11 replies to this topic

[DracIsBack]

As I was playing my recently received 7800 ACE OF ACES last night, I was reminded of a theory I've always had ... that the Tramiels deliberately crippled 7800 support in favour of the Atari XE Game System.

I've been on a kick to collect 7800 and XE carts lately. Playing versions of games for both systems has reminded me of why I feel this theory might have some validity.

While the 7800 graphics and animation technology was newer and more advanced than the XE, many XE versions of games had better graphics and/or were more playable than the 7800 versions - in a way that almost seemed deliberate.


Take a look at KARATEKA. Not a particularly complex game in terms of graphics or gameplay. After seeing the 7800 pull off games like ALIEN BRIGADE, TOWER TOPPLER, COMMANDO and MIDNIGHT MUTANTS, Karateka would seem like an easy effort.

On the 7800, the graphics are pared down. Many of the elements (ie. the gate, the kick doors) are missing from the play. Some of the animations are gone. The hawk looks like a duck in heat. And it has some of the most unresponsive joystick control in history.

In comparison, the XE cart is bang on, with all the familiar elements there. The graphics look like the should, the game plays like it should. Hmm ...

Witness Sumer Games. The XE one has a title screen. The 7800 one doesn't. The 7800 is missing some events like skeet shooting. Mysteriously, the XE one has all the 7800 events + the missing events. Hmmm ...

Witness Crossbow. More detailed graphics and better use of colour, even though the 7800 has the same colour palette and more advanced graphics capabilities. The XE one has some digitized sound, which could also have been pulled off on the 7800 (witness JINKS) but wasn't.

**************

It was almost as though the 7800 became Atari's premiere system from 1986-9 despite Atari's best efforts. They seemed to want the XE to succeed, despite its older technology.

In hindsight, I can understand why. While both the XE and the 7800 were more capable on a technical level than the 2600, the XE already had pre-developed games on disk which could be cheaply ported. On the other hand, the 7800 games would have to be developed at a higher cost. Atari already had a pre-existing library of cart games for the XE. They also could sell XE carts to 8-bit computer users and 8-bit peripherals and disk software to XEGS users. Cheap and easy to support.

Just a thought.

[King Atari]

Deliberately crippled the 7800? Who knows what Tramiel was doing. He buried it with poor marketing, yet kept it going until 1990-1. I don't know, but the fact that it sold so poorly is an indication that he didn't care enough for marketing.

[tyranthraxus]

Well it could have been a case of inexperienced programmers. The XE
had been around for years and programming for it was no mystery.
The 7800 never got a proper launch, usually the first year of games for
a system is pretty bland and this period was extended because the 7800
was just thrown out there by Atari.

[King Atari]

That's a good point. The first generation of 7800 games are very bland, and pretty much recycled from what everyone had already seen.

[Agent X]

DracIsBack said:

As I was playing my recently received 7800 ACE OF ACES last night, I was reminded of a theory I've always had ... that the Tramiels deliberately crippled 7800 support in favour of the Atari XE Game System.

I never really thought about it until you mentioned it. It seems like it could be possible, but maybe it's not so much a case of the Tramiels "crippling" 7800 support as it was of emphasizing the XE Game System over the 7800.

DracIsBack said:

It was almost as though the 7800 became Atari's premiere system from 1986-9 despite Atari's best efforts. They seemed to want the XE to succeed, despite its older technology.

Of course they wanted the XE to succeed. I'm sure they wanted all of their systems to succeed. But, as you said, I think the 7800 kind of became their main game system during that period, even though the Tramiels probably wanted that honor to go to the XE. More on this in a moment.

DracIsBack said:

In hindsight, I can understand why. While both the XE and the 7800 were more capable on a technical level than the 2600, the XE already had pre-developed games on disk which could be cheaply ported. On the other hand, the 7800 games would have to be developed at a higher cost. Atari already had a pre-existing library of cart games for the XE. They also could sell XE carts to 8-bit computer users and 8-bit peripherals and disk software to XEGS users.  Cheap and easy to support.

