7800. The 7800 was the hope at reviving the industry and their was a lot of interest in it. Unfortunately, Warners sold out, Atari Corp. disavowed itself of gaming (until the NES started selling in 1985 in the U.S. to much success) until it was too late and then half-heartedly sold the 7800 in 1986; two years too late to make the impact it should have. The Nintendoland summary is also inaccurate because it claims Warner (TimeWarner) had only 20% in Atari stock during that time period when in fact it was 100%.
Ah, the great subject of Atari...
"Research into Mind Controller devices, a Pizza Place, consoles that were never released, expensive movie/tv/comic licenses that were never released, dozens (hundreds?) of games cancelled at or near completion, massive R&D departments, etc., etc., etc. Atari overspent BIG TIME. At one point Atari estimated that the company was losing about a million dollars a day and began to close down every division possible within the company. Only a few of the games under development survived this purge, thus giving us a wealth of unreleased prototypes."
Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre - which became a big success - was sold back to Nolan Bushnell when he left Atari in 1979. Atari did not lose money on it.
There is no evidence that Atari overspent on R&D. They just added to their intellectual property library. The MindLink system was not a waste of money, nor was the research on holographics. I have no idea what patents Atari gained from Alan Kay's "amplification" projects, but I'm pretty sure Infogrames has squandered whatever they have in the portfolio due to their massive inaction with their Atari ownership.
"Unfortunately, the E.T. game bombed so badly that Atari buried the remaining and returned cartriges. (Supposedly in the foundation of Atari HQ.)"
E.T. was a ploy orchestrated by Steve Ross - chairman of Warner Communications - to steal Steven Spielberg away from MCA/Universal. And in that respect, it was a success because Ross hammered out a commitment by Spielberg to distribute half of his films through Warner Bros. Most critics have called shenanigans to a lot of the alleged 2600 cartridge dumping.
"Kassar screwed up the Fanicom deal. He saw Coleco present their Adam computer with Donkey Kong on it (Atari owned the rights to Donkey Kong on home computers) and tore into Nintendo. Nintendo tore into Coleco in turn (who only had console rights), but Kassar had done enough damage to the relationship that the execs who took over (after Kassar was asked to leave) had to start over from scratch. One thing lead to another, and the 7800, the Amiga 'Mickey', the Fanicom, and many other Atari projects all fell through because Atari no longer had the money to be producing new consoles OR computers."
No. Kassar did not screw up the Famicom deal. Kasser was gone. Manny Gerald was running the Company at the behest of Steve Ross when Atari was negotiating the Nintendo deal. They were within acquiring the rights when Warner had to sell Atari to defend itself from a hostile takeover from Rupert Murdoch. When Warner sold out, the deal collapsed not only for the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom but it allowed Amiga to cancel its deal with Atari and sell itself to Commodore for $25 million, which was quite a step up from $250,000, the monies Atari had funded Amiga with, and future licensing.
And no, Atari had money. Gerald was going to revive Atari Inc. and had every plan to not only acquire the Famicom rights (to sit on the product to allow the 7800 to dominate the U.S. and Europe), but to release the 7800, the 1400XL and the 1450XLD, and the near-future Amiga project(s). Unfortunately, the hostile takeover attempt by Murdoch on Warner Communications took its toll and they sold the division to Tramiel on the cheap with the intent of reacquiring the company when the pressure was off the stock. That's why Warners refused to sell Atari to Philips. Philips wanted 100% of the stock of the entire company; Warners wanted to retain 25% and that's what they did not only with the Atari consumer division with the Tramiel acquisition, but also with the Atari Games Corporation (arcade division) sale to Namco of Japan (Warners retained a 25% stake in them, and reacquired the whole thing in the early 90s).
"The only reason why Atari ever produced a home computer was that Tremiel infused the home section of the company with the cash to do it."
Are you high? Atari released the 400/800 8-bit computer line in 1979/1980. The XL line circa 1982/83. The later XLs w
"Atari killed Atari. Sure, they were making a pretty penny off the VCS, but they assumed the revenue and continuously overspent. The market crash thus creamed Atari, but didn't kill them."
