3 ms·

Every story I hear about Atari is wild. Hard to believe they managed to have the success they did.

ForOldHack 1y ago
I took a class from an ex-executive. It was trajecially worse. Almost every morning for them was a jaw dropping knuckle dragging experience. This is the Harvard text book example of "let the adults handle it."
- lordfrito 1y ago
  I'm endlessly fascinated by the stories that come out about the execs dealings during that period. How they were offered and passed on being the American distributor for the NES (all because the exec saw Donkey Kong running on a Coleco Adam at CES). [0] And how they funded but f'ed up the deal with the Amiga chipset (it should have been theirs but Commodore stole it at the 11'th hour). [1] Or how they were illegally bypassing DRAM price controls in the Tramiel era (the illegal $$$ is the main reason Atari stayed afloat after the disastrous Federated Group purchase). [2] The list goes on and on. I'm under the impression that there's a lot of real dirty stuff that's been swept under the rug, maybe now lost to time, as many of the execs are no longer with us. A lot is documented in the book "Atari: Business if Fun". [3] A shame that the follow up book "Atari: Business is War" will likely never be finished. [4] [0] https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-remember-when-atari-turned-down-nintendo-and-sega https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-remember-wh... [1] https://www.nostalgianerd.com/the-amiga-story/ https://www.nostalgianerd.com/the-amiga-story/ [2] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/207245-secret-atari-dram-resale-operation-revealed-by-fbi/page/2/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/207245-secret-atari-dram-r... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/0985597402 https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/098... [4] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/227211-atari-corp-business-is-war/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/227211-atari-corp-business...
lordfrito 1y ago
Mainly because they were the only game in town back then. At the time they were the fastest growing company in history... So many $$$, for a time everything they touched turned to gold. Being first in a new industry, they made all the mistakes that subsequent companies learned from and avoided. For example, putting a textiles executive in charge, treating developers like assembly line workers, etc. This all laid the seeds for their subsequent implosion... Epic rise, epic fall. I wish someone would make a movie about that story.
- hinkley 1y ago
  First you're successful because you didn't listen to anyone telling you that you were going to fail. Then you fail because you didn't listen to anyone telling you that you were going to fail. There's a story in business that the CEO that built the company is not the CEO that can keep it running. That definitely seems to be true.
johnvanommen 1y ago
> Every story I hear about Atari is wild. Hard to believe they managed to have the success they did. It was a different era. I worked in a mall arcade in the early 90s, and because we purchased arcade games, I had access to the trade shows and various promotional events. For instance, E3 invited me to come out for their first event. The size of the teams in the early 90s was TINY; I met the dudes who made Mortal Kombat at the AMOA convention, and the entire team was less than ten people. The main programmer had so little experience, he was largely known for doing the voice of "Rudy" in the pinball game "Funhouse." Basically, the tech community was tiny and the gaming community was a tiny subdomain of the tech community. Atari's big innovation may have simply been that it was founded in the right location (Silicon Valley.) If it wasn't for that, Steve Jobs wouldn't have worked at Atari. (And Wozniak wouldn't have moonlighted at Atari.) https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-employee-number-40 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-empl... I'm doing this from memory, but IIRC: Atari was the only major gaming company based out of Silicon Valley A lot of the games of the time were basically just Japanese games that were licensed by US distributors. Pac Man came from Namco in Japan and was distributed in the US by Chicago's Midway, Space Invaders was made by Taito in Japan and licensed in the US. (Also by Midway, IIRC.) "Defender" was one of the first 'homegrown' games in the US that wasn't coming out of Atari in Silicon Valley. (Defender was made by Eugene Jarvis in Chicago for Williams, who later merged with Midway.) Although Nintendo was NOT based in Silicon Valley, they had the dumb luck of locating just up the hill from Microsoft. If you've seen "King of Kong," the dude from the documentary basically lives halfway between Microsoft in Redmond and Nintendo in Snoqualmie: https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend Sega WAS based in Silicon Valley, but their slow decline was arguably due to a political tug-of-war between Sega of America (based in Silicon Valley) and Sega (based in Japan.)

