Food for thought from this month's Retro Gamer, about what happened when Atari overestimated sales of the VCS, later known as the Atari 2600, and Nolan Bushnell's reaction to slow sales:
The losses were threatening to bring the company down, and Nolan stood up at a budget meeting in late 1978 and started ranting wide-eyed "Sell off all the inventory of the VCS, we've saturated the market!" He also wanted to cancel Atari's soon to be released entry into home computers. Warner's Manny Gerard and Atari's Ray Kassar were willing to play chicken with the home console market, having faith it would revive. After some secretive efforts to try and take control of the company from Warner, Nolan was 'put on the bench' and relegated to purely advisory status, formally resigning from the company in January 1979. On the single positive note, by early 1979 it meant that Atari was sitting atop of the new consumer industry, with only the newly released Magnavox Odyssey2 a very distant second. Manny and Ray would go on to lead the company and the VCS to both its glory years and eventual downfall.
The losses were threatening to bring the company down, and Nolan stood up at a budget meeting in late 1978 and started ranting wide-eyed "Sell off all the inventory of the VCS, we've saturated the market!" He also wanted to cancel Atari's soon to be released entry into home computers. Warner's Manny Gerard and Atari's Ray Kassar were willing to play chicken with the home console market, having faith it would revive. After some secretive efforts to try and take control of the company from Warner, Nolan was 'put on the bench' and relegated to purely advisory status, formally resigning from the company in January 1979. On the single positive note, by early 1979 it meant that Atari was sitting atop of the new consumer industry, with only the newly released Magnavox Odyssey2 a very distant second. Manny and Ray would go on to lead the company and the VCS to both its glory years and eventual downfall.