Atari didn't overspend. The problem was that Atari made all the retailers place their orders for the holiday 1982 season many months in advance based upon the sales figures from the prior year. They banked on it and didn't expect people to stop buying games such as *Pac-Man*, *E.T.*, *Raiders of the Lost Ark*, and the *Swordquest* series. Considering those were first tier Atari titles, combined with the third party glut, contributed to the collapse of the industry along with people opting to buy computers like the Commodore 64 instead of consoles and games only for those consoles. And considering that this impacted Warners stock greatly, it put considerable pressure on them to dump Atari, even though in mid-1984 the industry was about to rebound but the bad-word-of-mouth regarding Atari forced the hands of Steve Ross to sell off the company even though the 7800 and the 1400XL and 1450XLD computers were ready for their debuts which would have kicked up the Atari sales greatly. Not to mention the Amiga hardware which was going to debut under the Atari brand in 1985, and the worldwide rights to the Nintendo Famicom Atari was about to acquire. All of that disappeared when Warners sold a 75% stake of the Atari home computer/gaming division to Jack Tramiel & Co. Oh what could have been... and this is coming from an old Atari ST enthusiast.
"The Video Game crash of 1977, however, caused the Channel F to exit the market, leaving Atari with a 100% market share. That share would later be challenged by the more expensive Intellivision and Colecovision, but those two consoles would suffer heavily in the '83 market crash, again giving Atari the lead."
I still stand by my 90% industry stake based upon the 1981 sales figures... it was between 80% and 90%. The 90% closer when you count Atari's coin-op (aka "arcade") division and arcade games in the total videogame industry at the time. Atari was fighting against the Mattel Intellivision in 1981, and Coleco with the ColecoVision in 1982. Not to mention with itself in trying to get 2600 owners to upgrade to the 5200, much like Microsoft today with convincing businesses to upgrade to the latest edition of Microsoft Office.
"The 7800, BTW, also had a lockout system to prevent a situation like the '83 crash."
I know. I have/had a 7800. I had read how great it was in the book "Infoworld's Essential Guide to the Atari" from 1984 on to when it finally was released in 1986. I mistakenly concluded that Tramiel's Atari Corp. had finally reacquired the Atari Games arcade division and we 7800 owners would be treated to ports of the "modern" games of *Gauntlet* and *Paperboy* and I was heartbroken to discover that they were still separate companies and Tengen would be releasing the "Atari" titles on the NES instead.
The other problem with the 7800 was the lack of the Pokey audio chip. For the life of me - aside from cost - I don't understand why they didn't include that chip standard in the machine instead of packing it in the cartridges for games like *Ballblazer* to beef up the audio. Standard audio was the true weakness of the Atari 7800. It certainly wasn't the Maria graphics chip, which ate the NES's graphics chip for brunch. Single Player *Double Dragon* on the NES still cracks me up when compared to the arcade experience on the Atari 7800 and the Sega Master System. Although the Maria chip did run hot...me thinks it thought it was the ancestor to the Pentium in the heat department...
"Coleco also paid royalties on their VCS emulator / expansion module. Atari made tons of money off of the bad games since they got a royalty from everyone basically. The myth got started because the settlements were non-disclosed. Atari was the first collectors of licesenses and they didn't care how bad the games were as long as they got their cut. And Atari had some of the most tennacious lawyers in the business. A month wouldn't go by before some lawsuit was announced from Atari-Warner.
What - you think Atari became as large as they did so fast because of sales of Pac Man and ET?"
Uhm, excuse me. Atari had a 90% stake in the industry before 1982, which was before the 2600 versions of Pac-Man and E.T. debuted. Atari sued because it held a ton of intellectual property which was something they learned to do because Ralph Baer and Sanders/Philips sued all the game companies based upon the intellectual property they had from the original Odyssey system. So if you want to blame the litigation trend on anyone, dump it on the doorstep of Ralph Baer because he couldn't handle the fact that his games essentially sucked and Atari did it better. Activision paid royalties to Atari because most of the early Activision games were created when the programmers had worked at Atari and took the stuff with them when they defected and founded Activision. Why do you think tech companies like Apple today insist upon coding rights to anything an employee of theirs created during their employment at Apple even if it was on their off-hours?
The whole debacle on E.T. was because of Warner Communications. You can read about it in the biography of Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Communications who was the first media person to see the value of videogames and multimedia (he bought Atari back in 1976), and later spearheaded the merger of Time and Warner before dying of prostate cancer. Ross wanted to get Steven Spielberg away from Lew Wasserman of MCA/Universal. So Ross did things like befriending Steven, having Warner pay for his house and moving costs, and then instructing Atari Inc. from above (and above Atari's objections) to pay Spielberg $25 million for the videogame rights to E.T. The gamble worked because Spielberg then decided to make half his movies for Warner Bros. and the other half still for MCA/Universal based upon personal loyalty to Wasserman. However, the gamble contributed to the collapse of Atari and the game industry (because E.T. sucked due to its rushed production) which hurt Warner's stock and triggered Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempt which in turn prompted Warner to jump the gun and sell Atari way too cheaply just to get its bad news from continuing to depress the Warner share value.
