Word: atari
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Over the past several years, almost no business has grown faster than video games, but last week stocks of most of the industry's highflying participants came crashing down with a thud. Warner Communications, owner of Atari, the king of video games, unexpectedly forecast a slump in fourth-quarter earnings. The news reverberated through Wall Street. Analysts began recalculating profit estimates of the best-known games manufacturers, trying to divine whether the Atari setback had more cosmic implications. By week's end no one was quite ready to declare that the stock market was flashing a bleak "Game...
...sold the cartridges and the consoles better than Warner's ten-year-old Atari. By acquiring the rights to popular arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, and designing them to fit players of its own manufacture, Atari saw its sales leap from $30 million in 1976 to $1.1 billion last year. As late as last summer it still held about 80% of the world market, and in doing so had got a lock on an enormously profitable business in which cartridges that cost only about $6 to manufacture can usually be sold for a retail price...
...Atari's success quickly lured other competitors. A year ago, Mattel was still the major one, but at least 20 companies have products on store shelves this Christmas. In order to hold on to its market share, Atari spent heavily to promote its new E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark games. But sales failed to reach expected levels...
...boom in personal computers. Unit sales of the $500-to-$12,000 desktop devices for office or home are expected to reach 1.1 million by the end of this year, according to International Data Corp., a research company. But instead of shopping around for a particular machine made by Atari or Apple, canny consumers are first looking for the programs that will perform the specific tasks they most want done, such as letter writing or financial planning. Then buyers select the brand of computer that can operate that software. This year software sales for personal computers are expected to reach...
Stevens Institute of Technology this year started requiring math and science students to pay $750 for Atari 800 microcomputers. Next fall, Drexel University will be charging students $1000 over four years, and Clarkson College of Technology will be asking each of its students for $1800 over four years, with an expected network linking all of the terminals...