59 replies to this topic

[Atariman]

any updates on this? anyone? anyone at all? seemed so interesting, but then this thread just kinda choked.

[Retro Rogue]

blehrer said:

I wonder if anybody could help me with some detective work.

A client of mine owns a large inventory of the original 7800 Atari games. He sees a demand for the manufacture of Atari 7800 machines so that he can sell his game inventory and has contracted us to find a manufacturer for the machines. We have identified a factory and qualified engineers for the project. However, they need some help that apparently (I am not an engineer!) only an original Atari engineer would be able to provide. Does anybody know anybody who might be able to help us out?

Thank you

Barney Lehrer
North American Trade Associates
New York

Would that "client" be Bill Houlehan (O'Shea)? He contacted me about a year ago asking if I had info on on the original manufacturing plant in Taiwan. By the way, did he manage to get permission from Infogrames to do this?

[ApolloBoy]

[quote="JaySeaver"][quote]
...you could sell it for about $75, sell enough to make the production run worthwhile, and (maybe) sell them to people other than the folks in the already-saturated Atari enthusiast market.[quote]




What?! 75 dollars!? What are you smoking?! I want it for $10-$30!!!

[Atariman]

you'll never get it that cheap. We're talking about a brand new 7800 system with an extremely limited production run (probably). It's tough to even find old USED 7800 systems for that cheap.

[desiv]

Actually, I frequently see 7800 systems with a few games for $25-35 on EBay...

Got mine for $19 (+ shipping) with 4 games (Yes, that included the AC adapter)..

Yeah, alot of systems go for more, but if you're patient, that price range is easy to get..

Unless it's the kualest looking thing known to man, I can't see many people paying $75 for a system.. (Unless it came with Mean 18 :-)

desiv

[joeybastard]

I don't think the original message was real at all. How could the reproduction of an entire piece of hardware be the solution to selling off cartridge stock? It would be more cost effective to sell these carts for $2 each then to develop and market a piece of very outdated and not very well known hardware.

[Edit_5]

I'm beginning to agree with you Joey, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense...

[JaySeaver]

joeybastard said:

How could the reproduction of an entire piece of hardware be the solution to selling off cartridge stock?

Well, at last check, O'Shea's claims 1.3M cartridges in stock, with 32 distinct varieties, or roughly 40,000 of each.

All these games are dirt-common. They've probably saturated the active Atari market - nearly everybody that has a 2600 or 7800 and has heard of them likely has a copy of every game they'd be interested in. So, their options are basically to either make more people aware of these games' availability (assuming that the market isn't completely tapped out), to crush them up and bury them in the desert, or to create new customers. Apparently they're going for option "C".

Now, who their (assuming it's O'Shea's, which is all but definite) market is for 200,000 new 7800s, I'm not sure. I don't think there are that many people who woud like one but don't like buying secondhand/don't trust ebay, or who have a bunch of 2600 games in the attic but no system. That's why I wondered if maybe a portable system would be the way to go - if you can come up with a 7800/2600 portable for roughly the price of a GBA, that might be a new market - folks who wouldn't buy a 7800 to hook up to their TV might buy one to play on the bus. The thing is, I don't know how many of those people would be buying games, too - I'd like a 7800 portable, but I've already got all the 26/7800 games they have that I want.

Now, what would be really funny would be if this thing was made available and they got orders for a million of them, and had to negotiate with Atari for the right to manufacture new cartridges.

[Atariman]

Edit_5 said:

I'm beginning to agree with you Joey, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense...

hmm. that's what I was thinking in the beginning, but then I got convinced differently. Now I'm REALLY not sure.

[Edit_5]

@ blehrer any updates for us?