Nolan Bushnell Disappointed With PS3 124
An anonymous reader writes "Atari founder Nolan Bushnell points out that PS and PS2 got lucky with their release, 'It wasn't anything brilliant that they did. With the PS and PS2 it was timing. They had the right pricing at the right time [and were] almost the accidental winner.' But he sees things differently this time around. 'It would not surprise me if a year from now they'll be struggling to sell 1 million units.'" I find that kind of hard to believe, but he raises some more salient points in the other parts of the article.
1 Million In A Year? (Score:1, Interesting)
Is this guy like the Dvorak of video games or something?
Re:1 Million In A Year? (Score:5, Funny)
Is this guy like the Dvorak of video games or something?
No, he's the fucking Nolan Bushnell of videogames.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell [wikipedia.org]
I'd say he has a little bit more credibility about videogame-related matters than you do.
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Re:1 Million In A Year? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Atari was diversified in nearly every consumer electronic product in existence, had holdings in intellectual property markets and a market cap of $41 billion.
Sorry, Sony is a different boat than a company who created a market by convincing people that a new type of product was something they wanted.
Bushnell is respectable, and he has experience in the field, but the industry is an entirely different game now. Markets, and products are merging. How many people thought consumers would pay $300+ for a music device? Jobs did, and that's all that mattered evidentally.
Bushnell is, erroneously, using experience from a younger, less mature, less saturated market, to make prediction about a market which has merged with several other markets and a company which he is neither privvy to, nor had comparable experience or resources to when he was running the show.
This is just like someone quoting Einstein on philosophy. The man was an expert in math and physics... that doesn't make him an expert on everything.
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But, you can't totally discount Bushnell's comments, as he has gone on to start a couple dozen successful companies, he does have experience and he has stayed on top of the video game market from the sounds of things. He says (along with others in the indust
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To have both sides of the story, Red Herring would certainly have to interview the manager of a japanese restaurant...
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KFG
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It would be more correct to say that he has failed to respond.
KFG
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Oh? Because EVERY respectable place I've heard so far is still saying 400k.
Yeah, because I have TONS of experience assuring me that the manager of a retail store is an expert on corporate politics and electronics manufacture numbers.
Not to mention that he's told me that at least 1/2 of his pre-orders are destined for E-bay.
And how exactly does he know this?
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Funny. I saw that same story on the apwire [excite.com] the other day. Now where did I find that link... ? Oh yeah! On Slashdot! [slashdot.org]
Meta-Criticism (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's the guy who founded Atari, and single-handedly created the Video Game industry.
Depends, did you invent the Video Game Industry? No? Then STFU.
Busnell was responsible for Atari's early arcade games, their Pong machines, and the Atari 2600. Save for the poor showing of the Space War arcade game, none of those were abject failures.
Bushnell left Atari in 1978, partly because of a disagreement over the 5200 strategy. Warner wanted to branch out into computers (the Atari 400/800) while Bushnell wanted to keep the 8-bit technology for the next game console. Warner effectively pushed him out of the company, at which point he went on to dedicate his energies to the highly successful Pizza Time restaurant. (Known today as "Chuck E. Cheeses".)
Warner continued with their 8-bit computer plans, while developing new technology for the next console. Unfortunately, the technology for the next console failed to work out, causing Atari to repackage an 8-Bit computer as a game console. (The 5200.) At that point, however, the 5200 was late to the market, overbuilt for being a game console, and had these poor analog controllers which failed within hours of use. It was absolutely nothing like the original vision for the console, and failed from a combination of consumer pushback and Atari's own failure to support it.
E.T. was a rush job to get an E.T. licensed game out for Christmas 1982. That was another Warner/Atari failure. The video game crash caused the company to be sold to Jack Tramiel (of Commodore fame) who gutted the company. Tramiel's legacy was the poorly supported Atari 7800, the Atari Lynx, and the Atari Jaguar.
*sigh*
Bushnell Leaves Atari: 1978
Atari Releases 5200: 1982
Warner sells Atari: 1984
Jaguar Released: 1993
Hallelujah! Someone who actually got it right!
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In other news, I got a ET cartridge the other day for 2 bucks, I feel I paid 5 bucks more than I should have.
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I would think that the PS's success is due to the kind of games they had and relationships Sony made with developers/publishers.
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I don't think so... [wikipedia.org]
I still don't think so... [wikipedia.org]
Nobody buys his games anymore. [wikipedia.org] They just play them.
