Considering the price when it first came out, one might wonder: how much was the Atari when it first came out? In 1977, Atari consoles were expensive, but the price has come down since the company rebranded them as Atari Video computer systems. But did the console live up to expectations? We’ll look at some factors that contributed to the success of the Atari brand. In addition to its price, it took a long time to develop and launch.
Table of Contents
Price
Atari, Inc. is a company founded in Sunnyvale, California in 1972 that pioneered home video games and arcade games. The company’s products would come to define the electronic entertainment industry for decades to come. The Atari Video Computer System, model 2600, retailed at a price between $199 and $229, depending on the game. The game consoles were extremely popular and sold for billions of dollars.
The Atari was not inexpensive, but it was a revolution in home video game development. Its founders paved the way for gaming companies to follow. Atari gaming systems are still considered vintage, but recent releases of flashback consoles have brought many of the old games back to life. Today’s price of an Atari 2600 is lower than that of a Bentley. However, if you’re looking for an antique video game, you’ll need to be prepared to pay more.
Development time
The Atari Jaguar was developed in-house at Atari with help from an external contractor, Martin Brennan. Brennan was one of the founding members of Flare Technology, a group of former Sinclair engineers who had worked on the Konix Multisystem and Flare One. He was joined by John Mathieson, who was also an ex-colleague of Miller’s. The pair were collectively known as “Flare II” in internal documents.
The company’s success peaked in 1982, and in 1984, the videogame industry suffered from poor third-party game titles, bad licensing decisions, and product dumping, which lowered the price of full-priced games. In the following years, many companies, including Atari, struggled to survive, while others were thriving. The Atari 2600 sold over 30 million units during its lifetime, and the company released numerous hits including Pac-Man and E.T.
Success
While there was plenty of competition in the early 1980’s, the Atari was a winner. It had a huge install base and a large library of games. The competition was not nearly as good as the Atari, which topped all other games by a wide margin. In fact, the only competition to the Atari was Channel F, which was a hand-held console with no sound or graphics capabilities. But the lack of distribution stopped the system from being sold nationwide. Eventually, this led to the demise of the Fairchild and Atari Corporation, which made the Atari Lynx.
The first games for the Atari used the venerable C64. The games were designed for the stock joystick controller. Taito’s Space Invaders arrived in America and interest in video games skyrocketed. The engineers at Atari were dismissed as “high-strung prima donnas” by CEO Ray Kassar. The success of the Atari at first was undoubtedly due to its innovative games.
Failure
The Atari was a great success when it first came out. It had an impressive feature set and was able to attract a wide audience. It even had a game that was popular among a wide age group. In the early 1980s, there was little competition and the Atari was able to make a decent impact. In the end, however, Apple came along and changed the landscape forever.
In 1973, Bushnell purchased Atari from its co-founder Ted Dabney and sold it to Warner Communications for $28 million. Bushnell got a further $15 million from Warner, who bought the company. After a couple years, Bushnell resigned as CEO and the company became owned by Warner. Warner quickly acquired the company and the Atari became one of the most popular video game systems of all time.
Rebirth
The first Atari home console, the 2600, came out in 1977. It led to the home game console revolution and ruled the market for several years. The company is now completely focused on producing digital content, with ten people in New York and three in Paris. While the company hasn’t released many new games since it went bankrupt, it has released a number of remakes of old favorites.
Initially, the game was not all that popular. It didn’t look good, and it was incredibly frustrating to play. It wasn’t until the movie’s release that the game’s developers realized it was a success. Despite this setback, it sold millions of copies and eventually reached the ten-million-copy mark. However, investors had high expectations for the game and the company lost a great deal of money.