26 replies to this topic

[toptenmaterial]

It's 1984, and you have just acquired Atari Corp in a chaotic split from Warner. How do you return the video game giant to profitability, and create sustainability into the 21st century?

I would first drop the 2600 and 8-bit line to avoid market saturation. Release the 7800, even though all of the wrangling with Warner sets back the release until 1986. Include a better sound chip, a d-pad type controller, and also 2600 compatibility. Hire fresh out of school programmers to capitalize on the platforming craze. In the meanwhile, I would heavily promote, to the extent that money constraints allowed, my power next-gen computer line, and make sure that parts and surplies are available via circulars on the paper. Team up with Sears and get stuff in the wishbook, bulk mailings, etc.

Release the Lynx and support it throughout the 90s til just before the dawn of the GBA.

I would continue to support the 7800 against far more powerful competitors like the SNES and Genesis. Build up solid relationships with third party publishers who were freed from Nintendo's grasp by court ruling in the early 90s, and release solid titles on the 7800 platform. Do the same with successive lines of Atari computers, which by this time would have a much greater market share.

By the time 1996 roles around, release the Jag, with some technical improvements. Use a CD drive only, to spare costs, DON'T promote it's power, and release a normal controller.

By 2000, it's time for a successor to the Lynx and Jag.

How would YOU run Atari?

Edited by toptenmaterial, Wed Dec 7, 2011 3:08 PM.

[fiddlepaddle]

Step 1: fire the entire marketing department and start over with people you hire from Mattel's marketing department.

Step 2: go track down Jay Miner and look into whatever he's working on and pay him a big retainer.

Step 3: Go in halfsies with that Nintendo thing.

[Pixelboy]

Cancel all console development, and concentrate on competing with Apple's MacIntosh via a new computer line with its own mouse-driven operating system. Offer expansion modules for backward compatibility with Atari 2600 and 5200 cartridges. Release 7800 games on floppies, and let third party developers go wild on this new computer, for both games, family-oriented and business-oriented software, with somewhat stringent licensing deals to keep the crappy software at bay as much as possible.

The plan above applies for 1984 to 1989, approximately. What would follow after 1990 would depend on Atari's success with this plan.

[mike99mccarthy]

I Love console games..... but computers should have become the future of video gaming. Atari Should have released something just like the XEGS(in a black color) for christmas 85. Everyone of them would have came with a keyboard and lightgun in box. Make an awesome Pac man platformer(a la mario) a pack in title. Maybe call it the Super VCS or Avanced VCS. follow up in 89 or 90 promoting the ST computer as the main gaming platform

[Rybags]

Cancelling the 8-bit in 1984 would be a bad move.

Tramiel at least made it more competitive despite doing nothing to improve it technically besides creating the 130XE (which in itself was a logical progression and nothing revolutionary)

One thing he did wrong, he gave many technical people the boot, so was left with lots of projects midstream and nobody with much idea how to progress them further. Amy for the XE being a key one.
Also a lot of emails and works in progress were allegedly deleted by disgruntled (soon to be) ex-employees, so it might never be known what was lost there.

On one hand I'd say ditch 2600 and progress onward but the fact of the matter is that at time of aquisition the 2600 and 8-bit machines were almost all Atari had.
Fast tracking the 7800 would have been a good move. And the entire philosophy of the way they produced and marketed games continued to be flawed.

In the early 1980s, doing arcade ports was fine. By 1984, console and computer games were still technically inferior in most cases insofar as the hardware they ran on, but the good games were becoming much more complex in their plot and mechanics than arcade games, which elevated them above the "casual gamer" audience.

To the ST - the problem there was it was rushed to market, IMO Midi being a poor excuse/substitute for the machine having vastly inferior internal sound hardware to the Amiga. If they'd pumped in maybe a few months more dev time on the hardware, just a few simple elements such as a DMA driven A->D sound channel or two, word-aligned screen origin rather than page aligned, and hardware H-Scrolling could have at least put the machine in the same league as the Amiga.

Later days - by the late 1980s the profits were dwindling and it seems plenty of research was happening but not much in the way of new products or improvements on existing ones.
Improvements to the overall ST/TT/Falcon line were too slow to arrive, too expensive, and losing the once significant price:performance advantage they held over competitors.

Jaguar - one of the saddest stories. Despite US release almost 2 years ahead of the PSX and relative failure of the Saturn, it never acheived the penetration it could have.