It makes a lot of sense. At the same time, it also illustrates the flaws of one company trying to produce and support three separate video game platforms simultaneously.

As the story goes, the XEGS was born because Atari had a huge stock of software and peripherals for their 8-bit computers that they were trying to clear out. Unfortunately, the 8-bit computers were aging fast, and anyone who still wanted a cheaper 8-bit computer instead of a newer 16-bit computer was buying a Commodore 64/128. So, instead of pushing the XE line as "home computers," they developed the XE Game System and repositioned the platform as a high-end game console that could also be expanded into an entry-level computer (shades of the Coleco Adam, although the XEGS was many times more of a "real" computer than the Adam ever was).

The problem was that Atari already had the 7800 as their high-end console. With the introduction of the XEGS, the 7800 was now realigned as a sort of mid-range console. This move by itself might have at least slightly stifled the 7800 in the consumers' eyes--the 7800 was no longer Atari's "best" system. This didn't really affect the 2600 because it was already the low-end system--it could still sell because it was dirt cheap, and 2600 cartridges could sell to the existing user base.

With regard to the 7800 vs. the XEGS, I perceive the XEGS as a better overall machine-- it had more memory, more expandability, and more software. As a pure gaming console (in relation to contemporary game consoles of the day), I think the 7800 was better suited to the task--the graphics were better, it had two-button joysticks, and backward compatibility with the 2600.

I think certain types of game styles translated better to the XEGS (particularly anything using the keyboard), and of course some existing disk games could be (and were) modified for cartridges rather than programming a new version. But, overall, I think the 7800 was better at doing fast-action arcade-style games.

Some of the computer conversions to the 7800 might've suffered for the reason they couldn't be ported over as easily as they could to the XEGS. Were the 7800 ports "crippled" in the process? I don't know. I think some of the games were just quick and/or shoddy ports by developers who were inexperienced or "less talented" (to put it kindly). Some of the others, though (for example, Ballblazer, One-on-One Basketball, Tower Toppler), turned out pretty good.

Going back to what I was saying earlier, though, this really showcases the problem of having to support so many game systems at once. Atari was the first company to attempt to support three separate video game platforms at the same time. There are often times when companies will have two systems on the market, but this is usually when transitioning from a time-tested older system to a new "next generation" system (for example, Atari 2600 to Atari 5200, NES to Super NES, PlayStation to PlayStation 2). However, more than two at a time (not counting handhelds) is very rare, and it has never worked--the only other major company that I can recall ever tried this was Sega in the mid 1990's with the Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn. (Yes, the Sega CD and 32X were peripherals for the Genesis and not "systems" per se, but they were being positioned as gaming platforms with their own lines of game software.) You end up competing with yourself in the process.

Atari should have probably done something a little more drastic to reduce the number of game systems they were supporting at once. It's easy to say this in hindsight, especially considering Atari didn't have a precedent (unlike Sega who should have known better). Still, I'll give some ideas now on what they could have done that might've helped them gain more marketshare (of course, there was lots more they needed to do, like marketing, advertising, etc.).

1. They should have discontinued the 2600 console by early 1988. They could still produce 2600 software for a short time afterward (so as not to leave 2600 owners hanging), but the system itself should have been killed off.

2. They reposition the 7800 as their main video game system, as the direct successor to the 2600 (for those looking to play 2600 games), and focus on the 7800 (instead of the XEGS) as the direct competitor to the NES and SMS (remember Atari's XEGS ads with Nintendo's "toy robot").