The real answer is that through the years Mr. Bushnell has founded over a dozen companies related to v
Meta-Meta-Criticism (Score:1, Insightful)
uWink *is* the "upscale Dave n Busters clone" that you don't think exists.
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I would think that the PS's success is due to the kind of games they had and relationships Sony made with developers/publishers.
Right, and the reason they were able to craft these relationships was that they had the biggest installed user base. Bushnell wisely points out that even if Sony's current production estimates are accurate, and they instantly sell every one that they ship (highly unlikely), then they won't be the market leader until mid 2007. That's assuming that Microsoft doesn't sell a sing
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As always the system selling games, wide library and their exclusivity will determine the sell through of the console. Most people who aren't gamers and who have a good grasp of gaming history are not really able to comment on why something is or isn't successful. Gamers get consoles to play games, before PS1 h
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I would think that the PS's success is due to the kind of games they had and relationships Sony made with developers/publishers.
Has the gaming market changed all that much over its entire history?
The fact is that there is a certain similar strategy which made the Atari 2600, NES, Gameboy, SNES, Playstation, Playstation 2, Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS more successful than
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Whatever happened to Dabney, anyway?
Ralph Baer single-handedly created video games. The Magnavox Odyssey was a complete failure, making Atari responsible for creating the Video Game industry.
If that were true, then the Odyssey wouldn't have failed. (It was released to the market the same
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He's still around, in the middle of interviewing him in fact.
Again incorrect, and more quoting from fansites rather than accurate sources. The Magnavox Odyssey sold about 375,000 units in its US release alone, with that ammount doubled including world wide released. This is during a 4 year run ('72-'75) with U
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In that case, fix your own damn fansite [classicgaming.com]: "However, even with this initial success, the console did not fair well."
You're spreading disinformation, Mr. Site Director.
Neither Mr. Baer or PongStory have upped their esitmates from 350,000 units. If you have new information, you might want to share with them so that they're not spreading disinformation from their "fan
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While I agree that there's been a lot of that here, you're not immune your self.
Actually, he's the guy who *co-founded* Atari and jumpstarted the video game industry. He did not "single-handedly create the Video Game Industry". He did create the video game
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It is not incorrect, it is a simplification. I do not have all day to rant on abou
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If its stating that all the paddles failed within hours of play, it is not a simplification, it is incorrect and a missquote.
Oxidization happens over a short (over hours) time? I'd love to see that trick.
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"uWink, Inc. (OTCBB: UWNK) is a digital entertainment company based in Los Angeles, California that develops interactive entertainment software and platforms for restaurants, bars, and mobile devices. Led by entertainment and restaurant visionary Nolan Bushnell, founder and former CEO of Atari (NasdaqNM: ATAR) and Chuck E. Cheese (NYSE: CEC), uWink is currently building a new entertainment dining experience called uWink Bistro (working title) which le
is there a slashdot editor in the plane?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Misleading article title... (Score:3, Interesting)
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And, hypothetically, if the PS3 was $1,500, it would have to do a lot more than it does currently for people (myself included) to rationalize buying it over say, a new computer.
But the PS3 isn't priced that high. $1,500 is three times more than the $500 the base model is going for, your point might be valid at $1,500, but less so at $500.
And, how can one call it a disappointment until one has, you know, played it? I
Another one for the 'zonked' tag (Score:3)
His claim they are going to have trouble selling a million within a year ignores the early preorder prices systems are going for on eBay. They could sell a million by Christmas if they had them - in the US they should have around 600k-800k by the end of the year, and people will be snapping those up.
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It'll sell 1 million in the US easy. But over taking the 360 which is ahead in sales and price, is going to be the hard part. Especially since the majority of the PS3's launch games are cross-platform.
Sony and Nintendo still are one up on MS (Score:1)
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.. except the PS3 is massively larger than the 360 (Score:2)
Err, while the Wii is relatively miniscule, the PS3 is actually much larger than the 360 [wordpress.com].
BTW - The reason why the PS2 still sells well is because it's cheap, and there are a ton of great games on that platform. Of course, this holiday season is going to be the last time we see
Re:.. except the PS3 is massively larger than the (Score:1)
You might want to try checking some current [engadget.com] pictures, from people who actually have the systems, rather than pre-production mockups. Looks to me like the difference in width and height are less than an inch each. Unfortunately, we can't really tell from the pictures how deep each console is.
