Atari, Inc. (1972)

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Atari, Inc.

logo
legal form Incorporated
founding June 9, 1972
resolution July 1984
Reason for dissolution Split into Atari Corporation and Atari Games
Seat Sunnyvale (California) , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Branch Information technology

Atari, Inc. was an American manufacturer of game consoles, home computers, and computer games. The company was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972 and existed in this form until 1984, when the manufacture of computers was separated from arcade machines. Later on, various companies used the Atari brand name for both games and hardware. GT Interactive was renamed Atari, Inc. in 2003 .

The original company was a pioneer in the computer game industry. Pong was the first worldwide popular computer game. Atari had success with the Atari 2600 (since 1977), a game console, and later with home computers. By 1983 at the latest, the console business came into stiff competition with computers that could run software from floppy disks. The game computer and console departments were founded in 1984 under the name Atari Corp. sold to Jack Tramiel. After computers like the Atari ST were only moderately successful, Tramiel and his family sold the company. After various owners, the Atari brand passed to the French game producer Infogrames in 2003.

The arcade branch, Atari Games, belonged to Warner and later TIME Warner. One produced among other things console cartridges for Nintendo. In 1996 Atari Games was sold; this buyer in turn had to give up in 2003, so that in 2009 the remaining holding came back to TIME Warner at short notice. Since 2013 this Atari branch no longer exists legally.

Company history

Syzygy

In 1969, the two Ampex electrical engineers and office colleagues, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, decided, together with the computer programmer Larry Bryan, to work together on a private basis to create an arcade machine version of the computer game Spacewar! to develop. At Bryan's suggestion, they named their cooperation after the mathematical term Syzygy . In March 1970, Bushnell moved from Ampex to Nutting Associates , which agreed to finance the development of the machine. Dabnell followed him in the summer of the same year, in 1971 they completed their arcade machine under the name Computer Space . However, the slot machine proved to be less than successful. In 1972, Bushnell and Dabnell left Nutting Associates to use the proceeds from the sale of Computer Space to develop a new computer game, Pong , and to start Syzygy as a company. They also hired Ampex engineer Allan Alcorn to help them develop Pong. Before it was founded, however, it turned out that the name Syzygy was already being used by another company. It was therefore decided to use the term “ Atari ”, which comes from the vocabulary of the Go game .

Atari founded

Pong

On June 9, 1972, Bushnell and Dabney signed the Atari Incorporation Agreement in San José , California , with official company registration on June 27. In total, the parties agreed to issue 75,000 shares at one US dollar each. The company's headquarters were ultimately located in neighboring Santa Clara .

The economic breakthrough came with the Pong slot machine and the home version in the form of a stationary device that can be connected to the television. Bushnell came up with the idea for Pong after visiting a press and dealer exhibition of Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey game console on May 24, 1972 at the Airport Marina Hotel in Burlingame (California) . An entry by Bushnell in the guest book proves his presence. Baer presented there, among other things, his game ping-pong, which Bushnell finally had Al Alcorn reproduced and published as pong . The game turned out to be a huge success for the company and is regarded as the spark for the commercial breakthrough of computer games. However, Atari faced a lawsuit from Magnavox and ended up paying royalties to the company for Pong .

The well-known logo in the form of a stylized A was later added to the company name . Logo creator was Atari's first graphic designer George Opperman, who was also responsible for the graphic design of the first Atari games. The logo was later interpreted as a stylized form of the Japanese mountain Fuji . Opperman himself stated that he was inspired by Atari's first big sales success, Pong . The two outer curved lines symbolize the two players, while the middle bar corresponds to the central dividing bar.