Remember...before Netscape, Atari was the fastest growing company in the history of American business. In 1980, Atari wanted to build a $500 million campus to consolidate itself in a central location in Silicon Valley instead of being spread through 75 different buildings at the time. Warner rejected the Company's request.
Had Warners administered Atari a little more independently, today, the computer and videogame industries would be dramatically different, in my humble opinion. We certainly would not be running Microsoft Windows on the majority of computers sold today, for one...
"Atari won a lawsuit against Sega in the mid-90s. I think it had to do with the fact that Atari had a copyright on certain types of scrolling backgrounds in games. Sega used a lot of scrolling backgrounds in their late 80s / early 90s games."
Patents. Atari settled with Sega. Atari had done the same thing to Nintendo, for close to $200 million as well.
Whether that kept Atari Corp. afloat or not, that's a point of debate amongst us Atarians. For most, the Company was ran into the ground. The Tramiels should have sold Atari Corp. back to TimeWarner back in 1991/92 when TimeWarner wanted them in order to combine Atari Corp.'s tech for the Lynx and the upcoming Jaguar with TimeWarner's recently re-acquried Atari Games Corp. (Atari Games arcade and Tengen in the homes) to re-create a unified Atari which would have been powerful enough to retake the industry. Alas, they did not sell out and the rest is a dismal history of incompetence.
"And you want to invest one billion dollars in these guys? Sometimes you have to look beyond the balance sheet and use some common sense. When was the last time Microsoft invested one billion in anything?"
Cough, Xbox division. Cough.... MSN. Web/MSN TV. Comcast. UltimateTV. Microsoft Foundation software. With such a track record, they should be bankrolling *Rocky 6*...
"Atari took no precautions to prevent third party games. The judge ruled that Atari didn't have a legal leg to stand on."
That's because there was no such thing as a third party video game company when the Atari 2600 VCS originally debuted in 1977. The renegade Atari employees who created Activision founded the third-party industry. The same industry that pretty much caused the 1982-84 videogame industry collapse that ruined Atari which it never truly recovered from which is why "carpet-bagging" companies like Sony and Microsoft now control the industry. Nintendo put a lock-out chip in the NES to prevent games like *Custer's Revenge* from ever appearing on their console. They wanted to restrict the third parties to ensure quality. At least that's what they told the public; the monopoly power was an alleged side-effect of that behavior. It should be remembered that Atari gained a 90% controlling interest in the earlier gaming industry without such tactics.
"But then Nintendo took Atari to court for creating third-party games for the NES and somehow got the opposite result. I do wish there were penalties for paying off judges in the United States."
Different Atari. The Atari that took Activision to court (mainly because Activision was made up of ex-Atari programmers whose games had mainly been coded on "Company" aka Atari time before they left). That was the unified Atari Inc. which encompassed both the arcade division and the consumer (home videogames and computers) divisions. Post-1984 Atari was split into two different companies when Warner sold out to try to stop Rupert Murdoch (who later bought Fox) from taking over Warner. The consumer division became Atari Corp., owned by Jack Tramiel (well, 75% owned by them and 25% by Warner, later known as TimeWarner), and the arcade division called Atari Games Corporation (75% owned by Namco of Japan and 25% by Warner). Atari Games Corp. owned the rights to the name "Atari" for arcades only; Atari Corp. controlled the rights to the brand for home videogames and computers. Thus when Atari Games wanted to get into the home gaming business, they named their division "Tengen" and signed up to become an NES licensee. They then reverse engineered the NES authorization chip and tried to be an independent third party developer because they claimed Nintendo shorted them authorized cartridges to the benefit of Nintendo's other favored third party developers. TimeWarner jumped back in and bought out Namco, and then proceeded to try to get Atari Games and Atari Corp. to work together (and they tried reacquiring Atari Corp. too) which led to the cross licensing of post-1984 Atari Games Corp. arcade titles which then appeared for the Atari Lynx game system. Atari Games Corp. sued Nintendo for monopolizing the home videogame industry in America (which they did) based upon the exclusive contracts regarding supplying authorized cartridges whereas Atari Corp. sued Nintendo on antitrust grounds for prohibiting the NES licensees from porting their titles to non-Nintendo game systems (such as the Atari 7800, the Sega Master System, and the NEC TurboGrafx-16). Somehow Atari Corp. lost their side of the case, and then proceeded to hit Nintendo upside their heads over patent infringement and they settled for nearly $200 million.
