Dear old Sam. Atari never really had a chance by this stage with the likes of Sony's deep pockets entering the industry. He'd already messed up by putting lots of money into the Falcon which ultimately had little chance of success against the might of the DOS/Windows and Mac platforms, which were becoming affordable as home computers by then.
@Kevo00 The Falcon could've succeeded and made a niche for itself within the music world. The specs and price made it a dream machine for musicians. With the right marketing it would've triumphed but once again Atari dropped the ball. I never ever saw one advert on UK TV or in the press for the Falcon. They even used the old ST case just to save money.
The Tramiel's wasn't short of cash but were cheapskates who didn't want to spend it on basic essentials like good advertising and promotion.
Say what you will about Jack's business style; Atari was probably the most stable it ever was as a company under his leadership. Of course that changed when he passed the torch to Sam, but c'est la vie.
"Don't forget, Atari was the pioneer of the industry."
That doesn't mean much. Of course, what you did that was great back then was an accomplishment, but your history does you no good if your current reputation, as exhibited by your current products and services, is less than desirable.
If anything, referencing your history but having bad performance today can be bad; it shows you did not learn from your success (and the failures that were part of achieving that success).
This guy had nothing to do with the sucess of the early Atari inc. His family was running Commodore at the peak of Atari's success. The Tramiels get credit for creating and selling good hardware at reasonable prices but their product marketing and management was awful.
I wasn't referring to Sam Tramiel, but to Atari itself.
I know that the Tramiels founded Commodore and led it to its success in the early 1980s.
And I know that the Tramiels were running Atari Corporation (not Atari Games as that was a separate company kept by Warner after the selling of Atari Corp. to the Tramiels) solely to try to get back at Commodore for kicking them out.
And I am fully aware of the Tramiel's cutthroat business style, especially that of Sam's father, Jack.
As for the Tramiel's failure with Atari, I probably attribute that to a lack of long term vision and experience.
To me, it seemed as if Atari's sole purpose under the Tramiels was to get back at Commodore. Once that stopped being relevant, they had no ability to formulate a new plan to be competitive.
Another part of it was that home video games was an area the Tramiels had no experience or even interest in. When Atari became irrelevant in computers, that was the beginning of the end.
Get your facts right Sammy.Pong was created by Ralph Baer and then Nolan Bushnell saw it and made it popular.Bushnell also made the Atari 2600.You were still working for Commodore pushing a broom and emptying wastebaskets out when all this went down.
And why do you complain about Nintendo using "Monopolistic Pratices" when Atari did the same thing in the first few years of the 2600's lifetime?You and Pops were to busy using Atari to exact revenge on Commodore.
You know your history, only after being ousted from Commodore did the Tramiel's buy Atari (on the cheap) from Time-Warner and attempted to buy the Amiga (again on the cheap) from it's creators to destroy Commodore.
Atari created the ST computer from scratch (and on the cheap). They bought the amazing Lynx handheld console from it's designers and marketed it on the cheap into a flop. They did the same thing with the Jag, poor games and poor marketing.
Along with having incomplete chip sets in the Jaguar full of bugs didn't help the Jag at all.
Atari didn't create the ST from scratch though, Jack took Commodore employees with him when he left Commodore and they were already working on the next machine to succeed the C64, he just took those guys to Atari.
The SNES did outsell the Genesis. Genesis bowed out early in 1995. It took Nintendo till late 1994 to fully catch up and pull ahead of Sega, all thanks to 2 games. Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country.
3DO was a sound concept, problem is that Trip Hawkins had no idea how to sell consoles. He set it up so they made money off the games, and licensed out the hardware and the hardware manufactures had to make money on the hardware. Instead of selling the machine at a loss to make it up with software. The razor and blade model.
Relying on a name or past achievments is not enough to guarantee success in this world, they just over estimated there own value and thought they could do it on the cheap.
shame as the Jag was superior to both sega and nintendo at that time!