I took a class from an ex-executive. It was trajecially worse. Almost every morning for them was a jaw dropping knuckle dragging experience. This is the Harvard text book example of "let the adults handle it."

lordfrito 1y ago
I'm endlessly fascinated by the stories that come out about the execs dealings during that period. How they were offered and passed on being the American distributor for the NES (all because the exec saw Donkey Kong running on a Coleco Adam at CES). [0] And how they funded but f'ed up the deal with the Amiga chipset (it should have been theirs but Commodore stole it at the 11'th hour). [1] Or how they were illegally bypassing DRAM price controls in the Tramiel era (the illegal $$$ is the main reason Atari stayed afloat after the disastrous Federated Group purchase). [2] The list goes on and on. I'm under the impression that there's a lot of real dirty stuff that's been swept under the rug, maybe now lost to time, as many of the execs are no longer with us. A lot is documented in the book "Atari: Business if Fun". [3] A shame that the follow up book "Atari: Business is War" will likely never be finished. [4] [0] https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-remember-when-atari-turned-down-nintendo-and-sega https://www.timeextension.com/features/flashback-remember-wh... [1] https://www.nostalgianerd.com/the-amiga-story/ https://www.nostalgianerd.com/the-amiga-story/ [2] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/207245-secret-atari-dram-resale-operation-revealed-by-fbi/page/2/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/207245-secret-atari-dram-r... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/0985597402 https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/098... [4] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/227211-atari-corp-business-is-war/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/227211-atari-corp-business...

lordfrito 1y ago

Mainly because they were the only game in town back then. At the time they were the fastest growing company in history... So many $$$, for a time everything they touched turned to gold. Being first in a new industry, they made all the mistakes that subsequent companies learned from and avoided. For example, putting a textiles executive in charge, treating developers like assembly line workers, etc. This all laid the seeds for their subsequent implosion... Epic rise, epic fall. I wish someone would make a movie about that story.

hinkley 1y ago
First you're successful because you didn't listen to anyone telling you that you were going to fail. Then you fail because you didn't listen to anyone telling you that you were going to fail. There's a story in business that the CEO that built the company is not the CEO that can keep it running. That definitely seems to be true.

johnvanommen 1y ago

> Every story I hear about Atari is wild. Hard to believe they managed to have the success they did. It was a different era. I worked in a mall arcade in the early 90s, and because we purchased arcade games, I had access to the trade shows and various promotional events. For instance, E3 invited me to come out for their first event. The size of the teams in the early 90s was TINY; I met the dudes who made Mortal Kombat at the AMOA convention, and the entire team was less than ten people. The main programmer had so little experience, he was largely known for doing the voice of "Rudy" in the pinball game "Funhouse." Basically, the tech community was tiny and the gaming community was a tiny subdomain of the tech community. Atari's big innovation may have simply been that it was founded in the right location (Silicon Valley.) If it wasn't for that, Steve Jobs wouldn't have worked at Atari. (And Wozniak wouldn't have moonlighted at Atari.) https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-employee-number-40 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/steve-jobs-atari-empl... I'm doing this from memory, but IIRC: Atari was the only major gaming company based out of Silicon Valley A lot of the games of the time were basically just Japanese games that were licensed by US distributors. Pac Man came from Namco in Japan and was distributed in the US by Chicago's Midway, Space Invaders was made by Taito in Japan and licensed in the US. (Also by Midway, IIRC.) "Defender" was one of the first 'homegrown' games in the US that wasn't coming out of Atari in Silicon Valley. (Defender was made by Eugene Jarvis in Chicago for Williams, who later merged with Midway.) Although Nintendo was NOT based in Silicon Valley, they had the dumb luck of locating just up the hill from Microsoft. If you've seen "King of Kong," the dude from the documentary basically lives halfway between Microsoft in Redmond and Nintendo in Snoqualmie: https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_North_Bend Sega WAS based in Silicon Valley, but their slow decline was arguably due to a political tug-of-war between Sega of America (based in Silicon Valley) and Sega (based in Japan.)