Atari is a corporate and brand name, oftenly called as creators of electronic gaming world. It was established in the year 1972 by an ex electrical engineer Nolan Bushnell and his friend Ted Dabney. From the date of its establishment it was owned by various business entities. Now it is owned by, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Infogrames Entertainment SA . Atari interactive in return licensed the brand names and Assets to Atari, Inc. a 51% majority is owned by Infrogames Entertainment SA, encompassing its north American operation. Original Atari Inc. was considered as pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company’s main products, such as PONG and the ATARI 2600, helped define computer entertainment industry from 1970s start to mid 80s.

Atari Inc. (1972-1984)

Atari was incorporated in the state California on June 27th, 1972.

Atari’s first product to be launched commercially was Atari 2600 which was the result of Bushnell’s effort to produce a flexible video game console that was capable of playing all four Atari’s game of that time. Bushnell was well aware of the fact that bringing the machine into the market will be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, in 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner communications for around $28- $32 million.

Under Warner’s banner Atari achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600’s and computers. At that time the home computer revolution was taking off, so new machines were adapted, with the audition of a keyboard and various inputs, Atari 800 was launched with its smaller cousin, the 400. Due to some reason’s they were found less attractive than Apple II. But still Atari was making amore than $2 billion per year and was the fastest growing company in the history of America. However Atari ran into problems in mid 80’s, they loss around $500 million following the famous video game crash of 83’. Adding to their wounds a small but innovative company come in their contest and soon Atari was nowhere on the gaming map. Finally in July, 1984 companies that time president James Morgan sold his stock to Jack Tramiel for $240 million in stocks who then used it to create a new company Atari corporation. Warner retained the name but sold it to Namco in1985.

Atari Corporation (1984 – 1996)

Under Tramiel’s ownership, Atari Corp. released two consoles in the year 1986—the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800 console. Atari rebounded, making $25 million profit that year. In 1989 Atari launched a hand held game console Atari lynx with color graphics, but unfortunately lack of parts kept the system to launch the console for the Christmas and the lynx lost to Nintendo’s game boy which only has a black and white and display but was available. Game boy proved a blockbuster and removed Atari from any of left over business. By the 1993 Atari released a 64 bit interactive media system which sold around 200,000 units. But it was not enough to keep Atari in business because market was full of competitors like Nintendo, Sony, and e.t.c.

Atari Inc., a division of Infogrames (2001 to present)

In October In October 2001 Infogrames announced about  “reinventing” the Atari brand with the launch of three new games. On May 7, 2003, Infogrames had its majority-owned, but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames NA officially renamed Atari, Inc., renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept the original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment. Atari tried its level best to gain the same fame again but was not successful because this era is of techno freaks like Sony and Microsoft who shares more than 60%of gaming industry. And those consoles include cutting edge technologies like perfume synthesizer, black box and many like them.

Game Server Social Bookmarking

Nolan Bushnell, inventor of Pong and founder of Atari, is rightly considered the father of electronic gaming.

He was born in Utah on 5 feb.1940, was a typical childhood inventor. He won a third grade science project on the theme production of electricity. He nearly burned his home garage while trying to launch a roller skate mounted rocket using a home made liquid fuel. His father died when he was just fifteen, so he took over his concrete business.

Bushnell’s career plans got anew boost when he was attending the University of Utah. At that time he was learning the basic of computer graphics, while managing park and playing chess tournament side by side. He was fascinated by the combination of computers, images, and fun. Inspiring from this he went on to invent the first computerized game of human history in the year 1970. The game was named as “Computer space”. This game was like a prototype of the later launched game “Asteroids”, and was little bit of complicated and too cumbersome for launching it publicly.

So learning from that he simplified it and launch it next year as “Pong”, with the help of young computer engineer Allan alcorn. Pong was the video version of ping- pong, whose ball was a blip that bounced back and forth on the screen between two “paddles” that were moved up and down by control knobs in the hands of the players. They installed there first machine in bar in Sunnyvale, California an evening in1971. The game was proved to be a blockbuster as the machine nearly broke down after being stuffed too full with quarters.

Knowing that he had a winning product he founded a company with his friend Ted dabney with only mere 500 $ in the year 1972. games that were produced by there company in next few years, including Asteroids, gave rise to not only the video arcade, but to an entire industry which is still growing today. In 1975 Bushnell made an agreement with sears to sell home version of Pong. This was even a greater milestone, for the first time TV can be used to do something other than watching it. TV become more

In 1976, Bushnell took an intelligent decision by selling Atari to Time Warner for a whooping 28$ million dollars. By the arrival of mid 80’s Atari’s total business was more than 2 $billion dollar’s annually. Meanwhile Bushnell had already founded a company named as Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurants (1977), which gave kids the chance to enjoy, simultaneously, the fun of playing electronic games and having fun out of eating out.