3. The XEGS should have still been supported, but positioned as a higher-end "computer gaming system," with a focus on more computer-style games. It should have competed more with the Commodore 64/128 game market. Yes, that's pretty much what the old XE computers were doing just a year or two earlier, but what I'm saying is that the marketing shift should have been less dramatic. In the late 1980's, the XE and C64/128 were "home computers" that were aimed at consumers, rather than serious business-oriented number crunchers that they were originally positioned as. Commodore 8-bit owners knew (especially after the Amiga release) where the C64/128's position was in the market, and had no problem with their computers as machines that played a lot of games and did a little bit of work (for school or personal productivity) on the side. Atari should have taken that position with the XEGS, albeit with a bit more gaming emphasis for obvious reasons.

4. Overlapping conversions (games that were ported to 2 or 3 systems) should have been kept to a minimum. Except for the case of very big hit games, they should have kept the computer conversions exclusively on the XEGS (going with #3 above). The 2600 took away from 7800 business, too. Hot new arcade games should have come out on the 7800 only--or, at the very least, debuted exclusively on the 7800 for at least 6-12 months. After all, why buy a 7800 to play Xenophobe or Ikari Warriors when you could just get a version that works on your old 2600? I knew some friends with 7800 systems that bought 2600 versions of games like Desert Falcon or Crossbow just because they were $5 cheaper or could be found in stores more easily than the 7800 versions.

I don't know how well these strategies would have worked, but I think they could have helped to improve the situation for Atari. What do you think?

[Agent X]

King Atari said:

That's a good point. The first generation of 7800 games are very bland, and pretty much recycled from what everyone had already seen.

I disagree. I feel many of the early 7800 games were not bland at all. In fact, they were quite good, even compared to some of the later titles. Several of those games had never been previously released on a home video game system or computer (Pole Position II, Xevious, Food Fight, Galaga). Of the other games, even though they had been released previously, the 7800 versions were the best available versions; in most cases very noticeably so. Seeing such good, high-quality conversions of arcade games that I liked made the 7800 a very attractive system for me.

[King Atari]

Maybe bland was the wrong word. What I mean is that they were all ports of old arcade games, there was nothing original like the NES had with Super Mario Bros.

[jsoper]

Man it' hard to say whether the 7800 was deliberately crippled because Atari was so incredibly incompetent by that time anyway. Look at the 7800 controllers that hardly anyone likes, or the NTSC Impossible Mission that you can't finish (testing department, hello?).

The other posters made some good points. I still think that if the best parts of the 5200 and 7800 were combined into one console and then heavily marketed, it would have been a contender.
John

[DracIsBack]

"pping conversions (games that were ported to 2 or 3 systems) should have been kept to a minimum. Except for the case of very big hit games, they should have kept the computer conversions exclusively on the XEGS (going with #3 above). T"

This is another good point ... the Atari 7800 really got nailed by Atari's dumbass approach of releasing the same games on all three systems. As you note, that stupid practice of releasing 2600 versions and 7800 versions of the same games was confusing the consumer ... especially when the 2600 version was always labelled as being, "for the 2600 and 7800." It didn't help bring over potential buyers because it led many people to think that the 7800 was really just a repackaged 2600 with the same crude graphics. You still see non-Atarians on the usenet who have that viewpoint.

I could see where Atari was coming from because they wanted to get the most out of their licenses but it really hurt their systems, particularly the 7800.

[King Atari]

Desert Falcon is a good example of that, people probably thought it came in two different packages, but it was the same game.

[Agent X]

DracIsBack said:

As you note, that stupid practice of releasing 2600 versions and 7800 versions of the same games was confusing the consumer ... especially when the 2600 version was always labelled as being, "for the 2600 and 7800."

I suppose there might have been some confusion going on, but in my circle of friends that was never really the case. The packaging was pretty distinct at that time, with the different colored boxes and large "2600" or "7800" at the top. On the other hand, I have seen people who were confused between Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance game packaging.

