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Atari, Inc.

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For information on the Atari brand and its history, see Atari.
For the current brand name, see Atari, Inc. (Atari, SA subsidiary).
Atari, Inc.
Industryvideo game industry Edit this on Wikidata
Founded1972
FounderNolan Bushnell
Ted Dabney Edit this on Wikidata
Defunct1984
FateClosed, properties sold
SuccessorAtari Corporation, Atari Games
HeadquartersSunnyvale, California, U.S.
Key people
Nolan Bushnell (co-founder)
Ted Dabney (co-founder)
ProductsPong
Atari 2600
Atari 5200
ParentWarner Communications (1976-1984)

Atari, Inc. was an American video game and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.[1] Primarily responsible for the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries, the company was closed and its assets split in 1984 as a direct result of the North American video game crash of 1983.

Origins

In 1966, Nolan Bushnell saw Spacewar! for the first time at the University of Utah. Deciding there was commercial potential in a coin-op version, several years later he and Ted Dabney worked on a hand-wired custom computer capable of playing it on a black and white television in a single-player mode where the player shot at two orbiting UFOs. The resulting game, Computer Space, was released by a coin-op game company, Nutting Associates.

Computer Space did not fare well commercially when it was placed in Nutting's customary market, bars. Feeling that the game was simply too complex for the average customer unfamiliar and unsure with the new technology, Bushnell started looking for new ideas.[2]

The original Atari upright cabinet

Bushnell and Ted Dabney left Nutting to form their own engineering firm, Syzygy Engineering,[3] and soon hired Al Alcorn as their first design engineer. Initially wanting to start Syzygy off with a driving game, Bushnell had concerns that it might be too complicated for the young Alcorn's first game.[2] In May 1972, Bushnell had seen a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, which included a tennis game. According to Alcorn, Bushnell decided to have him produce an arcade version of the Odyssey's Tennis game,[4][5][6] which would go on to be named Pong. Atari later had to pay Magnavox a licensing fee after the latter sued Atari because of this.[7][8]

When they went to incorporate their firm that June, they soon found that Syzygy (an astronomical term) already existed in California. Bushnell wrote down several words from the game Go, eventually choosing atari, a term that in the context of the game means a state where a stone or group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972.[9]

By August 1972, the first Pong was completed. It consisted of a black and white television from Walgreens, the special game hardware, and a coin mechanism from a laundromat on the side which featured a milk carton inside to catch coins. It was placed in a Sunnyvale tavern by the name of Andy Capp's to test its viability.[10]

When the game begun malfunctioning a few days later and Alcorn returned to fix the machine, he was met by a lineup of people waiting for the bar to open so they could play the game. On examination, the problem turned out to be mundane; the coin collector was filled to overflowing with quarters, and when customers tried to jam them in anyway, the mechanism shorted out.[citation needed]

After talks to release Pong through Nutting and several other companies broke down, Bushnell and his partner Ted Dabney decided to release Pong on their own,[2] and Atari, Inc. was established as a coin-op design and production company.

The third version of the Atari Video Computer System sold from 1980 to 1982

In 1973, Atari secretly spawned a "competitor" called Kee Games, headed by Bushnell's next door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market (virtually) the same game to different distributors, with each getting an "exclusive" deal. Though Kee's relationship to Atari was discovered in 1974, Joe Keenan did such a good job managing the subsidiary that he was promoted to president of Atari that same year.

In 1975, Bushnell started an effort to produce a flexible video game console that was capable of playing all four of Atari's then-current games. Development took place at an offshoot engineering lab, which initially had serious difficulties trying to produce such a machine. However, in early 1976 the now-famous MOS Technology 6502 was released, and for the first time the team had a CPU with both the high-performance and low-cost needed to meet their needs. The result was the Atari 2600, released in October 1977 as the "Video Computer System", one of the most successful consoles in history.

