Atari - Destroyed by Sale to Warner in 1976

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According to Gamespot Atari's Co-founder Nolan Bushnell hosted a new Reddit AMA, and talked about how the sale to Warner Communications in 1976 ruined Atari.

Atari's decision to sell to Warner Communications in 1976 was a mistake that cost the iconic Pong company almost everything, according to co-founder Nolan Bushnell. During a recent Reddit AMA, Bushnell said the biggest lesson he learned at Atari was to never sell to "big Hollywood studios." This sale almost immediately marked the end of Atari, he said.

"Atari had an extraordinary corporate culture that was destroyed within two years of the sale," Bushnell said. "I think that Atari would still be important today if that sale hadn't occurred."

Atari lives on today, but only as a shell of its former self, having undergone numerous splits and acquisitions. The current version of Atari is still involved in games, having recently announced Roller Coaster Tycoon World and reboots of Alone in the Dark and Haunted House for PC.
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And I'd say if Warner hadn't ruined Atari, Bushnell would have done it himself. Bushnell is a visionaire, but bad in keeping things running and optimizing daily routine. I also don't think it was necessarily Warner who killed Atari. It was the surprizing success of this new and undiscoverered entertainment business that created an economic bubble, just like the dot-com internet hype. No one survived the north-american Video Game Crash.
 
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!?!? The sale was in 1976. The Atari 2600 didn't even show up until the 1977 holidays. The environment he led the company in and the one that killed Atari were pretty different - so how does he know he could have done better??
 
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Because they didn't allow him to develop a new console, when the Atari 2600 initially didn't sell. He thought Atari needed new and better hardware, Warner thought they needed better marketing and sales strategies (read: Ray Kassar). But I don't think Bushnell was right in that case, and from an economic point of view Kassar proofed him wrong. Maybe Atari's fate would also have been different if Warner hadn't forced him to leave.
 
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