As the author wrote in another article, in retrospect it is almost inexplicable that Atari didn't simply release the 5200 as a keyboardless 8-bit computer, as o

As the author wrote in another article, in retrospect it is almost inexplicable that Atari didn't simply release the 5200 as a keyboardless 8-bit computer, as opposed to using the same hardware but making the two platforms incompatible. There is absolutely no reason why it could not have released the equivalent of the XEGS in 1982, instead of five years later; doing so would have given the 5200 a large library immediately, especially given that it came out in the brief window the Atari 8-bits were the clear choice for computer games (after the Apple II and before the C64). It would have also protected the company from the "Why not buy a computer instead?" argument that contributed to the crash a year later. The only explanation I can come up with for this not happening was the incredibly bad internal war at Atari between the coin-op, computer, and console divisions. InfoWorld in 1984 covered the chaos in detail <http://books.google.com/books?id=gy4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q&f=true http://books.google.com/books?id=gy4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&pg=PA...>. The 7800 was another mistake along these lines, with better graphics but worse sounds than the 5200 or 8-bit.