Although Burbank, California, is not as famous as nearby Hollywood and Silicon Valley, its influence in the United States is not inferior to that of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, because it is the media capital of the United States. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 The headquarters of major American media groups, including Warner Group, Walt Disney, NBC, Viacom, PBS, etc., are concentrated here.

The headquarters and main manufacturing plant of Atari, which was acquired by Warner Group, are also located in Sun Valley, Burbank, California.

Atari was founded in 1972 with the intention of naming the company and the company, but was unable to register due to the duplicate name, and later Nolan Bushnell took inspiration from the Japanese shogi and named the company Atari, which means the Japanese shogi "shogun" pronunciation.

Atari initially obtained a $50,000 loan from the bank on a contract for an order fabricated by Nolan Bushnell. Later, he set up a factory in an abandoned ice rink, hired some workers at basic salaries, and assembled his invention of the game "Pong", which later received orders for more than 10,000 units and became the first commercial arcade product.

At that time, the American company Odyssey had already launched a home console game platform, the Osside system. Thereupon. Atari also began to miniaturize arcade machines, making a version of the "Pong" family game. But the hardware for each home game needs to be developed repeatedly, which led Nolan Bushnell to come up with the idea of developing a console game platform.

Although by 75 years, Atari's revenue has exceeded $15 million, and it is an absolute leader in the American game industry. However, the development of a high-performance console platform required a huge expense at the time, so Atari was forced to sell to Warner Group for $28 million. Warner acquired Atari and injected $100 million in capital, which allowed Atari to start having enough capital to invest in technology research and development.

With Warner's capital injection, the development of Atari's video game console system is progressing very well. However, expensive R&D investments have turned the company from a profit to a loss.

By '77, the Atari 2600 was launched, but because sales did not meet expectations, the company still failed to turn around its losses, and it was still the case in '78. As a result, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell had to submit his resignation.

Later, Warner appointed professional manager Ray Kaiser as the new president of Atari, the new president Caesar did not have any technical background, knew nothing about computer technology and game development, was originally a businessman engaged in the textile industry, after he was appointed president, began to drastically reform Atari, but also cut many research and development projects that he thought were not necessary, in order to save research and development costs.

At the same time, Ray Kaiser devotes more resources to product marketing, giving salespeople huge performance commissions, but scorning technicians.

After Ray Caesar took office, the conflict between Atari's original technical research and development team and those with no technical background intensified.

At a time when Atari's game console sales were skyrocketing, its technicians kept submitting their resignations.

Many technicians who left their jobs set up third-party game companies to continue to develop games for the Atari platform. Most of the American game companies established in the 70s~early 80s are basically related to Atari Corporation.

Ray Caesar, the president of Atari, was not afraid of all the technicians leaving, because the company's popular platform, the Atari 2600, had a monopoly, and even if the people who left the company set up a company, they had to rely on Atari to make a living.

As long as these technicians are not gathered under the banner of soul figures, such as Bushnell, then Atari will not be afraid of the rabble at all.

"President, this is the latest news, the new startup Electronics has established a North American branch and invested in Bushnell's pizzeria!" an Atari executive held a freshly baked newspaper and circled the key points with a pen.

"Bushnell still has a new start-up electronics, how is it possible? They cooperate, how can it be a pizzeria?" Ray Caesar had serious suspicion written on his face.

"That's what it said on the news, and I found out that many of the company's engineers frequented the pizzeria. The executive also said quietly.

"There must be a conspiracy!" Ray Caesar said, slapping the table, "They're probably investing in pizzerias on the surface, but they're actually working together on a game! Yes, it must be." The pizzeria was a front for them to come into contact with the Atari ghosts...... All the employees who have been to that pizzeria are not trustworthy! No...... Most of the employees who joined before November '78 are not trustworthy!"

Ray Keys kept pacing the room, and after a while, he said, "You, go find some private investigators, quietly collect evidence, and once you find out that Nolan Bushnell is really engaged in the game industry, then sue him!"

"Yes!" the executive said.

"Every pizzeria has someone to watch and pretend to be a meal. Keep a list of the employees who have visited the pizzeria. Ray Caesar sneered and said, "That Lin Qi often predicts that our company is going to collapse, there must be some insider who has provided him with some kind of news, so that he has the confidence to bring down Atari! I let the facts prove that his wishful thinking is a dream at all! Sooner or later, we will defeat it in the field of handheld computers that he is best at!"

In fact, the recent pressure on Ray Caesar is also very high, because the sharp increase in Atari's performance during his tenure is not his ability, but the good foundation laid during Bushnell's tenure.

However, at the beginning of 82, the classic model of the Atari 2600 has been disliked by consumers for its lack of performance and backward game performance. In addition, the shoddy games on the platform have also affected consumers' favorability of Atari platform games. Therefore, the game must rely on overwhelming advertising to sell well. It's no longer like in previous years, when players hardly pick a game, and any game cartridge can be sold.

The effect of continuous marketing advertising stimulation is also gradually decreasing.

At the same time, some old and new competitors are also eyeing Atari's market share. For example, Commodore Computer Company is strangely positioned, wanting to occupy the microcomputer market upwards and snatch the share of the home console market downward.

In the future, Commodore will gradually fall into trouble due to its market positioning.

However, the current commodore is still relatively awesome. In '82, the Commodore 64" (Commodore C64) had just been announced, and this machine was just over five hundred dollars, and the gaming performance of the Atari 2600 was no less than that of the PC that had just come out in October '81!

In fact, the 80s were also the glory days of commodore, and the company's classic model Commodore 64 sold 22 million units in the future, and was hailed by the media as the "Volkswagen of the computer industry" in the 80s.

Although the variety of games on the Commodore 64 platform is not as rich as the Atari platform, there are also some third-party game developers who gradually join the Commodore 64 camp, and there are also game makers who make games across platforms, but Atari has no way to effectively control the third-party game companies.

Historically, if Commodore had focused on home consoles, it might have been able to nibble on most of the cake of the collapse of the Atari empire and dominate the gaming industry. However, due to the lack of clarity in its definition, it wants both the game market and the computer market. As a result, the $500-plus Commodore computer, although a formidable threat to home consoles, cannot replace home consoles that cost only $200.