In the cases where my friends opted for the 2600 versions over the 7800 versions, the decision was made because the 2600 versions were cheaper and/or more easily obtainable than the 7800 versions. I mentioned Desert Falcon and Crossbow as examples, because I myself had a very hard time tracking down the 7800 versions of each. I think I got them from either Sears catalog or J.C. Penney catalog. Even after I had gotten them for myself, I had friends who had 7800 systems, played the 7800 versions at my house, and still ended up buying the 2600 versions later, for the reasons I mentioned above. They were completely aware that 7800 versions existed, but apparently felt it was easier to walk into their local Kay-Bee or Child World and buy the 2600 versions, than it was to order from a catalog, pay $5 more, and wait a week for the 7800 versions (which weren't stocked locally) to arrive in the mail.

DracIsBack said:

It didn't help bring over potential buyers because it led many people to think that the 7800 was really just a repackaged 2600 with the same crude graphics. You still see non-Atarians on the usenet who have that viewpoint.

Yes, that's ignorance for you. I also regularly encounter people in real life who think that the Jaguar isn't really 64-bit and "Atari just added two 32-bit processors together" because "EGM said so."

Stores tended to stock more 2600 titles than 7800 titles, because the 2600 had a much larger userbase. Also, 2600 games could be played by both 2600 and 7800 owners, but 7800 games could only be enjoyed by the 7800's much smaller userbase. There wasn't much incentive to stock 7800 games, especially games that were available in a 2600 version. Although I and a lot of my friends viewed backward compatibility as a great benefit to the 7800, it might have also been a hindrance in some ways, particularly when it came to developer and retailer support.

Sega had a similar problem with Sega CD and 32X, because many of their games were just enhanced versions of Genesis 16-bit cartridges. Many consumers didn't see the need to buy Sega CD or 32X if most of the popular games were going to come out on regular Genesis cartridges anyway.

The GBA and PS2 seemed to have been much more successful in their transitions, because they didn't have nearly as much overlap, and Nintendo/Sony pushed for development (both first-party and third-party) of games that took good advantage of the newer systems' capabilities.

[Witchfynde]

Agent X said:

The packaging was pretty distinct at that time, with the different colored boxes and large "2600" or "7800" at the top.  

Yeah I never had a problem with that either, all you had to do was spend a whole second and a half looking closely, and that was about it.

Agent X said:

DracIsBack said:

It didn't help bring over potential buyers because it led many people to think that the 7800 was really just a repackaged 2600 with the same crude graphics. You still see non-Atarians on the usenet who have that viewpoint.

Yes, that's ignorance for you. I also regularly encounter people in real life who think that the Jaguar isn't really 64-bit and "Atari just added two 32-bit processors together" because "EGM said so."

Well, it's always been the controversial argument whether or not Jaguar was really 64 bit or 32 bit (I just recently found out the Turbo Grafix 16 wasn't truly 16 bit myself!). I guess I'm lucky to NOT know enough about the technical specs to argue either way...?

Agent X said:

Sega had a similar problem with Sega CD and 32X, because many of their games were just enhanced versions of Genesis 16-bit cartridges. Many consumers didn't see the need to buy Sega CD or 32X if most of the popular games were going to come out on regular Genesis cartridges anyway.

I don't think most of the 32X games came out for the Genesis: Star Wars Arcade, Metal Head, Kolibri, Doom, Shadow Squadron, Star Trek Starfleet Academy, Fahrenheit (sp?), Knuckles, etc. It has been argued, though, that one reason the 32X didn't sell well was because people thought it was too expensive, especially without a game included for the price. Also, Sega of Japan refused to support the 32X for a while, probably due to the fact that they figured (I'm assuming) that if people wanted a 32 bit gaming system, they'd just GET one: the 3D0 had been out for a while, the Jaguar was either 32 or 64 bit, and the Playstation had been released a little before the 32X (if memory serves me correctly). I agree with the Sega CD games' assessment, though, since a lot of 'em had killer intros but the rest of the gameplay was pretty much you could get on a cartridge. So much for a cd game supposedly holding the memory of over 500 Genesis cartridges (which is what Sega said themselves in articles!)!