The Atari Company and its Downfall

[tcorourke2007]

Wow, I remember that landfill thing. I was 11 years old and could not get my mind around the fact that the physical cartridge was of zero value to the company, since it had value to me. The concept the product was an idea and not the computer chip. I was shocked by the waste, whereas now I understand it, and I'm merely dismayed.

[misekmoj]

for cancer and stuff. They were not billionares at 25 chasing chicks and drinking and partying all night long. I respect them, but this society worships gladiators. Oh which empire in te past had similar problems before downfall?

[misekmoj]

This video can be put to use so people in illusion by tv and movies can see what real engineers look like and what lifestyle they live. Not what hollywood producess. He drives an old Benz and classic suits and earns probablly 50.000 USD a year at least if he is a great engineer. They wear beards and glasses, ... They are intellectuals and don't show off. They're not steroid tpye perfect looking engineer like in movies.... They don't sleep many nights and people like that develop like medicine...

[zoomerlawns]

So when does the Atari 2600 come out? I want one!

[thehackerz101]

@zoomerlawns it comes out in 34 years ago

[zoomerlawns]

@thehackerz101 Dang! I can't wait!

[thecomputerwhiz1]

Atari didn't deserve what happened to it. They are one of the best video game companies in the world and their consoles are the best and always will be.

[Liquadia1]

what does he mean towards the end he made more money Shorting their stock!

[8BitBastard]

he sold his share before the stock crashed @Liquadia1

[8BitBastard]

Respond to this video... where's the rest of this video? Is it available on DVD?

[916gagafan]

good vid post.

[RabidRat88]

Surprised there isn't a new video game crash these days with the overproduction

of rubbish titles on the PC and copycat ones on the consoles.

If only they could put Microsoft in a landfill...

[lastwhiteman27]

Not a single shitskin or chink face in the bunch. Just like everything else the video game industry and technology was created by whites.

[KhalidNbg]

This effect with "so many competitors offered soooo many games that were so bad" reminds me kind of todays circumstances with the Wii :-D 30 years later... nothing changed...

[snakes3425]

and because of Atari's bungling a US company wouldn't make a successful console for nearly 30 years, yeah Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 are the first successful American consoles since the Atari VCS/2600

[MaximumPyromaniac]

long live atari

[MattTheSaiyan]

Those subtitles are extremely annoying.

[DeathBringer9000]

EA is the new atari maybe

[creaturebotman]

I work at at Atari..I worked for Nolan.... It was a great dream..lots of fun too.

Nolan...

Love you man!

[Watcher3223]

@creaturebotman

Were you also around during Ray Kassar's reign of terror?

[creaturebotman]

@Watcher3223 ....

Yes.. the dark days..

But I was also around when the white knight (Dr. Alan Kay) was in charge of Atari Research Group. I was among the group (Robotics) and let me tel you man...The best time of my life... wonderful growth time for me being a young man in the mist of a great industry in its infancy. Boy do I have stories to tell. I was like a forest Gump meeting some top industry folks before they got super rich and famous.

[Watcher3223]

@creaturebotman

Would love to read and hear about them.

Perhaps you should make videos talking about the history as you saw it as an employee of the company during its triumphant and turbulent times.

As you say, you've got stories to tell. And, I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of people here that would love to listen (me, included).

The lessons that can be gathered from that history can help shape the future.

[tdrewman]

ET was so bad, I finished the game the first day and never touched it again, I ended up selling the game for 5 dollars to some kid down the street. I spent that money at the video arcade...

[lampini]

I know people change when they get older but I would not have know that that was bushnel from the 80's by just looking at him in the preasant

[pokerockmario123]

Nederlandse ondertiteling :P

Atari en Amiga waren mijn favoriete computers.

[09vl1603]

What song is at the beginning?

[Malagutirider]

@09vl1603 Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

[ViciousAlienKlown]

I feel that Nintendo is doing the same thing Time-Warner/Atari did in the early 80s by selling a lot of Wii systems then throwing up in the air bad games and hoping for money to fall down instead......what falls is Birthday Bash and Cooking Mama. Apparently Nintendo forgot how they brought back the industry.

[lowes48impala]

@ViciousAlienKlown you're right ! 128 BIT graphics are not forever ! How many people I know who likes video games doesn't have a wii.... They just doing the same mistake as ATARI did.... But just hope we won't have this crash anymore...