But what would I have done? I guess if you look at it from a perspective of "keep the name alive, keep the money rolling in", then I suppose the change in strategy needed would have been to shift the company towards making PC addon cards by the early 1990s, and let the existing products die a natural death.

Think how big Atari could have been if they'd been the pioneer of hardware like Adlib, Soundblaster, 3DFX and the like.

Sure, probably a much less exciting company, but probably one that would have survived.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Interesting ideas and topic but I think it is far easier to say "I would have done THIS instead" looking back based on how everything turned out and knowing what we know and indeed it would be nice to have a magic crystal ball that could show us the results of these choices you would make instead. Funny thing is that while the ideas you would make now after the fact may seem to be better choices it is hard to say what the long term affect would have been, for all you know these decisions may result in things turning out worse in the long run. For sure it is interesting to ponder "if only" but I wonder really if in the end things would have turned out any "better"? We will never know sadly.

[Retro Rogue]

Interesting, common theme in all of them about cutting products. Problem with that though - in getting the Atari Inc. properties and forming Atari Corp., you also had to take on all the staggering debt from Atari Inc. With those products you're all cutting being the only source of income during these lean times, how would you fund future development let alone take care of all that debt like Jack did?

fiddlepaddle, on Wed Dec 7, 2011 8:46 PM, said:

Step 1: fire the entire marketing department and start over with people you hire from Mattel's marketing department.

Regarding marketing - marketing was all gone, most of them moved over to Worlds of Wonder. Remember, it wasn't a direct transfer of employees from Atari Inc. to Atari Corp. technically everyone was fired from Atari Inc. (they didn't realize it at the time) and those going through interviews with Jack's people were actually being hired over to Atari Corp.

Quote

Step 2: go track down Jay Miner and look into whatever he's working on and pay him a big retainer.

He was building Amiga. Everyone knew that.

Quote

Step 3: Go in halfsies with that Nintendo thing.

That ship sailed back in '83 with Atari Inc. By '85 NOA was already well established at going at it on their own.

[VertigoProcess]

OldSchoolRetroGamer, on Thu Dec 8, 2011 11:25 AM, said:

Interesting ideas and topic but I think it is far easier to say "I would have done THIS instead" looking back based on how everything turned out and knowing what we know and indeed it would be nice to have a magic crystal ball that could show us the results of these choices you would make instead. Funny thing is that while the ideas you would make now after the fact may seem to be better choices it is hard to say what the long term affect would have been, for all you know these decisions may result in things turning out worse in the long run. For sure it is interesting to ponder "if only" but I wonder really if in the end things would have turned out any "better"? We will never know sadly.

Agreed, hind sight is always 20/20

[Reaperman]

With my perfect hindsight--I would have invented and marketed several very successful Pokemon games, cards and toys.

[VertigoProcess]

Reaperman, on Thu Dec 8, 2011 7:26 PM, said:

With my perfect hindsight--I would have invented and marketed several very successful Pokemon games, cards and toys.

My hind sighted self prob would just win the lottery a few times and called it a day if were playing it that way... haha

[Crazyace]

I'd have made the ST a higher end system, while still trying to keep the price.
Put a 68020 at 12MHz in with 256k of ram ( 32 bit wide ) - and have a full expansion bus/slot rather than the cartridge port.
Have the graphics steal cycles ( a la 800 ) rather than be interleaved - and only have 256 colours with no pallette ( 2:2:2:2 RGBI ) with support for EGA style monitors as well as TV.
Offer 160,320,640 X and 480,240,120 Y - with a Antic style linebuffer to allow TV and line doubled monitor use.

A 68020 might bump the initial price up by $200 or even $300 , but price would still drop , and this ST would be way more competitive with the Amiga, and also the Mac and PC.

[Random Terrain]

Invest in time travel. Find out who the competition will be and destroy them. Cripple all attempts to advance technology and make sure that the Atari 2600 is the only console available until 2012. Why 2012, you ask? Because space aliens will land during the 2012 Olympics and suck out our brains, so plans beyond 2012 are a waste of time.

[PFL]

Pay the programmers real wages thus keeping 'Activision'. Do the deal with Steve Jobs for what would be Apple and leave that business to concentrate on computers. Do the deal with Jay Miner and merge 'Apple' and 'Amiga'. Keep legacy consoles alive (Flash Back units with SD slots anyone?) - Atari's biggest asset was it's early market penetration keep the momentum of that going while developing newer iterations. Quality Control on game releases would have to be a big thing too. Price games at am impulse buy level. Create proper franchises to fuel merchandise a la Ninty... Hey, this is easy! You know, I should've been a CEO.