You're right there. Just because Atari video game systems sold well in the 80's, it doesn't mean they'll keep selling well, unless they're marketed well and have good games on them. I'm not even sure if the Jaguar was available in Australia where I live.
LOL!!! Atari Jaguar didn't outsell anything. This moron ruined Atari by keeping the 7800 on the shelf indefinitely and letting the NES take over the market. Then when he finally brought it out, he took outdated games that had been made years ago and tried to pass them off as cutting edge.
Actually, the Jaguar sold pretty well at first but tapered off quickly when it was clear most of the games available for it were of shall we say way-less-than-stellar quality. Really the only good games were Doom, AvP, Tempest 2K, Wolf 3D, and Super Burnout. And for the Jag CD, prolly the only good game was Battlemorph.
Agreed. Tramiel's advertising budget policy was not a good policy. Tramiel Atari should have just concentrated on improving the Atari ST line. Imagine what the ST would have been like powered by a PowerPC chip. Hey, gotta keep that "Jackintosh" gimmick in tune with Apple's changes in the Mac line. :D
Dear old Sam. Atari never really had a chance by this stage with the likes of Sony's deep pockets entering the industry. He'd already messed up by putting lots of money into the Falcon which ultimately had little chance of success against the might of the DOS/Windows and Mac platforms, which were becoming affordable as home computers by then.
Kevo00 1 year ago
@Kevo00 The Falcon could've succeeded and made a niche for itself within the music world. The specs and price made it a dream machine for musicians. With the right marketing it would've triumphed but once again Atari dropped the ball. I never ever saw one advert on UK TV or in the press for the Falcon. They even used the old ST case just to save money.
The Tramiel's wasn't short of cash but were cheapskates who didn't want to spend it on basic essentials like good advertising and promotion.
JayArgonaut 1 year ago
why is this pixelated? Is this an example of what the jaguar could do with video? lol
azmanntoz 1 year ago
Say what you will about Jack's business style; Atari was probably the most stable it ever was as a company under his leadership. Of course that changed when he passed the torch to Sam, but c'est la vie.
freezafan 1 year ago
"Don't forget, Atari was the pioneer of the industry."
That doesn't mean much. Of course, what you did that was great back then was an accomplishment, but your history does you no good if your current reputation, as exhibited by your current products and services, is less than desirable.
If anything, referencing your history but having bad performance today can be bad; it shows you did not learn from your success (and the failures that were part of achieving that success).
Watcher3223 2 years ago
This guy had nothing to do with the sucess of the early Atari inc. His family was running Commodore at the peak of Atari's success. The Tramiels get credit for creating and selling good hardware at reasonable prices but their product marketing and management was awful.
dstarks80 2 years ago
@dstarks80
I wasn't referring to Sam Tramiel, but to Atari itself.
I know that the Tramiels founded Commodore and led it to its success in the early 1980s.
And I know that the Tramiels were running Atari Corporation (not Atari Games as that was a separate company kept by Warner after the selling of Atari Corp. to the Tramiels) solely to try to get back at Commodore for kicking them out.
And I am fully aware of the Tramiel's cutthroat business style, especially that of Sam's father, Jack.
Watcher3223 2 years ago
As for the Tramiel's failure with Atari, I probably attribute that to a lack of long term vision and experience.
To me, it seemed as if Atari's sole purpose under the Tramiels was to get back at Commodore. Once that stopped being relevant, they had no ability to formulate a new plan to be competitive.
Another part of it was that home video games was an area the Tramiels had no experience or even interest in. When Atari became irrelevant in computers, that was the beginning of the end.
Watcher3223 2 years ago
All the Tramiels had for Atari was its past and they tried to market it rather than use history as a lesson for the future.
"Atari was the pioneer of the industry."
The key word here is "was." They WERE the pioneers, but they lost it the day Atari lost its lawsuit against Activision.