In May 1974 the company hired the hippie Steve Jobs , later co-founder of the computer manufacturer Apple, as the 40th employee . Jobs initially mainly worked as a technician and was responsible for customizing arcade machines. Over time, however, he managed to get a job as an engineer. In fact, Jobs never worked as an engineer himself, but had the work done secretly by his future Apple business partner Steve Wozniak , who was then working at Hewlett-Packard . Wozniak was a childhood friend of Alcorn's and had already made a big impression by developing an improved Pong home console. His version required far fewer transistors , which made console development and, above all, production much cheaper. However, he turned down a job offer from Alcorn. In 1976 Wozniak developed the video game Breakout in four days, while he was working for Jobs at HP . The time frame had been arbitrarily imposed on him by Jobs for booking a flight to Oregon. In fact, Jobs had no time limit on this assignment. Jobs did not inform him about a bonus of US $ 5,000 if the console required fewer than 50 transistors. Instead, he only fed Wozniak with a previously agreed stake of $ 350, which was half of Jobs' base fee. Jobs kept the bonus to himself.

From 1976, the Atari developers continued to work on the completion of the video game system, codenamed Stella , which was marketed in 1977 as the Atari VCS 2600 . This finally helped the concept of separating game hardware and software to achieve a breakthrough. The lack of equity to cover the development costs resulted in the sale of Atari to Warner Communications in October 1976 to 28 million US dollars . At the time, the company had sales of $ 2 billion.

Atari under Warner Communications

Atari 2600 with joystick

Under pressure from the new owner, Nolan Bushnell left Atari in 1978. He was followed by Raymond Edward Kassar as company director, who transformed Atari from a loosely organized bunch of engineers into a tightly run company. This soon earned him the reputation of an autocrat. In the next two years, numerous studies were carried out on home computers and various video game consoles, and some prototypes were brought to production readiness. In 1979, the production and sale of the first Atari home computers and the Atari VCS 2600 video game console began . Both soon became bestsellers. During this time, the first arcade machines with vector screens ( Lunar Lander , 1979) and with Battlezone (1980) a completely new genre of games, the so-called first-person shooter, were created .

In the early 1980s, Atari dominated the video game market with a market share of 80 percent. But for the first time there were also discrepancies. In 1979, the programmers David Crane , Larry Kaplan , Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead parted ways with Atari because the management refused to mention them by name in the credits of the games they developed. On October 1, 1979, they founded the independent game publisher Activision . In 1981, the chief developer of the home computer department, Jay Miner, turned his back on Atari and founded the Amiga company together with his business partner David Morse in order to pursue his own projects, the realization of which seemed impossible to him under Atari's leadership.

In March 1983 Atari presented plans for entering the communications sector, which should take place from the spring of 1984. The specially established research department Ataritel developed telephone sets based on computer technology for this purpose. The technology should allow users to control household appliances and heating systems over the phone.

Financial decline

Because of Atari's good numbers, Warner Communications' sales have grown significantly since 1976. In the first nine months of 1982 Atari contributed about half of the company's total revenue of $ 2.9 billion and accounted for about two-thirds of its operating income of $ 471 million. In December 1982, analysts therefore expected further sales growth of around 50 percent. In fact, sales at Atari fell to just $ 1.2 million in the fourth quarter, after posting $ 136.5 million in the same quarter of 1981. The reason was, among other things, the increasing competition from companies such as Mattel ( Intellivision ) and Coleco , which reduced profit margins, but also depreciation. When Warner's business figures were announced on December 7, 1982, growth of only 10 to 15 percent could be forecast. Revenue for the group as a whole shrank 56.5 percent, after which Warner Communications' stock value fell by a third from $ 52.625 per share to $ 36.25. In total, Warner lost around a billion US dollars and had to defend himself against hostile takeover attempts, including by Rupert Murdoch at the end of 1983.