As a subsidiary of Warner Communications

Bushnell knew he had another potential hit on his hands, but bringing the machine to market would be extremely expensive. In 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for an estimated $28 – $32 million, using part of the money to buy the Folgers Mansion. He departed from the division in 1979.

The Atari 400 was released in 1979

A project to design a successor to the 2600 started as soon as the system shipped. The original development team estimated the 2600 had a lifespan of about three years, and decided to build the most powerful machine they could given that time frame. By the middle of the effort's time-frame the home computer revolution was taking off, so the new machines were adapted with the addition of a keyboard and various inputs to produce the Atari 800, and its smaller cousin, the 400. Although a variety of issues made them less attractive than the Apple II for some users, the new machines had some level of success when they finally became available in quantity in 1980.

While part of Warner, Atari achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600s and computers. At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income and was the fastest-growing company in the history of the United States at the time.

Although the 2600 had garnered the lion's share of the home video game market, it experienced its first stiff competition in 1980 from Mattel's Intellivision, which featured ads touting its superior graphics capabilities relative to the 2600. Still, the 2600 remained the industry standard-bearer, because of its market superiority, and because of Atari featuring (by far) the greatest variety of game titles available.

However, Atari ran into problems in the early 1980s. Its home computer, video game console, and arcade divisions operated independently of one another and rarely cooperated.[11] Having grown to exceed the arcade division's sales, the game division viewed computers as a threat.[12] The company had a poor reputation in the industry. One dealer told InfoWorld in early 1984 that "It has totally ruined my business ... Atari has ruined all the independents." A non-Atari executive stated:[13]

There were so many screaming, shouting, threatening dialogues, it's unbelievable that any company in America could conduct itself the way Atari conducted itself. Atari used threats, intimidation and bullying. It's incredible that anything could be accomplished. Many people left Atari. There was incredible belittling and humiliation of people. We'll never do business with them again.

Stating that "Atari has never made a dime in microcomputers", John J. Anderson wrote in early 1984:[12]

Many of the people I spoke to at Atari between 1980 and 1983 had little or no idea what the products they were selling were all about, or who if anyone would care. In one case, we were fed mis- and disinformation on a frighteningly regular basis, from a highly-placed someone supposedly in charge of all publicity concerning the computer systems. And chilling as the individual happenstance was, it seems to have been endemic at Atari at the time.

Because of fierce competition and price wars in the game console and home computer markets, Atari was never able to duplicate the success of the 2600.

  • In 1982, Atari released disappointing versions of two very publicized games, Pac-Man and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, causing a pileup of unsold inventory and depressing prices. (In 1983, in response to a massive number of returned orders from distributors, Atari buried 700,000 unsold game cartridges[14] (partly consisting of those same two titles, Pac-Man and E.T.) in a New Mexico desert landfill.)
  • In 1983, Atari CEO Ray Kassar was prosecuted for insider trading related to sales of Atari stock minutes before the disappointing earnings announcement in December 1982. They later settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $81,875, neither admitting or denying the charges.[15]
  • Larry Emmons, employee No.3, retired in 1982. He was head of research and development of the small group of talented engineers in Grass Valley, California, who had designed the 2600 and home computers.
  • The Atari 5200 game console, released as a next-generation follow up to the 2600, was based on the Atari 800 computer (but intentionally incompatible with Atari 800 software),[12] and its sales never met the company's expectations.