Instead of finding ways to work with 3rd party software companies, Atari tried to keep a monopoly on software and it blew up in their faces.
Nintendo learned this lesson well.
Watcher3223 2 years ago
Did Atari ever consider taping his mouth shut
snakes3425 2 years ago
Get your facts right Sammy.Pong was created by Ralph Baer and then Nolan Bushnell saw it and made it popular.Bushnell also made the Atari 2600.You were still working for Commodore pushing a broom and emptying wastebaskets out when all this went down.
And why do you complain about Nintendo using "Monopolistic Pratices" when Atari did the same thing in the first few years of the 2600's lifetime?You and Pops were to busy using Atari to exact revenge on Commodore.
And the SNES outsold the Genesis.
Murmurdamadman 2 years ago
You know your history, only after being ousted from Commodore did the Tramiel's buy Atari (on the cheap) from Time-Warner and attempted to buy the Amiga (again on the cheap) from it's creators to destroy Commodore.
Atari created the ST computer from scratch (and on the cheap). They bought the amazing Lynx handheld console from it's designers and marketed it on the cheap into a flop. They did the same thing with the Jag, poor games and poor marketing.
No wonder they went bust! Never had a clue
JayArgonaut 2 years ago
@JayArgonaut
Along with having incomplete chip sets in the Jaguar full of bugs didn't help the Jag at all.
Atari didn't create the ST from scratch though, Jack took Commodore employees with him when he left Commodore and they were already working on the next machine to succeed the C64, he just took those guys to Atari.
snake2006 7 months ago
@Murmurdamadman The SNES didn't out sell the Genesis, it was more like a 50/50 take on the market .
ViciousAlienKlown 1 year ago
@ViciousAlienKlown
The SNES did outsell the Genesis. Genesis bowed out early in 1995. It took Nintendo till late 1994 to fully catch up and pull ahead of Sega, all thanks to 2 games. Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country.
snake2006 7 months ago
Comment removed
lightdark28 3 years ago
@lightdark28
3DO was a sound concept, problem is that Trip Hawkins had no idea how to sell consoles. He set it up so they made money off the games, and licensed out the hardware and the hardware manufactures had to make money on the hardware. Instead of selling the machine at a loss to make it up with software. The razor and blade model.
snake2006 7 months ago
Spitting image of Jack.
darthchaosofrspw 3 years ago
Relying on a name or past achievments is not enough to guarantee success in this world, they just over estimated there own value and thought they could do it on the cheap.
shame as the Jag was superior to both sega and nintendo at that time!
imperialpod 3 years ago
You're right there. Just because Atari video game systems sold well in the 80's, it doesn't mean they'll keep selling well, unless they're marketed well and have good games on them. I'm not even sure if the Jaguar was available in Australia where I live.
Lachlant1984 3 years ago
LOL!!! Atari Jaguar didn't outsell anything. This moron ruined Atari by keeping the 7800 on the shelf indefinitely and letting the NES take over the market. Then when he finally brought it out, he took outdated games that had been made years ago and tried to pass them off as cutting edge.
dogeymon83 3 years ago
Actually, the Jaguar sold pretty well at first but tapered off quickly when it was clear most of the games available for it were of shall we say way-less-than-stellar quality. Really the only good games were Doom, AvP, Tempest 2K, Wolf 3D, and Super Burnout. And for the Jag CD, prolly the only good game was Battlemorph.
darthchaosofrspw 3 years ago
His cheap way of doing things ruined that company. It doesen't take a doctorate in business to realize it takes money to make money.
dtrks80 3 years ago
Agreed. Tramiel's advertising budget policy was not a good policy. Tramiel Atari should have just concentrated on improving the Atari ST line. Imagine what the ST would have been like powered by a PowerPC chip. Hey, gotta keep that "Jackintosh" gimmick in tune with Apple's changes in the Mac line. :D
darthchaosofrspw 3 years ago