The crisis at Atari was exacerbated when it became known that Atari boss Ray Kassar had sold 5,000 shares in Warner Communications just 23 minutes before the financial statements were announced. Dennis Groth, Senior Vice President of Atari, acted similarly, selling a total of 10,900 shares on November 19 and December 1. This earned both of them an insider trading investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission . On July 7, 1983, Kassar was forced to give up the management of Atari. In September, investigations into Kassar were closed after paying $ 81,875 without admission of guilt. Under the leadership of his successor, James J. Morgan working with Jay Miner and its company Amiga was established in March 1983, the so-called Lorraine project reinforced one on the Motorola 68000 - CPU based home computer system. This should expand the XL series by a new 16-bit model series. The contract between the two companies provided for the delivery of the Lorraine chipset to Atari; Amiga received capital of 500,000 US dollars from Atari for this. In June Amiga transferred the sum back to Atari, on the grounds that the chips would not work. In August Amiga was finally taken over by Commodore and the home computer was later published as the Amiga 1000 without Atari's participation. Just before the announcement of the takeover, the Atari Corporation , which had meanwhile been reorganized under the previously slain Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, filed a lawsuit against Amiga for breach of contract and claimed ownership of the Amiga chipsets.

Splitting up of the company

Like many other console and game manufacturers, Atari fell victim to the so-called video game crash , the collapse of the market for computer games due to market saturation and overproduction in 1983. Examples of this are the failure of the Atari 5200 game console and overcapacities in the games Pac-Man and ET the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600, which eventually had to be buried in the New Mexico desert (see Atari Video Game Burial ).

With over a billion sales, the company made a loss of 538.6 million US dollars. In July 1984, Warner Communications sold Atari's console and computer division to Jack Tramiel, the founder and recently ousted managing director of Commodore. Tramiel, the company acquired solely with debt amounting to 240 million US dollars. This part of the company was continued under the name Atari Corporation and existed until the merger with JTS, a subsidiary of Tandon Corporation in 1996. All company activities were discontinued under JTS. The trademark rights went first to Hasbro Interactive and finally to the French game publisher Infogrames , who each used the name for their own purposes.

Warner Communication, however, kept the department for arcade slot machines, which was henceforth operated separately under the name Atari Games Corporation, until it was renamed Midway Games West in 1998 after several changes of ownership, closed in 2001 and finally dissolved in 2003. With the sale of the Midway trademark rights in 2009, the naming rights were transferred to the Time Warner subsidiary Warner Bros. Entertainment .

The Ataritel telephone division was sold to Mitsubishi Electrics without ever putting a device on the market. Mitsubishi, however, finally brought the Ataritel videophone, which was already well advanced in development, to market maturity and released it under the name Luma Phone . The telephone with the project name Eagle , developed in cooperation with Porsche Design, was later added to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art .

Video game consoles

Stationary game consoles

  • Home Pong (1975)
  • Super Pong (1977)
  • Atari 2600 (1977, also known as Atari VCS )
  • Atari 2800 (1982, Japanese version of the 2600, sold in North America as Sears Video Arcade II )
  • Atari 5200 (1982)
  • Atari 7800 (1984), was already published in May 1984, but has been taken off the market for the time being by the successor company Atari Corporation.

Portable video game consoles

  • Touch Me (1978)
  • Super Breakout (1980)
  • Space Invaders (1980)

Concept studies in the prototype stage

  • Atari 2000 "Val" (1981)
  • Atari 2200 "Bonnie" (1983) - 1986 as Atari 2600jr. published
  • Atari 2500 (1981)
  • Atari 2700 "RC Stella" (1982)
  • Atari 3000 "Graduate Computer" (1983)
  • Atari 3200 "Video System X" (1982) - released in 1982 as Atari 5200
  • Atari 3600 "Maria" (1983) - published in 1986 as Atari 7800

Home computers

Based on 8-bit CPUs of the MOS-6502 series , the following systems were created until the company was split up:

  • Atari 400 and Atari 800 (August 29, 1979)
  • Atari 1200 XL (1982/1983) was only a year and only in the United States sold
  • Atari 600 XL, Atari 800 XL (September 1983)

The Atari 65 XE, 800 XE and 130 XE finally appeared in 1985 under the successor company Atari Corporation.

