Activity

Michael Naimark: But after Alan left things started tanking very quickly. Atari went from like earning billions to losing billions. And I think the first quarter of ’84 was the turning point.

David Crane: It was a whole disaster. There was a time when Atari lost a hundred million dollars in a qu…

Howard Warshaw: They bought E.T. as a loss leader to keep it away from other people. Back then Atari was the vast majority of the industry, but there was also Mattel, there was Coleco.

David Crane: They had to get it out by a certain time frame for Christmas.

Nolan Bushnell: Therefore the dea…

Alan Kay: Atari was greedy and they were making a shitload of money off really obsolete games toward the end there.

Al Alcorn: You know in Silicon Valley if you don’t obsolete yourself somebody else will, right? The Warner guys didn’t really understand that. They were from an East Coast company …

Bob Whitehead: The four of us began to look up the numbers and we found out just the four of us were responsible for in excess of $200 million in sales, just our games. That was after a year and a half or so of sales.

David Crane: Since we went out to lunch together and tended to look at these t…

Randy Wigginton: Steve was never very technical, even though he liked to say he was, but he really never was. I don’t know that he could actually program or design hardware. I never saw any evidence of it. He was more interested in the Homebrew Computer Club as a way to make a business. I mean he j…