These problems were followed by the video game crash of 1983, which caused losses that totaled more than $500 million. Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20, and the company began searching for a buyer for its troubled division.[16] When Texas Instruments exited the home-computer market in November 1983, many believed that Atari would be next.[13]

Still, Atari held a formidable position in the world video game market, and was the number one console maker in every market except Japan. A Japanese video game company by the name of Nintendo was going to be releasing their first programmable video game console, the Famicom (later known to the rest of the world as the NES), in 1983. Looking to also sell the console in international markets, Nintendo approached Atari to offer a licensing deal whereby Atari would build and sell the system, paying Nintendo a royalty. The deal was in the works throughout 1983,[17] and the two companies tentatively decided to sign the agreement at the June, 1983 CES. However, Coleco was showcasing their new Adam computer, and the display unit was running Nintendo's Donkey Kong. Atari CEO Ray Kassar was furious, as Atari owned the rights to publish Donkey Kong for computers, and he accused Nintendo of double dealing with the Donkey Kong license. Nintendo, in turn, tore into Coleco, who only owned the console rights to the game.[18] Coleco had legal grounds to challenge the claim though since Atari had only purchased the floppy disk rights to the game, while the Adam version was cartridge-based.[19] In the coming month, Ray Kassar was forced to leave Atari, executives involved in the Famicom deal were forced to start over again from scratch, and the deal eventually languished.

Splitting of properties

James J. Morgan was appointed as Kassar's replacement on Labor Day 1983.[13] Stating "one company can't have seven presidents", he stated a goal of more closely integrating the company's divisions to end "the fiefdoms and the politics and all the things that caused the problems".[11] Morgan had less than a year to try to fix the company's problems before he too was gone. In July 1984, Warner sold the home computing and game console divisions of Atari to Jack Tramiel, the recently ousted founder of Atari competitor Commodore International, under the name Atari Corporation for $240 million in stocks under the new company. Warner retained the arcade division, continuing it under the name Atari Games and eventually selling it to Namco in 1985. Warner also sold the fledgling Ataritel to Mitsubishi.

Major products

Arcade games developed by Atari, Inc.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Atari.

References

  1. ^ "Atari". Giant Bomb. July 6, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c "The adventures of King Pong". salon.com.
  3. ^ Vendel, Curt. "ATARI Coin-Op/Arcade Systems 1970 - 1974". Retrieved 2008-05-18.
  4. ^ Shea, Cam. "Al Alcorn Interview". Retrieved 2008-09-11.
  5. ^ Ador Yano. "Video game history". Ralphbaer.com. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  6. ^ "Videogames Turn 40 Years Old". 1up.
  7. ^ "Odyssey - The Dot Eaters". thedoteaters.com.
  8. ^ Atari Coin-Op/Arcade Systems
  9. ^ California Secretary of State - California Business Search - Corporation Search Results
  10. ^ Retro gamer issue 83. In the chair with Allan Alcorn
  11. ^ a b "James Morgan Speaks Out". InfoWorld. 1984-02-27. pp. 106–107. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  12. ^ a b c Anderson, John J. (March 1984). "Atari". Creative Computing. p. 51. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
  13. ^ a b c Mace, Scott (1984-02-27). "Can Atari Bounce Back?". InfoWorld. p. 100. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
  14. ^ "Five Million E.T. Pieces". snopes.com. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  15. ^ Cohen, Scott (1984). Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari. McGraw-Hill. pp. 125–126. ISBN 0070115435.
  16. ^ David E. Sanger (July 3, 1984). "Warner Sells Atari to Tramiel". The New York Times.
  17. ^ Teiser, Don (1983-06-14). "Atari - Nintendo 1983 Deal - Interoffice Memo". Retrieved 2006-11-23.
  18. ^ NES 20th Anniversary! - Classic Gaming
  19. ^ Kent, Steven (2001) [2001]. "We Tried to Keep from Laughing". The Ultimate History of Video Games. Roseville, California: Prima Publishing. pp. 283–285. ISBN 0-7615-3643-4. Yamauchi demanded that Coleco refrain from showing or selling Donkey Kong on the Adam Computer, and Greenberg backed off, though he had legal grounds to challenge that demand. Atari had purchased only the floppy disk license, the Adam version of Donkey Kong was cartridge-based. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

Further reading

  • Atari Inc. - Business is Fun, by Curt Vendel, Marty Goldberg (2012) ISBN 0985597402
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