Computer games

literature

  • Curt Vendel, Marty Goldberg: Atari Inc. - Business is Fun . Syzygy Press, Carmel NY 2012, ISBN 978-0-9855974-0-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://atari.vg-network.com/aainterview.html ( Memento from October 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ mcurrent.name (PDF)
  3. ↑ a b Cam Shea: Al Alcorn Interview ( English ) In: IGN . Retrieved September 11, 2008 .; Note: George Opperman is referred to as Fred Opperman.
  4. ↑ Ador Yano: Video game history ( English ) In: Ralphbaer.com . Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  5. ↑ Videogames Turn 40 Years Old ( English ) 1UP . Retrieved June 30, 2013.
  6. ↑ The Dot Eaters - Player1 Stage1 - Classic Video Game History
  7. ↑ Nick Dart: The 'Fuji' logo ( English ) In: The Art of the Arcade . November 6, 2011. Archived from the original on December 22, 2013. Retrieved June 1, 2013.
  8. ↑ Steve Morgenstern: Game-Grams . In: The Atari Club (Ed.): Atari Age . 1, No. 5, January / February 1983, p. 6. ISSN  0731-5686 . "George tells us that the corporate logo basically represents a stylized letter 'A' to stand for 'Atari.' He did have an added inspiration in designing the symbol, though. Back in 1972, Atari's claim to fame was 'Pong,' and George says the two side pieces of the Atari symbol represent two opposing video game players, with the center line of the 'Pong' court in the middle. "
  9. ↑ http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=395 ( Memento from August 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ gamasutra.com
  11. ↑ a b c d Kenneth B. Noble: 2 Charged In Atari Stock Sale ( English ) In: The New York Times . September 27, 1983. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  12. ↑ Barbara Mikkelson, David P Mikkelson: snopes.com: Buried Atari Cartridges ( English ) In: Snopes.com . May 10, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
  13. ↑ gamasutra.com
  14. ↑ pc-magazin.de
  15. ↑ Company News: Atari Plans Entry In Communications ( English ) In: The New York Times . March 18, 1983. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  16. ↑ Business People: Atari Replaces Head Of Unit After 9 Months ( English ) In: The New York Times . September 8, 1983. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  17. ↑ The Game Turns Serious at Atari ( English ) In: The New York Times . December 19, 1982. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  18. ^ Roger Cohen: The Creator of Time Warner, Steven J. Ross, Is Dead at 65 ( English ) In: The New York Times . December 21, 1992. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  19. ↑ Susan Chira: Amiga's High-Tech Gamble ( English ) In: The New York Times . August 29, 1984. Retrieved June 6, 2013.
  20. ^ Atari Parts Are Dumped ( English ) In: The New York Times . September 28, 1983. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  21. ↑ COMPUTER: Business is war . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1984 ( online ).
  22. ↑ Sample Contracts - Agreement and Plan of Reorganization - Atari Corp. and JT Storage Inc.- Competitive Intelligence for Investors
  23. ↑ Brooke Shelby Biggs: 'Success' killed Pac-Man creator Atari ( English ) San Jose Business Journal . July 19, 1996. Retrieved August 15, 2009.
  24. ^ JTS Corp .: 8-K For 2/23/98 ( en ) JTS Corp. March 3, 1998. Retrieved August 15, 2009.
  25. ↑ Infogrames: Infogrames Reinvents Atari With Shipment of MXrider, Splashdown For PlayStation 2 ( English ) In: Official press release . The Free Library. October 31, 2001. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
  26. ↑ theregister.co.uk
  27. ↑ Jörg Benne: k & k: Infogrames is called Atari, Shellshock 2 indexed, Hearts of Iron 3 . In: Gamecaptain . Maiwald & Benne GbR. May 29, 2009. Retrieved May 25, 2013.
  28. ↑ Time Warner to Sell Part Or All of Its Stake in Atari ( English ) In: The New York Times . March 25, 1995. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  29. ↑ sec.gov
  30. ^ John Dix: Luma video phone out . In: Network World . tape 3 , no. 10 , May 12, 1986, ISSN  0887-7661 , pp. 11, 14 .
  31. ↑ Frank Lovace: Fast Forward . In: Billboard . tape 98 , no. 37 , September 13, 1986, pp. 67-68 .