In the aftermath of the Atari crisis, some news outlets began interviewing Atari's founder, Nolan Bushnell. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

Now, after Nolan Bushnell left Atari, Chuck Cheese Restaurant has been a re-successful one, expanding from just three stores before Lin Qi's investment to 15 stores, and made a profit of $5 million last year.

As a successful restaurant chain owner, however, the media still paid more attention to his identity as the father of video games and the founder of Atari.

"Hello, Mr. Bushnell, what do you do about the recent massive boycott of Atari by players?"

"I'm not surprised at all when Atari has problems...... Nolan Bushnell said in an interview with the media, "Since I left, Atari has been working on 8-bit game consoles, and upgrades are equal to no upgrades, and even with the same 6507 chip, Atari engineers have actually developed several machines that are not very compatible." Not to mention the quality of the game, our early Atari emphasis is that the game should be simple, so that players don't need to read the complicated manual, you can easily get started, but simple does not mean shoddy! A game is simple, in fact, it is not simple, such as the game "Chinese Cube", is it complicated? It's not complicated at all, but is it shoddy? No, it's so simple that it doesn't need to be modified, and there is no need to modify it at all, even if the CPU performance is good, it's still like that, concise and classic! Since then, the new start-up electronics company that created "Chinese Cube" has gradually used more and more advanced hardware, and designed games with more and more programs and richer content, which has been very different from the simple style of the early days. But...... This company has been constantly innovating and launching high-quality games!"

"Does anyone suspect that the Pangu console is behind you?" the media reporter speculated.

"No, you think highly of me, as a gamer, I am respected as the originator of the video game industry, just because you help me tout, and at the same time, it means that I have been in this industry for a long time, and other than that, it does not mean that my skills are the best and optimal. Nolan Bushnell said, "I'm outdated in terms of technology. Xinchuang Electronics is an open-minded absorption of the world's most cutting-edge scientific and technological theories, and the software and hardware it designs are much more complex than we were at the beginning. I can only say that their technology is the best in the game industry, I can't coach them more, and there is no need, after all, young people nowadays don't need the guidance of a restaurateur at all. Instead, he can teach a restaurateur how to stand out from the market. ”

"Do you think the Atari crisis is a temporary problem, or is it a continuous collapse?"

"Emotionally, I hope Atari is experiencing temporary difficulties. But in fact, the current Atari predicament is by no means a change in management policy can save ......," Bushnell said sharply, "At present, the MOS 6507 chip used by Yada is a revision of the 6502 chip, because MOS technology companies are not too keen on launching 16-bit chips, resulting in the original use of this company's chip manufacturers, all encountered the dilemma of outdated technology." There is no doubt that the 75-year-old 6502 chip is very powerful, low price and high performance, and has achieved the miracle of Atari, Apple and other companies. However, the failure of Atari and Apple is also due to the fact that MOS technology companies are not enterprising and CPU chip upgrades are slow. Apple and Atari will encounter difficulties in switching to 16-bit chips from other companies that are not compatible with the previous system and need to start over with new machines. And as it is now, if we continue to use MOS Technology's chips, then we will hand over the timeline for technology upgrades to MOS Technology, but MOS Technology has been disappointing. If time can be turned back, I will buy the 6502 chip to improve and upgrade the license, so that the company will use the 6507 in the early stage, and after that, the profits from the sale of consoles and games will be invested in the research and development of the next generation of CPUs, and independently develop a 16-bit chip compatible with the 6507 chip architecture......"

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple and the 40th employee of Atari, had a heroic feeling about his former boss, Bushnell, in his comments. Apple computer and PC competition, in addition to IBM's strong market appeal, more importantly, MOS technology company cheats!

Look at the Intel X86 chip is not cost-effective, but the technology upgrade is fast. 8-bit chips competed, so they began to upgrade to 16-bit architecture. Now, 16-bit chips don't seem to have an advantage, so the next generation of 80386 will be 32-bit CPUs.

After MOS Technology launched a 6502 in 75 years, for so many years, its company's main products are still 8-bit chips 6502 and 6502 series improved chips.

In the field of computers, machine manufacturers using 6502 chips can only lag behind in the face of machine manufacturers using other architectures.

"What can I do? I'm desperate......" This is probably the voice of the 6502 camp manufacturer.

In a sense, the real culprit of Atari's collapse may not be that there is a problem with the company's management policy, but that the company has improved several console products, and the CPU chips have not changed much, at most they can only be slightly enhanced in other configurations such as memory and video memory.

However, the CPU is not powerful, it can't support larger memory and video memory, blindly increasing video memory and memory can only be a waste, even if the memory of the 6502 chip is made to the highest configuration, it can only support 64KB of memory!

It can be seen that the whole machine using the 6502 chip has reached the extreme to tap the performance potential.

CPU performance drags, even if the price of memory, video memory and other hardware has been reduced, but it is not used, and there is no room for upgrade.

Ray Caesar, president of Atari, who was completely tech-ignorant, saw Bushnell's interview and said, "Does he make sense?"

"That's right, that's right, our failure is not due to incompetence and lack of progress. Actually, it's because of MOS technology. This company hasn't been able to come out with a better CPU, and we can't help it. The technician shouted again and again.

"Can't we buy an improved production license for the chip architecture and then develop the improved version ourselves?" asked Ray Kaiser.

"Well, even if you do that, it will take time. The technician replied, "It will take at least 1 year to upgrade the original architecture of the chip to 16 bits, and it will take longer for the chip to be produced and used in the next generation of hosts, and it is conservatively estimated that after 2~3 years, a new host with excellent performance can be launched." ”

Although Ray Kaiser does not understand technology, he still issued an order to purchase the modification and production authorization of the 6502 chip architecture, and the research and development of the next generation of hosts is also carried out simultaneously.

Of course, Ray Caesar would not have known that in a few months, he would resign, and that this too late R&D project had further contributed to Atari's losses to $600 million a year.

Sadly, the next president cut the project again in order to save costs, and instead adopted Motorola's expensive and inefficient 16-bit chip to launch a home console that was compatible with arcade machines. Of course...... After that, the new host was the same fiasco. The successive failures eventually cost Atari all the money it had earned over the years.