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Now I'm curious, how large is the PS3 compared to the original Xbox? And more importantly, does size even matter? The claim as to why the original Xbox didn't do well in Japan was because it was too big. If the PS3 is close to the same size, yet still does well in Japan, then it blows that theory out of the water. (Personally, the reason why any console bomb
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The Dreamcast when it launched was the fastest and most successful selling console launch to Date- better than the Ps1, N64, NES, Genesis...you name it. Customers weren't "avoiding it like the plague" by any
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Oh? Where would that be? I seem to remember that the Atari 2600 was anything but a huge failure.
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And what was the PS2?
Most of the interview wasn't about the PS3 anyway. Zonked again!
Really, it's Zonk that actually has me rooting for the PS3 to be a roaring success, just so I can shove the fact into his smug pimply face.
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Actually he sold it because he was unsuccessful from a business perspective because of that. He sold to Warner *because* Atari was having financial problems at the time (1975-1976). The arcade division (the main source of income) was having problems (mainly due to a deluge of PONG sequels) and the consumer prouct line was just starting out. Warner was at the end of a list of companies to sell to, to get som
Re:Reliable Opinion? (Score:5, Informative)
Bushnell left Atari in 1978. Methinks he didn't have anything to do with the Jaguar, 5200, or E.T.
Doesn't anyone pay attention to history?
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Note that I didn't say he had many failures, I said that the company he founded did. Atari basically had one major success, the 2600. Bushnell, as a person, seems to have had two. The first part of Atari's life, and Chuck E. Cheese's. His other things seem to be failures as well. And the 2600 was definitely an instance of nothing but good timing. As his first computer game box (Computer Space) was considered a commercial failure because it was too far ahead of its tim
Re:Reliable Opinion? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a former 2600 game programmer I disagree. It was the brilliant low-cost, deeply flexible design of the 2600 that kept it dominant when there were plenty of competitors around.
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Wow, you guys are still around? What was it like carving circuit boards out of sandstone?
Ahhh I'm just kidding, actually I was part of the Atari generation too...
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I don't know where you got that idea from - the 2600 was released at a time that was anything but good. The winter of '77 saw the first video game crash, with a deluge of low end Pong consoles at closeout prices in stores as well as big competition from the emerging electronic handheld market. Within the next year it also faced competition from the Odyssey 2, APF M1000, and Bally Professional Arcade. There's a reason in fact that the r
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That's two more billion dollar successes than you've had, I wouldn't brush it off so lightly. Most business ventures fail. Very rarely is a runaway success that entrepeneur's first project (if it was it was probably a fluke), and once they do get a success their "next big thing" doesn't usually pan out either.
Dismissing the ma
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Thank you!!
Jesus H. Christ, Slashdotters are driving me nuts on this one. "His company had failure ehe he stupid me smart him not know so much pblblblbl".
In Atari's early days, when Bushnell actually WAS there, they were a staple of the technology industry as a whole. Heck, Steve Wozniak got his start there (and his education, as much as he ever had one. the man seems to have just been born brilliant), and
I'd Mod you up (Score:1)
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To be fair, Atari didn't have anywhere NEAR the brand success Nintendo and Sony currently have. Nintendo's been a dominant player in the field since 1985 with no less than four profitable consoles. An argument can be made that they've been substantially less successful in that area since the SNES, but even so the SNES and NES and the properties established on those systems were so popular it can be argued they've been coasting on them ever since. I remember reading an article once where Mario had surpassed
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Re:file that between... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The SNES was 400 when it first came out but quickly dropped down over a few years.
The xbox360 is way too expensive as it is, the PS3 costing more just makes things worse.
I'd gladly do without either to know I'm not shelling out tons of money for a platform I can't legitimately hack.
Tom
SNES was $200 (Score:2)
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Like New Zealand. Where a $200 USD SNES would indeed have sold for $400 NZD. (Based on US launch price of Wii at $249.99 before taxes and $499 NZD launch price after taxes.)
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I had two very good reasons to think so, which obviously you glossed over in your hurry to flame.
1. The prices quoted were far too high to be in USD.
And the important one, in bold so you notice it.
2. The user has a Canadian email address.
See it? Right there, at the top of his post, under his user name. Can't miss it. Wait. You did.
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Year 2006 dollars people! (Score:2)
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You forgot the NeoGeo and the 3DO (Score:2)
Atari 7800
SNES
Dreamcast
Gamecube
I'd say it was more of a majority of them were more than $300 in today's dollars.
Of worthy note is that the Genesis ALMOST makes it into that club (~$306) and the
PSX is bumped out of it by $48 in today's values...
Right now, Sony's making the NeoGeo play (In terms of the then dollars, it was about
the same price and had a vast leg-up over the other consoles in terms of power and
display capabilities, etc...)- and we all know how well that wor
Re:file that between... (Score:4, Informative)
http://curmudgeongamer.com/2006/05/history-of-con
Gaming PC? No thanks. (Score:1)
And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess).
