Callate said:
That there was more than a signature involved, I grant; it was an over-simplification of the issues. But far, far more than today, a video game in the Atari 2600 era was the work of a single person. It was not untypical for Atari 2600 cartridges to hold only four kilobytes of ROM; very tight programming was the biggest concern, programming that was sometimes arcane to make the best use of hardware tricks, and multiple programmers would have gotten in each others' way.
Again, not accurate as far as the development and certainly not accurate as far as the released product. The one man programmer was a certain era of 2600 development, by the early 80s that included additional programmers and artists (Atari Inc. was the first company to start a graphics group to assist with both their console, coin, and computer game graphics) and even sometimes people for the music. Perfect example is E.T., where the graphics and intro were done by another person who assisted Howard. As far as the released product, there's project managers, graphic artists (box, label, and manual), writers (box, manual, other material), marketing specialists, etc., etc. all involved in getting the finished product (the cartridge, the box, the artwork, the manual, the manufacturing and assembly, etc.) out the door and onto store shelves as well, which was Ray's point, and he was right on that as well. The Activision guys were also right that credit should be given. However, it should have been given to everyone. What should have been done was what's done now as I said, where everyone involved in the entire product overall is credited.
Pac-Man was produced in quantities that exceeded the consoles sold at the time, as documented
here and
here. Pac-Man only
became the pack-in title later in production (by one report, in 1983, well after its initial release and at a point when the industry was already considered to be in decline).
Nope, you'd need to dig up better sources than that, as what you're trying to state is wrong not to mention the sources are both suspect by normal research standards. One's Wikipedia, which isn't really known for accuracy and quotes two book sources for sales that are in turn questionable with their own original sources for said material. The other is the Internet Archive which just presents a summation of materials presented elsewhere for a blurb next to a game ROM they have up and in no way represents an actual reference.
In comparison, by actual internal documents donated by ex-Atari employees including the person in charge of manufacturing and distribution, and direct interviews with said people(which were all for Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun, ataribook.com) Pac-Man was planned as the pack-in title from the beginning. Specifically for the "darth vader" 2600 model that was being introduced in '82. What it became the pack-in cartridge for in 1983 was the Atari 5200. Additionally, the manufacturing figures are for a period of time not all at once. Pac-Man was manufactured from November '81 through December '82, at which point the directive to stop manufacturing them came through. (For a short time at that time after that in '84, Space Invaders was the pack-in).
Where the "more cartridges than consoles" comment originates is an author who ran with an industry analysts comment from the time without actually researching the context. When Atari originally announced their own analysts were predicting possible overall production of 12 million games (driven chiefly by how extremely popular Pac-Man was at the arcades and in pop-culture at the time), this industry analyst questioned that forecast considering they only had about 6 - 7 million consoles in home at that time (late '81). Atari in turn stated that they were including it as the pack-in for the 2600 that year and were looking to recreate the fervor from '80 when people bought the 2600 just to get Space Invaders. They were proven right in console sales and total 2600 units jumped to 11-12 million units by the end of '82 and around 15 million by the end of '83.
Even factoring in it's sale as a pack-in, it reportedly sold only 7 million units of 12 million produced.
Again, that's missrepresentation of facts. Sold units means individually sold, pack-ins are never counted in those figures. Atari first started packing in Pac-Man with the "darth vader" all black model released in 1982 (which also marked the official change from Video Computer System to 2600 to coincide with the upcoming release of the 5200) as mentioned above.
Where Atari's big issue really was, is not in the manufacturing of specific titles. Rather it was in not having a system that monitored production vs. actual store sales of *all* their products. i.e. they based their overall manufacturing of all their games and consoles on "sell in" numbers which is demand from retailers, vs. "sell through" numbers which is actual units moved by retailers. There had been a shortage of Atari's console games in '81 (which caused great demand by retailers when ordering for '82) and then the exact opposite as they went through '82. It was compounded by retailers returning merchandise for credit with Atari as well, which meant even more stock not moving. That's what lead to the destruction of several blocks of that returned merchandise in '83, including most famously the one in Alamogordo in late '83 (which was not a mass dumping of E.T. but rather around 750,000 games consisting of 21+ titles (some very popular titles) for both the 2600 and 5200 as well as hardware and peripheral, all returned from stores for credit). Warner was a big part of that blame though, they used a heavy hand (often forming a dual management at Atari) to keep those sales up and in return their own earnings and stock value.