[johnnychronic222]

this was interesting to know, what atari would have been if we didn't have idiots monopolizing crappy video games.

[ZnEaKySpyNL]

Well if you look ad the transformer games you wont think atari has learned much:P That was also a very fast and boring design. I hope the new transformers war for cybertron has more to offer. But it looks like they just copied battlefield now. Just look ad the 4 types of transfomers. scout some kind of medic assault type, only the leader is a new thing.

[GriggsC123]

Let that be a lesson to all business, never sell to Time Warner or if Time Warner goes to buy you out, I suggest you sell.

[LeonMeekis84]

but Time Warner pwns your ass.

[GriggsC123]

True all my money goes to Time Warner. lol

[Watcher3223]

Well, to be fair, Time Warner didn't exist back then.

They were Warner Communications, years before the Time-Life merger with Warner.

Atari fell apart right when it lost leadership that was concerned with the company and its people (Nolan Bushnell) and gained leadership more interested in the bottom line (Ray Kassar).

And it didn't help that, after Warner sold Atari, the Tramiels were more concerned with beating Commodore in revenge than running Atari to be the best that it could be.

[xxYouTub3Policexx]

Watcher, I was going to send you a private message, but you have the "friends only" feature enabled. Could I send you a temporary friend invite?

[DamienColletti]

Pretty interesting, nice upload.

[glamourknight]

the kid at 5:42 ! Priceless

[jonzey0]

what show is this clip from?

[Xxassasin44xX]

i wish atari hadnt fell flat on there face.

because if they woudnt have fucked up they might

still be making games and shit.

and they might be good.

but then again,every thing they made after the 2600 was shitty.

[whiteechidna]

besides the Atari 800 and 7800.

[YodatheJedi12]

Interesting point (except for the swearing), although the 7800 was ok. I wonder what they would have made now and if it would have beaten the Wii/XBox

[bphutchins]

they still make good games. Enter the matrix was good, so was Neverwinter nights. Currently the ghostbusters game and star trek online are both good.

[netsurferx1]

Enter The Matrix...A good game?!?

Are you crazy, that game was f**kin' horrible!

[bphutchins]

you disgust me!

[eoMue]

You are so stupid, that is not Atari anymore. Infogrames only bought the name Atari, because it has a good reputation. Atari is not Atari, it is Infogrames selling their shitty products under an old, well known name!

[bphutchins]

ATARI IS ALIVE AND WILL LIVE FOREVER

[TheSunzuki1983]

@bphutchins Atari died ages ago, same as Commodore, they are just names now, what made them both great are long gone.

[Riddler95]

Atari screwed up big time.

They should have put more effort into their later games for the 2600.

In 1985 Nintendo revived Video Games with the NES.

[netsurferx1]

And hard to believe that Nintendo approached Atari to sell what would become the NES under the Atari name, only to have Atari tell them "NO!"

Easily the biggest blunder in the history of home gaming...EVER!

[Riddler95]

I heard about that.

Big problem about Atari was, they became obsessed with Success.

Video Games were dead. Because of Nintendo, they revived Video Games.

[WatchVenusSpa]

Nolan's Atari was the id Software of it's time. Had Bushnell been able to keep the company away from Ross they'd still be on top today.

[Luigi84289]

I agree.

[studentofsmith]

"Shorting" stock refers to the process of first selling stock when the price is high and then buying it back when the price is low. It's the flip side of buying low and selling high and is, believe it or not, a common practice and perfectly legal.

[downphoenix]

Atari got lazy with innovation and too trusting of the gaming public to continue buying, that was the death of them.

[bradleymxz]

Pretty simple. You believe a stock is overvalued and is going to drop soon. So what he did was borrow an X amount of Warner shares at say $100 and sold them at $100 each and agreed to the seller that he'd pay back the number of shares he bought sometime in the future. Now Atari failed and the share is $1, so he paid them back in devalued shares. You can make a grip doing this and you can also lose your ass so bad many people blow their brains out

[Zeldaartist]

i hear tears for fears everybody wants to rule the world playing!!! :)

that is a good song

tears for fears rule!!

thanks for this video. it iwas interesting to see.

[Urvy1A]

I heard the Mojo Jojo cover on The Powerpuff Girls' 10th Anniversary Special.