I'd rather use consoles to play games, thanks. And
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>And buying a more expensive PC simply to play games on it is better how? Not to mention all the usual Windows problems that goes with it? Service Pack 2 or not, there's always new holes being discovered and you'll never been 100% safe (or, in the case of Windows, even 50% safe I guess).
Very few people buy a PC "simply to play games on." In fact, almost every household that has a recent game console also has a PC. So it's not so muc
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2. Star Trek Legacy (the PC version is modable)
3. Neverwinter Nights 2 (well, when they patch it, but consoles get patched too)
4. Spore
5. Nearly any RTS game: galactic civilizations II for example
6. Tycoon games: just picked up railroad tycoon 3 for $9 and had a blast
The console wins in sports and racing games, which in my opinion are fun too. However, the recent version of madden sucked, and the 360 version of burnout takedown isnt that much different than the xbox ve
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"Xbox360 is from M$ nuff said"
Can you please expand on your thoughts? I don't see how the Wii would be considered 'just lame' or how the 360 suffers the horrible affliction of having one of the world's most successful companies behind it.
You sound like a Sony fanboi, but seriously, I do want to know if you can justify your feelings on the matter, or if it's just blind devotion.
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NES
Super Nintendo
Playstation
Playstation 2
Xbox
S
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I know you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway (Score:2)
Ehh, I work at Microsoft, specifically in Microsoft Game Studios. Your statement is FUD. The engineers in our group are almost entirely in the US. There are
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Here's your original statement again: "Where do you think Microsoft employs these whiz bang engineers and programmers who write the code and design the hardware. Hint: It's not in
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You'll have to explain what you mean by 'make games'. Fact is, the PS2 was not 'easy' to develop for. It was more difficult to develop for than the GameCube, due to it's hardware (also, why the PS2 was 'more powerful'). The GameCube's simpler (and less powerful in some regards) hardware also made it easier and faster to develop on. The XBox was "easier" as well as it used DirectX which was already being
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Did you ever ship a game for a Sony console?
I don't know where people get this idea from (you're not the first one to say it), but it's much harder to write for Sony's and Nintendo's consoles than for Microsoft's. Even the president of Sony was spinning "if it's easy it's not next-gen" (paraphrased, I can't find the link) to try to justify this.
I can't go into details without breaking NDAs, but the reality is
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No, in fact, the PS2 was the most difficult to program for in the previous generation. Xbox and Gamecube were designed around familiar architecture and established standards so that it was easy for developers to embrace the platform. Sony did what it has always done and took its own completely untraveled path.
The number of games available on PS2 has WAY more to do with the large established user bas
Re:hehe (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumers and game makers alike had the choice of: Buy/make games for PS2 or don't do anything at all. This is what Bushnell meant when he says it was a success based on timing.... Sony owned the market because they had no competition.
This kind of lead built on itself, companies made all of their games for the PS2 because it was the only console around, gamers all only bought the PS2 because it was the only console around, and then once Nintendo and Microsoft showed up it didn't matter because Sony already had an insurmountable install base, companies continued making all of their games for the PS2 because that's where the gamers were and gamers kept buying the PS2 because that's where all the games were. It had nothing to do with the ease of programming and everything to do with market share and the lack of options to consumers.
The tables are turned this generation, Basically MS and Sony find their positions swapped. MS has the market to itself and Sony and Nintendo are launching a year later. It's not exactly the same though, because many people were turned off by the $400 price tag of the 360, last gen consoles are still worth while (while the PS1 and N64 were showing their age when the PS2 rolled out) and based on the creeping market share by the Xbox and Gamecube by the end of the last generation people are more likely to wait to see what the PS3 and Wii have to offer. Even still a full year lead is a full year lead, and it would seem that Sony's tech while powerful isn't as far ahead of MS this generation as MS was ahead of Sony last generation, nor is Nintendo's new offering as boring as the GC was in terms of innovation.
I don't think anyone will run away with a market lead this time around, and I don't think Sony's consoles are popular because they did anything particularly well.... just released at the right time.
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Why does everyone forget about the Dreamcast when making statements like this? The DC was very much alive and competitive up to a full year before the PS2 launched with comparable hardware and some pretty stellar games. (Soul Calibur 1, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, Seaman, Rez.
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http://www.vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=PS& name2=SAT&type=2&align=1 [vgcharts.org]
http://www.vgcharts.or [vgcharts.org]
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