Company Name: Atari
Description: Atari has always been regarded as the father of the video gaming and arcade industry. It was a pioneer in the video games era which is at the moment equals, if not, surpasses the industry of movies in the United States in regards to the total income that is being generated.
In 1972, Al Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell created the ping-pong-based game called Pong. It had been a machine that was coin-operated. No company was interested in buying it that was why Bushnell together with Ted Dabney founded the Atari Incorporated on the same year. Atari is actually a Japanese word that meant checkmate. It was derived from the board game called GO. Atari became a phenomenon since its inception.
It was not until four years later that Bushnell sold the company to Warner Communications in order to fund and finish a project referred to as Stella which was a console that was cartridge-based. It was later renamed the Atari Video Computer System or VCS and later it was named the ATARI 2600.
The ATARI VCS was released in 1977 and was sold for approximately $200 per unit. It was packaged with an RF TV adapter, game controllers and the Combat game cartridge. It is through this product that Atari dominated the market of home video games while game companies were beginning to emerge in both the domestic and foreign markets.
Atari had struck gold when the company decided to make home versions of the popular arcade games such as Pong, Asteroids and Missile Command. The company also licensed big game titles that included Pac-Man and Space Invaders making the ATARI VCS more popular. At that time, it was the best video game system that was available in the market.
Atari’s continued success was followed by the release of more games for the VCS system. Soon after, the company began to experience management problems. The licensing lawsuits with other companies in the same industry incurred big losses. Although there had been an overhaul in management, it did little to help the company get back on its feet.
After the market for the video games industry crashed in 1984, Atari went on a downward spiral because it could no longer compete with the new companies like Sega, Nintendo and eventually, Sony.
Even after the company developed its own portable gaming system in 1990 called the Atari Lynx, Atari still could not compete with NEC’s TurboExpress and Nintendo’s Gameboy. NEC and Nintendo were competing for the market share of handheld gaming systems then.
In an effort to compete with console giants like Sony, Sega and Nintendo, Atari Corp which by then had already been owned by Time-Warner released the Atari Jaguar in 1993. The games that had been created for the said system included Tempest 2000 and Area 51. After the system failed to rival the gaming consoles released by its competitors, Atari went back to developing games. The company had recently been acquired by Infogames.
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