[Retro Rogue]

PFL, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 5:18 AM, said:

Pay the programmers real wages thus keeping 'Activision'. Do the deal with Steve Jobs for what would be Apple and leave that business to concentrate on computers. Do the deal with Jay Miner and merge 'Apple' and 'Amiga'. Keep legacy consoles alive (Flash Back units with SD slots anyone?) - Atari's biggest asset was it's early market penetration keep the momentum of that going while developing newer iterations. Quality Control on game releases would have to be a big thing too. Price games at am impulse buy level. Create proper franchises to fuel merchandise a la Ninty... Hey, this is easy! You know, I should've been a CEO.

It's 1984 and the new Atari Corp. Activision was back in '79, Apple was back in '76. The deal with Jay Miner was done, and it was for licensing - not buyout/merger.

Crazyace, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 3:07 AM, said:

I'd have made the ST a higher end system, while still trying to keep the price.
Put a 68020 at 12MHz in with 256k of ram ( 32 bit wide ) - and have a full expansion bus/slot rather than the cartridge port.
Have the graphics steal cycles ( a la 800 ) rather than be interleaved - and only have 256 colours with no pallette ( 2:2:2:2 RGBI ) with support for EGA style monitors as well as TV.
Offer 160,320,640 X and 480,240,120 Y - with a Antic style linebuffer to allow TV and line doubled monitor use.

A 68020 might bump the initial price up by $200 or even $300 , but price would still drop , and this ST would be way more competitive with the Amiga, and also the Mac and PC.

The 68020 was just being introduced in 1984 (it had it's first power up test that March), and was not in production yet by the time the ST was being designed across Apr-Jul. Likewise the cost would have been way more prohibitive than that for a brand new chip just being released (with no second source), there would have been no way to meet the desired low end margin. There's a reason why 68020's were first used in 1985 - in high end workstations - and then in the high end Mac II in 1987.


Guys, hind site is not 20/20 if you're not going by the actual facts.

[PFL]

Well, see, you just proved my point. With my grasp on the facts I'd make a perfect Atari CEO.

[fiddlepaddle]

Well, Retro Rogue, it's 1984, not 1985, and since I (not Mr T.) just bought the company, I've been working at it behind the scenes for a while, at least since 1983, and probably since ET carts (and yes, I know, other parts) were dumped. I obviously know about Jay Miner because I do my research and befriend him ahead of time (and offer moola from my coffers of investment capital). The Atari Amiga would ultimately become the video processing/multimedia standard of choice, attracting a merger with Apple (making me even more millions) and we'd all be carrying Amigaphones and Amigapads...

When I have 20/20 hindsight, it ALWAYS works out in my favor; historical probability is not involved.

[Pixelboy]

fiddlepaddle, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 10:42 PM, said:

When I have 20/20 hindsight, it ALWAYS works out in my favor; historical probability is not involved.

You've obviously never heard of the butterfly effect.

[Crazyace]

Retro Rogue, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 9:54 AM, said:

Crazyace, on Fri Dec 9, 2011 3:07 AM, said:

I'd have made the ST a higher end system, while still trying to keep the price.
Put a 68020 at 12MHz in with 256k of ram ( 32 bit wide ) - and have a full expansion bus/slot rather than the cartridge port.
Have the graphics steal cycles ( a la 800 ) rather than be interleaved - and only have 256 colours with no pallette ( 2:2:2:2 RGBI ) with support for EGA style monitors as well as TV.
Offer 160,320,640 X and 480,240,120 Y - with a Antic style linebuffer to allow TV and line doubled monitor use.

A 68020 might bump the initial price up by $200 or even $300 , but price would still drop , and this ST would be way more competitive with the Amiga, and also the Mac and PC.

The 68020 was just being introduced in 1984 (it had it's first power up test that March), and was not in production yet by the time the ST was being designed across Apr-Jul. Likewise the cost would have been way more prohibitive than that for a brand new chip just being released (with no second source), there would have been no way to meet the desired low end margin. There's a reason why 68020's were first used in 1985 - in high end workstations - and then in the high end Mac II in 1987.


Guys, hind site is not 20/20 if you're not going by the actual facts.

