This article ignores the fact that aside from being barred with manufacturing unlicensed NES games, Atari also failed to compete with any of its subsequent consoles after the VCS (although it did have some success with its PCs). The consoles were all flawed in some way. They were underpowered, didn't offer much over the previous iteration, or simply didn't have a strong enough library of games to compete. Atari was famously slow to realize that maybe people want more out of a game console than home ports of decade-old arcade games. On top of that, their original games that weren't home ports were mostly lackluster or were just outside of what gamers of the time were demanding.

Hard to say that Nintendo putting the kibosh on one arm of Atari's business "bled them to death" when all their other arms were bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.

The coda to this fascinating saga is that today - in a post publisher, open distribution marketplace - STEAM, the predominate game distribution gateway, allows anyone to publish just about anything for a $100 deposit and a 30% commission per sale. The predictable end result is that 19,000 new games were uploaded to STEAM last year alone, and over 100,000 titles are available for purchase on the platform.

The predictable result is that unless a studio has a lottery-win statistically equivalent outlier or a $50m marketing budget, a new game is swallowed up by the shear volume of titles. 1 in 5 games on STEAM never even earn back the $100 deposit.

$100 is pretty cheap for this kind of lottery ticket. You have to pay way more to get a start in other marketplaces.

This is also the social media game. Building a following is the name of the game and the long tail can substant many

Every story I hear about Atari is wild. Hard to believe they managed to have the success they did.

There’s an interesting shift in perspective that’s been happening around Nintendo over the last decade.

While the organization still presents as an odd-ball Japanese company with quirky qualities, it’s becoming more and more apparent they are commanded by MBA-types that are seeking to protect as much IP as possible, and squeeze out the last penny from fun.

Things I’ve purchased from them in the last little while are probably at my high-end of tolerance of what things should cost.

> Except, the game designers were paid a flat salary, not royalties, unlike the rock stars in Warner’s stable. In late 1979, four defecting Atari designers and one music industry executive disrupted the video game console business model by aligning it with the recording industry’s: Hardware would be just hardware, and content would now be supplied by third-party content providers. Activision was formed, with a little business and legal help from the Sistine Chapel of Silicon Valley law firms, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

I wasn't aware of that story, a lot of irony in there...