The History of Atari

In the spring of 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney started to develop their own version of the game Spacewar! They called it Computer Space. The project was sold to Nutting Associate late in 1971. On 27 June 1972, Bushnell and Dabney founded the Atari company in California. The original company was called Syzygy Co. after an astronomical term, but the owners realized that the name was already taken. Bushnell picked a new name from a Japanese game and chose the term atari, the term atari is when a group of stones is about to be captured. It also said that the Atari name came from a favorite film of Nolan Bushnell called Hatari! by Howard Hawks and featuring John Wayne.

On 29 November 1972, Atari selld its first arcade the famous Pong, which becomes a huge success with 35,000 units sold in total. "I did not invent the video game. I have sold it, "said Nolan Bushnell. In the gaming arcade, Pong was considered the first nail driven into the coffin of pinball. The second game by the company was Space Race which was launched on 16 July 1973. Ted Dabney, was worried by the rise of competition and decided to pull out of the business. To ensure market share, Bushnell decided to sign exclusive contracts with a distributor in each geographic area. As an area is covered by an average two distributors, Atari made a second company in secret to manufacture games called Kee Games which was headed by Bushnell's friend Joe Keenan. Kee would approach the second distributor for each zone that Atari was not working with. Games independently produced by Kee Games and Atari were marketed by both companies with cosmetic changes and different titles. In 1975, the company launched the Atari Pong console, the family version of the game

In October 1976, Nolan Bushnell sells Atari Inc. to Warner Communications for about $ 28 million. In 1977, the company released its first cartridge console, the Atari 2600 (or Atari VCS), which became the market leader with over 25 million units sold in total. Atari launched into the design of personal computers with the a range of Atari 8-bit systems. Despite the advanced graphics capabilities the systems remained in the shadow of the Commodore 64.

In early 1980, the company is hurt by strong competition and was losing money, as much as $ 1 million per day at that time. The video game crash of 1983 in the United States exacerbates the financial difficulties for Atari. On 3 July 1984, Warner Communications sells its division of computer and console game to Tramel Technologies, the company founded by Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore International. The division is renamed Atari Corporation. The "arcade" branch has some popular hits with Marble Madness, and Paperboy. The games division is renamed Atari Games in 1984 but only for a few months until it became a subsidiary of Namco in 1985 prior to its independence.

Now, Atari Corporation and Atari Games are two separate companies.

Works Cited:

Scott Cohen, Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari. 1987.

Adrien Lamothe, Atari Experience. 1984.