Well as I said I'd forgo the extreme low end margin to get the processor in , and increase the price to the consumer. ( By increase price I mean at least $500 - to offset the very high cost of a 68020 at 12MHz )
With a faster cpu and better professional graphics you would pull in more of the PC/workstation/mac crowd - price cuts etc could follow eventually , and the product would be much more future proof. ( I know that the 020 appeared in workstations first - but I expect Jack could have got a good price from Motorola based on quantity )
Wasnt there a rumour anyway about the NS32032 being the cpu anyway?

Edited by Crazyace, Sat Dec 10, 2011 9:44 AM.

[Crazyace]

I tracked this down ( processortimeline.info/proc1980.htm ) which prices the 16MHz 68020 at $487 - I'm assuming a cheaper price for bulk ( and 12MHz ) .
Interestingly I tracked a Workstation launch here:
http://books.google....epage&q&f=false
This is expensive, but prices the 68020 workstation product at roughly the same price as competitors 68010 products - so I dont think the market is quite the same as that of the more cut throat ST/Amiga.

[toptenmaterial]

My Atari fantasy is to release the sub-$100 tablet. Tablets for the masses, not the classes!

[fiddlepaddle]

toptenmaterial, on Sat Dec 10, 2011 11:14 AM, said:

My Atari fantasy is to release the sub-$100 tablet. Tablets for the masses, not the classes!

That would be the Atari Kindle, my other main product.

[wood_jl]

What's the point in wasting time on this kind of thread? You can't pose the question FREE OF HINDSIGHT so there's no point, at all. Give it a rest. How many times has this been done before? Is there no end?

[Random Terrain]

wood_jl, on Sun Dec 11, 2011 12:10 AM, said:

What's the point in wasting time on this kind of thread? You can't pose the question FREE OF HINDSIGHT so there's no point, at all. Give it a rest. How many times has this been done before? Is there no end?

And who wants to be free of hindsight anyway? If we got rid of hindsight, we wouldn't be able to look at nice, round, bubble butts, so embrace hindsight firmly and never let it go!

[Retro Rogue]

Crazyace, on Sat Dec 10, 2011 10:21 AM, said:

I tracked this down ( processortimeline.info/proc1980.htm ) which prices the 16MHz 68020 at $487 - I'm assuming a cheaper price for bulk ( and 12MHz ) .

16MHz was the launch rate, not 12MHz, there were no secondary sources at that point which would also be prohibitive with cost and sourcing ("bulk" had little to do with the supply chain of that scale). Everything's in "bulk" when you're talking about electronics manufacturing. It seems like you're trying to lay small business bulk orders of napkins and toiletpaper on to this or electronics aftermarkets, and that's not how it works - that's not the important factor in deciding end cost and usage.

Quote

Interestingly I tracked a Workstation launch here:
http://books.google....epage&q&f=false
This is expensive, but prices the 68020 workstation product at roughly the same price as competitors 68010 products - so I dont think the market is quite the same as that of the more cut throat ST/Amiga.

I'm not sure what your point is, the workstation that first used the 68020 was not mentioned to compare markets. Very specifically, the workstation market (as with any new high end processor launch) was the only market that could support the chip cost wise, which is why it was brought up.. Mid and low level markets usually adopt a processor once it's been out for some years and either the manufacturing costs have dropped, supply sources are more established, a cost reduced version has been produced, or the introduction of newer higher end processors have pushed it to a lower pricing tier.

Once again, saying you'd try to do that in 1984 is ignoring all these facts is pure unrealistic fantasy. Going after the higher end computer market in 1984 (which includes all the R&D since you'd be starting from scratch) with the mass amounts of debt that you just inherited would not be a favorable plan. Your market's limited (since the Atari brand had no previous inroads in that market to draw from), your dev time now just increased to a good year and half to two years instead of the year it took for the first 520ST's to roll off the assembly for evaluations and club use. This compared to the already established marketing and distributions chains that were just purchased from the previous Atari, and well established user group network to leverage for grass roots adoption support. You'd be throwing all that away as well, because the chains and marketing were for the consumer market not business (Tramiel had enough of a hard time making business inroads several years later), and there's no way the user group would have supported a jumnp to that high of a cost and model - there was enough of an outcry from those groups regarding the jumping from 8-bits to lower end 16-bits. Saying you'd do all that in 1984 is a plan for an ST fan in unclear hindsite that's going after a more general "wouldn't it be neat" personal want laundry list. There's nothing wrong with that if it's in that light, but it doesn't seem you're approaching it that way.

[GroovyBee]

Hmmmm... Jim'll fix it!