[TheNintendovssega]

oh my god tears for fears plays at the start!!!

i love tears for fears

[iwsab]

Hey video tr0d, or anyone out there, Please explain what "shorting their stock means" means for me. I am new to stocks..

[Mysteryracerdude]

Umm, stocks you mean as in games? Well, what would you do to get rid of 1,000,000 E.T. cartridges?

[iwsab]

nooo... somehow one of the founders made heaps of cash by "shorting stock". meaning he made money on stock market somehow. u coudn't make money selling crappy "stock of cartridges" with crappy games.

[ephesus]

Shorting a stock is when you borrow it with somebody promising to buy it back at a certain price. So if the stock price drops, they buy it back at the former high price and you make a profit off the difference.

[danytoon]

recycle?

[runeinator]

That's what they did with the Zelda cartridges. They recycled some Nintendo World Championships cartridges for the Golden Zelda ones.

[TheStormchaser1]

Actually Atari had the best console games but few game titles. Atari 5200 was better than Nintendo had few titles. All of Atari console and handheld games were superior. Since Atari had few games released it was crushed. Atari will and still make the best games in the computer business.

[Urvy1A]

Um, the 5200 sucked balls. The controller is broken when it came out. And the Jaguar sucked it hard.

[TheStormchaser1]

5200 was better than Nintendo. Jaguar was the best. Lynx was better than Gameboy and SEGA.

If you look at game systems which have few games released always failed.

But, Atari now focuses on games even more and makes the best games.

Atari had lots of flaws in consules what company has not??? Playstation 1, 2, and 3, Nintendo, XBox, XBox 360, SEGA some all had flaws and defects when made.

PC will always be the best with Atari and Bioware as the best game designers,

[Urvy1A]

5200 sucked ass, Jaguar was the worst, Lynx had lower battery life, making it suck balls.

The Atari of today is more of a shell of its former self. Some people refer it as Atari In Name Only. You think a lot of Dragon Ball games count as "best" games? Some of those games sucked, read a gaming magazine.

All systems have their flaws. Atari's flaw is bad marketing, toxic deals and such.

PC is no longer the best, people are buying Macs these days.

[TheStormchaser1]

Macs are for multi-media. That is why people are buying Macs. Mac is not good for games and I never played Dragon Ball.

The new Ghostbusters. Video Game coming out. Neverwinter Nights 2, Silverfall, The Witchers, Axis and Allies, 911 First Responders, Act of War.

Atari games were and always will remain the best in the business.

All the counsoles I have out performed the competitors and were flawless.

Think of Atari Console like Earth and Beyond bad marketing and it died.

[Mysteryracerdude]

Okay, you say that and play your crappy 4-bit, uncreative, uninnovative, poorly programmed games such as E.T. and Pac Man while kick ass playing Super Mario Bros on the NES.

P.S. don't forget to play Custer's Revenge before you masturbate.

[Mysteryracerdude]

Ughh, I hate you unknowledged gamers. There was a reason the atari failed and was buried. There is a reason Nintendo owned the video game market in the 80's and always will. Nintendo comes up with innovative games, Atari doesn't. Atari is now known by gamers worldwide as the apitimy of failing consoles. Oh and by the way, do the math because the Atari Jaguar does not have a 64 bit processor. Its controller is the worst ever made. There was no reason to put a number pad on them.

[SYSPrison]

Wtf do you mean by Unknowlegded? Do you mean uneducated? Unkowlegded - Not acknowledged or recognized.... So you hate people who play games and aren't recognized?

[BeyondLame]

How far is the landfill from Roswell?

[WayneAlexanderM]

E.T. was a bad game but, that game did not singlehandedly caused the crash. There were ton of poor game.

[Urvy1A]

Chase The Chuck Wagon, the 2600 port of Pac Man, need I go on?

[Uberdude25]

Ahh Atari.. The inferior cousin of the commodore Amiga!

[T3hGearos]

The phrase 'this shit is bananas' comes to mind...

I didn't realise it was so deep.

[zazaboy62000]

E.T. is an asshole!

[snake2006]

That was the old Atari that did that, the ones with proper programmers which later formed Activison and other 3rd party companies.

The Atari that made Neverwinter Nights is NOT THE REAL ATARI. The real Atari died in 1996 when they merged with JTS. Later got the rights got sold to Hasbro then the rights got sold again to Infogrames. They are Atari in name only.

