No kidding about the lost opportunity. It was frustrating enough from inside Atari (both the Warner and Tramiel companies).
- Warner was all about politics, and marketing had taken over major engineering decisions. It was one big balled-up rollerskating disaster as marketroids failed to grasp things on the level of: Adding a HELP key to a computer keyboard does not mean that you automatically get help in every application, especially not game cartridges with very limited space.
- Tramiel was all about not spending money. Vendors who were in the know (like DEC, who serviced our Vaxes until the Tramiels stopped paying for maintenance) demanded payment up front, with cashiers checks or other guaranteed instruments.
Both of these organizations were really tough to do good, high visibility products in. Lots of good stuff got canned (by people with political agendas to push), or couldn't be developed because of the lack of good people.
Sometimes I daydream about how things worked out in an alternate universe ... :-)
- Warner was all about politics, and marketing had taken over major engineering decisions. It was one big balled-up rollerskating disaster as marketroids failed to grasp things on the level of: Adding a HELP key to a computer keyboard does not mean that you automatically get help in every application, especially not game cartridges with very limited space.
- Tramiel was all about not spending money. Vendors who were in the know (like DEC, who serviced our Vaxes until the Tramiels stopped paying for maintenance) demanded payment up front, with cashiers checks or other guaranteed instruments.
Both of these organizations were really tough to do good, high visibility products in. Lots of good stuff got canned (by people with political agendas to push), or couldn't be developed because of the lack of good people.
Sometimes I daydream about how things worked out in an alternate universe ... :-)