Funny how modern day Nintendo fanbois forget how vile Nintendo conducted its business back in the mid 80s to the early 90s...and its also helps to remember that once Nintendo was essentially forced to clean up its act, it lost its industry dominance to first Sega, and then Sony.
As for Atari, its the name of Infogrames American division. It is comprised of all of the American interests of Infogrames as well as the properties that Hasbro Interactive had acquired before selling out to Infogrames (including the brand, titles, and intellectual property of the former Atari Corp as of 1996). The Atari Games Corp. was sold off to WMS Industries in 1996/97 when TimeWarner rejected a bid by Nolan (King Pong, founder of Atari) Bushnell to take over the company. WMS spun off its videogame interests (the former Williams and Bally-Midway arcade companies and the formerly TradeWest home game company) into what is now known as Midway Games. Which is why you'll see such (post-1984) Atari specific classic arcade games such as "Gauntlet" comprised (and or updated) in Midway's Greatest Hits titles even though they weren't Midway titles back in the day...
"hmmmmm..... Can Google/AOL both distribute ten bajillion CDs ~and~ do no evil? ;)"
Certainly. As long as they put OpenOffice on those CDs. That would sure put a world of hurt on the street value of Microsoft Office, now wouldn't it?
"Lastly, about AOL's so called "exclusive" content.. what is so exclusive about it? What information does google not have for free out on the web for users that AOL has? Is it worth 5%?? It just seems like AOL is buying old garbage waiting to be thrown out on trash day. The AOL for broadband scheme is a complete and utter joke. First off AOL doesnt offer broadband, they just offer their neat little toy interface to go along with your broadband connection.. and all that for $9.95...and for what?"
.Mac subscribers in the grand scheme of things. Yet people don't really complain about that here on Slashdot...
About as much as what Apple offers
"Is AOL really worth the $20 billion this investment (assuming its true) would value them at? It would value them at about 1/4 the entire value of TWX. Seems kinda high to me. Then again, its not as if I'm an expert at asset valuation..."
AOL ISP. AIM. MapQuest. DigitalCities. MovieFone. Netscape brand. Etc.
And had AOL been successful as becoming the premiere branded ISP for the cable companies, AOL would still have a high market valuation. Let us not forget that it was the TimeWarner brass who chose not to challenge the Comcast acquisition of AT&T Broadband all the while AOL could not make headways as a broadband ISP option for Comcast customers... Or even within the TimeWarner empire with TimeWarner Cable...
"Maybe Microsoft led them to this. Monkey Boy strikes again, to the tune of one Billion Google dollars? Nice."
Had Microsoft's MSN gotten ahold of the search feature for AOL(.com), it would have cost Google more than $1 billion. First, they would've lost $400 million annually from the deal, not to mention the fact that if Google lost a large number of searches, the rest of its advertising profits would also dramatically decrease and thereby the stock would fall. At the very least, this was a defensive move, and one that I am glad they executed. Don't forget, Microsoft's #2 motive in getting AOL's Search was to also shore up its MSN division (which is also sinking), almost as much of an incentive as hurting Google's pocketbook.
"Is this how they get around their "Don't be evil" (phoney) mantra? By buying and outsourcing all the evil to a company that's very good at being evil?"
Yeah, because AOL is SOOOOO evil. They were so evil that they bankrolled TiVo when it was starting out. So evil that even after Netscape became a non-entity, they ponied up money to spin Mozilla off as a non-profit so that development could still happen without pesky TimeWarner shareholders demanding it be closed down. So evil that they partnered with iTunes so that people could use iTunes through their AOL user name, thereby improving the audience of iTunes. So evil that they aided the antitrust litigation against Microsoft. So evil that they partnered with Apple over iChat. So evil that they provided a great deal of bandwidth for popular podcasts like *This Week in Tech* so that the podcasters didn't have to pay for the bandwidth.
Yep, that's really evil in my book.