Enter the Maxtrix is bad, and critically panned because it one of the most glitched filled games of all time.

The other one sucked too.

[snake2006]

The Atari today is not the same as the old Atari.

Old Atari never recovered and died officially in 1996.

The Atari today is Infogrames who bought the rights to Atari and call themselves Atari but they are not Atari.

But the new "Atari" still manages to keep the legacy of the old Atari by making shitty games still. So that at least stayed constant.

[bphutchins]

dude, Atari didn't put out shitty games, my god they created centipede, asteroids, berzerk. classics. And the Atari now made neverwinter nights, Enter the Matrix and a few other really good games

[kittendeathsquad]

mabye dumb fucks?

[coolwater1]

Atari meant something back then. today its just a name, a brand.

[snakes3425]

Atari still is suffering from the crash, it' hard to imagine a company that could have bungled so badly that it torpedoed an entire industry.

[freakshowcrow]

I heard "Dumb Shoes"...perhaps Nolan took issue with their footwear?

[freakshowcrow]

"If you don't obsolete yourself somebody else will." - Al Alcorn.....I'm gonna quote the fuck out of this!

[djhives]

for the record he says "I began calling them DUMB JEWS!"....

[hchoudh47]

WTF? Looked to me like he was saying "dumb shits".

[djhives]

no no, he said 'dumb jews'

[TheIrateGamerShow]

Fucking racist.

[NixonTech2071]

Thats it!!! Time warner was a key figure to atari's mismatched management! (Am I right or not?)

[zisoul]

How come these are not compete bios?

zisul:

[uggla03]

great video thanks

[snake2006]

With E.T game part of the deal to make the game was that Spielberg wanted it out by christmas. Which is what Atari agreed to stupidly.

As for the game crash, thankfully the mighty Nintendo game and saved the industry by performing CPR on it.

[mgabrysSF]

Geez half the stupid clips aren't even remotely close to what the hell they're talking about. Landfill? that's a frigging strip mining operation! VCS development? That's the assembly line for Star Wars the arcade game and other coin-ops.

Oh hell - we don't have time to get footage that matches our copy - let's put up some flash animation of cows fucking while we're at it. Great idea!

[Onono6]

i miss the atari 2600

[8BitBastard]

@Onono6 I don't, I play one every night :-)

[peterzad]

cool

[KikBlava]

God. I never actually imagined the crash of 1983 to be that bad. It would make a gamer cry... Well... not me... and I'm a big gamer.

[xXwhitexshadowXx]

actually, atari bought the rights to E.T. for $25 million...lol, serves them right for rushing :P

[snakes3425]

They developed it in six weeks, and the story goes Atari bleieved ET would be such a huge hit that they made more cartrages then there were Atari 2600s.

[ioport]

Man why are the subtitiles plastered across the middle of the screen?

[c64sid]

So they don't cover up the "lower third" titles that show a person's name. notice that they are only in the middle of the screen when the text is at the bottom. If you ever watch a TV show with closed captioning you will see the same thing happen when the title credits are shown.

[bohoki]

et wasnt that bad when compared to its contemporary games at the time they just made too many no company should make more cartridges than the existing consoles

[robokill387]

actually It was horrible, even for atari standards.

[gamer4567]

I will cry too if I made it...

[LiquidFilter]

Thats sad that they lost their artistic vision, i get the picture and it had always been that way, that artist make it happend but they don't make the money

[AusAsia]

That bloke just confessed that he made a fortune shorting Warner/ATARI stock. That's insider trading. A financial crime.

[livardo]

He had already sold the company to Warner and had nothing to do with it :\

[jescast99]

00:37-00:46

What was that song called?

[AutisticPsycho]

Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

[jescast99]

Thanks so much! :)

[stevenup7002]

Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

[ultimakissarmy]

When I became a serious gamer in 94/95 when I was 4, Atari was never heard of, I think at the time they had the Jaguar out, all you heard about was the Mega Drive and SNES.

[cybersalad]

Kind of inaccurate depiction of the crash though--if you read the book "Toyland" (great book) you'd see that Coleco and Mattel sold a lot of units the year Atari crashed out.

But, the stock market sold off everything video game related because of Atari's failure. Also, both Mattel and Coleco overproduced their respective consoles--so despite decent sales, the retail channel was swamped with product. If they had controlled supply, they may have survived.

[burr1aj]

lol... the atari two six hundred