To date, Bushnell has founded 18 companies. He has worked in many fields, including personal computers and robotics; but his real love remained the same developing computer games. For example, Bushnell now works on “cybersports” internet-based game that could accommodate thousands of persons per team. Bushnell has always been convinced that computer games are an excellent way to foster your curiosity and creativity in a social context. In other words, Bushnell has always seen computer games as a mean of education. And certainly his own game crated that pavement that leads to development of today’s educational games. For his support to gaming industry he was awarded Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame. He is currently the founder and CEO of uWink, a game-based restaurant startup, and the Chairman of the board at NeoEdge Networks, an advertising-based video game company. At the very last Nolan Bushnell has revolutionized entertainment, in public and at home; and he will doubtless continue to do so. So it’s not wrong to call him father of the electronic gaming.

Game Server Social Bookmarking

With an overall turn over of 27.5$ billion this industry even leads the music and movie industry combined.

But this modern video game industry had a humble start, but steady

In winters of the year 1966, a New Hampshire engineer earlier working for a defense contractor making electronic gears for military came up with a breakthrough idea that got video games out of the lab and into the living room. Looking at his TV he thought what else you can do with your TV besides watching “My three sons?”

Baer started development of the “Brown Box” console video game system and other prototypes in 1966 for the defense electronic company sanders associates in Nashua, New Hampshire. In late 1971 it was licensed to Magnavox. The console was launched in 1972 after being renamed as Magnavox odyssey. Many other looked down on game development, but it was sanders earning most of the profit.

By the mid of 70’s sanders and company rock the gaming market and made widespread development of video games as much as possible. But not far from it a new company came into existence. And it was soon seen all over the gaming map. It all started when an electrical engineer turned entrepre Nolan Bushnell hired a young Berkeley engineer Al Alcorn and gave him a base to get his feet wet in game design. “The idea was to build a video game that was the simplest thing you could think of” said Alcorn “so I just went to Walgreen’s drug store and bought a 75$ black and white TV.” They used black and white television and the computer system was 74 series TTL chips.

Bushnell and Alcorn named the game as pong and installed the first ping machine for a trial run at a bar in Sunnyvale, Calif., earlier known as Andy capps tavern. What happened next made Andy capp’s the  name scribbled in the history with golden letters. One day within the first week, “I got a call in the evening saying that the machine stopped playing, and could I come down and fix it cause they got customers that want to play the game,” said Alcorn.  “So I drove down to Sunnyvale and went to see the machine, opened the coin box up and there was this big fistful of quarters (that) just gushed out of the machine. … All of a sudden we had a real hit on our hands.”

Soon there was competition seen as companies like midway, which before that used to make equipment for amusement parks started getting into video game business. One of very famous and innovative company of that time which bought space invaders to America had invaded the market space of Atari- then the industry leader in a big way.

Rather involving into fighting Atari CEO Ray Kassar choose the better and beneficiate way and licensed the home rights. And guess what kassar won. Sales of the attari VCS console doubled in a single year. And then in summers of 1982 Japan invaded this time with a blockbuster: PACMAN. “When they were making the PacMan, the guy who was leading the project took his team to lunch,” said Steven L. Kent, Author of “Ultimate History of Video Games.” “They went for pizza in Tokyo.  And somebody had taken the first slice of pizza.  And then he looked down, and there was PacMan staring at him.” Japan was in the game and American’s were well aware what Japan had done to them in the past, nearly close down there world praise automobile industry. Japan had started a global epidemic.

Whole 80’s were dedicated to Japan’s NINTENDO had a whooping 90 % share of the video game market. And till 1989 company’s domination increase further and nigger as it launched its video game equivalent of Sony’s Walkman –game boy. And guess whom Nintendo was thankful to for its success none other than ex Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev. Well, sort of. At the end of the cold war, a soviet computer engineer named Alexy Pajitnov created a puzzle game called Tetris. When the iron curtain lifted, Nintendo got its first look at Tetris and start talking for rubles. Nintendo was well aware that it could be a killer game (launch title) on game boy. And it was, Tetris game boy became an instant hit. Selling over 32 million units in first three years. Nintendo seemed unbeatable until one more Japanese company earlier depending on other launched its own game platform, PLAYSTATION, in the mid -1990s. And still, this company is unbeatable.

Sony was planning for future as its products was loaded with such technologies that gamers was never heard of, like sound cards, video enhancers and the best perfume synthesizer.

After the mid blowing success of Playstation and its sequels Sony was saying “this is gonna replace PC, will replace DVD player. It’s going to be base of your home entertainment experience and can go beyond as well.” Replacing PC was not what MICROSOFT want to hear as they were the leading computer software makers in the world. And adding to that playstation was outselling the top 5 PC makers in the world. This sort of messaging catalyzed lot of competitive spirit among Microsoft people. And these lead to Microsoft’s X-BOX it soon ate a lot of Sony’s market but couldn’t able to over run Sony completely.

Today, the video game platform arms race is in full swing. In a matter of days, Sony’s new Play station 3 and Nintendo’s Wii will finally join Xbox on store shelves that Microsoft has enjoyed all to itself for an entire year. And another marketing shoot-out for gamer dollars will begin, let’s wait and watch what development we’ll see next. May be virtuality reality matrix.

Game Server Social Bookmarking