I really wish Google took over a larger chunk of AOL, myself. Tie MapQuest to GoogleMaps. GoogleTalk to AIM. AOL through a Google sponsored Firefox web browser. DigitalCities and MovieFone directly tied to AdSense. WinAmp spun off as an open source non-profit entity. Not to mention leveraging the AOL brand for commercial wifi.
Oh, not to mention getting back to that Steve Case goal of smashing Microsoft which the rest of TimeWarner had objections to...
I knew the good Commander had excellent taste...
Although the need to Skypecast for the last season won't be as great since the DVD box set is being released on R1 DVD format for USA/Canada on Valentine's Day. Although it'll clock in at $99 US MSRP.
"Microsoft has announced an intention to kill Google. (All right, Ballmer said so to a guy who was leaving to go to Google. Same difference.) Microsoft has made some announcements of stuff to compete with Google."
Not to mention coaxing TimeWarner to dump Google in favor of MSN for AOL's Search pages. Say goodbye to 11% of Google's profit right there...
"Now, if Google bought the OED, or the Britannica, then we'd have something to chat about. Plus, I'd be willing to look at (and click on) AdSense ads in exchange for a regular romp through the OED. Yum... 2-page word definitions!"
I'd prefer Google bought out WestLaw or LexisNexis, myself. Link it directly into a Google version of OpenOffice, and they'd rid law firms everywhere of legacy WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. Private litigation as well as local, State, and Federal legal costs would also be cut since they would not have to be out the cost of subscribing to whichever service Google bought out.
I'm actually surprised that Google hasn't jumped on that yet. There's gotta be some money to be made in tying KeyCite to AdSense.
"Yes, please buy Wikipedia and give it a less stupid name".
You mean like *Googlepedia*?
"Cellphones are going to become increasingly important in connecting to the internet, and Google probably wants to make sure they're not squeezed out by MS and PocketIE. Opera has a pretty good footprint in the PDA / Cellphone world. If Google wants them this will be why."
Yet Nokia is collaborating with Apple on using Safari on their mobile phones as we speak. . .
Of course Nokia doesn't make every mobile phone in the world. It certainly does not make my Motorola RAZR, which makes me happy because I'd rather not have my head soak up as much radiation as if I stuck my head inside a microwave oven.
"Seriously though - seems like a waste of money when they can just branch off from Mozilla. You know, with that sort of being the whole POINT of the license that Mozilla is under."
Perhaps they'll [Google] figure out a way to license the Opera code over to the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation to implement into Firefox without violating any licensing contracts Opera already had with companies such as Adobe and Nokia.
I'm surprised nobody has jumped out and claimed Google is going to acquire Divx just because they assume Google is about to now that the Google Toolbar is an optional install straight off the Divx 6.1 codec download package...
"That's no moon."
I vote on it being the lost twin planet of Earth known as "Mondas".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondas
"Great idea! Joss could take people out to colonize the rim. Meanwhile, here in the central planets, we could form an alliance so that everyone could enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of true civilization!"
:)
Yeah, but judging from *Serenity*'s box office take, Joss would only be taking ten "Browncoats" along for the voyage with him...
If you have Cingular Wireless (soon to be rebranded *AT&T*), dump them in favor of T-Mobile. You can carry over your GSM phones to T-Mobile, and you won't be stuck in a 2 year contract. Ditching Cingular is a double-whammy to both AT&T and BellSouth since Cingular is co-owned (60% AT&T, 40% BellSouth) by them.
I went from a Sony Ericsson T616 with Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless) to a Motorola RAZR with T-Mobile and I couldn't be happier in terms of the reception I'm receiving here in NorCal. I'm getting the best signal quality (in terms of no dropped calls) since before the switchover from analog to digital.
"aren't there more important things to worry about than claiming invention rights over on and off buttons and round and square pads? honestly, i've seen this interface already as a CHILD when coleco introduced a rounded dial-pad interface on the colecovision game console...anybody see coleco going after apple and others? no. why? not sure, are they all dead over there?"
Uhm, the numeric keypad on the ColecoVision/ADAM was not round. And that was not a Coleco exclusive anyway; the Intellivision and the Atari 5200 (and later the Atari Jaguar) also featured numeric keypads on their gaming controllers. So how is that relevant to the Apple vs. Creative discussion?
I really think the variable pricing scheme would short-change the iTunes Music Store affiliates, if you ask me. Would their cut be changed at all?