Atari

“Because they didn't really have a lot of experience in how video games were made, they basically, they made the game in five weeks and put it in the box, and it was a terrible game, and then they manufactured more games, more cartridges than there were Atari c…”

“I think they took a write down in 82 of four hundred million dollars, which was a lot of money in 82 for Warner Communications.”

“Given the primitive state of video graphics in that era, the computing power required to crack Atari would be affordable. Given that Atari had released dozens of games, an agent would have plenty of opportunities to prove it could be general. Given that most A…”

“To be the only person in the world with their own version of Pong at home, and he'd do it his way with just 28 chips. He completed this a year before Atari released their home version.”

“Woz writes, the whole thing used 45 chips, and Steve paid me half the 700 bucks he said they paid him. They were paying us based on how few chips I could do it in. Later I found out he got paid a bit more for it. Like a few thousand dollars than he said at the…”

“Nolan Bushnow, the founder of Atari, recounts in his book and a bunch of other interviews I've seen with him. Biggest regret in his life, he was offered 30% of Apple, I think for like 50,000 or a 100,000, it was something like that. And he said, no”

“If there was a single characteristic that separates Steve Jobs from the mass of employees, it was his passionate enthusiasm. Steve had one full, one speed, full blast. This was the primary reason we hired him.”

“One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question. What books do you like? I've never met a creative person in my life that didn't respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits. Actually, which books people read is not as im…”

“Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, recounts in his book and a bunch of other interviews I've seen with him biggest regret in his life, he was offered 30% of Apple, I think for like 50,000 or a 100,000, it was something like that, and he said no.”

“So he got into the hot tub, and he imposed discipline on that chaotic business culture. He took the genius of their games, and he compounded it and married it with a determination to actually make an organization that functioned. So Atari went from chaos to a …”

“Ted put in 250 dollars, I put in 250 dollars, and that's all the money that went into Atari.”

“And I show it to them and they don't like it because it's a two player game and the coin operated world doesn't allow for a two player game. If there's not a one player game at that time, that was sort of written in stone somewhere in the annals of coin op wor…”

“I mean, the game was earning almost 300 dollars a week. And the total cost that we had was about 300 dollars.”

“I looked at all the cash we had, and we had enough cash to build like 12 units.”

“And how we financed the company was we would sell for cash the machines. We had 30 day terms. Most of our parts we had 60 day terms. So we'd get the cash literally 60 days before we had to pay for the parts for that.”

“About a 150,000. Only of which, Atari only did about 35,000 of them. We got massively copied.”

“We sold zero.”

“And I had my manufacturing guy there, and I, and he says, we could probably do 25,000. And so, not wanting to be soul sourced, I said, we can do about 75,000.”

“He give us an order for 150,000. And He wants them delivered by Christmas, by, you know, October, November.”

“And so, Sears Bank set up a bonded warehouse at the end of the conveyor line, and so as soon as a consumer Pong dropped off the assembly line, they would advance us 80% of the contract price with Sears.”

“We did. And in fact, I think that year we sold almost a 180,000 and they took them all.”

“And then we didn't have a dress code, and we didn't have time clocks. We had this attitude that everybody knew what they needed to do, and they were adults, and they could wear what they want, and they could come and go when they want, and we weren't big broth…”

“Steve Jobs worked for me, and He was a technician in quality control, and he was really good at it.”

“I don't think you need to arbitrarily create an us versus them mentality in your company, you know, and one of the things that happens when you're owned by a New York company, they think that your laid back style is that you're not working as hard, and they th…”

“I kind of view business a little bit like a game Chess. You play the game, you play hard, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And then you set up the pieces, and you do it again. And you don't have angst that the fact, oh my god, I lost that game of chess, …”

“Before I sold Warner, we were selling games. These were coin-operated games, remember. We were selling them for about 1500 dollars. During their lifetime, in CoinDrop, they'd earned 30 to 50,000 dollars.”

“And that was all the technology and the one open store. The one open store was cash flowing half a million dollars a year. And they let me pay it a 100,000 a year for five years.”

“The company was called Control Video Corporation. They had a product called GameLine, which at the time was almost like Netflix for video games. Back then, most people didn't have PCs, but a lot of people had Atari game machines. And so GameLine allowed you to…”

“Ted put in 250 dollars, I put in 250 dollars, and that's all the money that went into Atari.”

“The game was earning almost 300 dollars a week. And the total cost that we had was about 300 dollars.”

“How we financed the company was we would sell for cash the machines. We had 30 day terms. Most of our parts we had 60 day terms. So we'd get the cash literally 60 days before we had to pay for the parts for that.”

“About a 150,000. Only of which, Atari only did about 35,000 of them. We got massively copied.”

“I tried to get, you know, investors, but everybody thought that video games were kind of flaky.”

“What we didn't know is that the toy business at that point in time did not sell anything that was more than 35 dollars.”

“And so, not wanting to be soul sourced, I said, we can do about 75,000.”

“And so, Sears Bank set up a bonded warehouse at the end of the conveyor line, and so as soon as a consumer Pong dropped off the assembly line, they would advance us 80% of the contract price with Sears.”

“We did. And in fact, I think that year we sold almost a 180,000 and they took them all.”

“A semiconductor company in Silicon Valley came up with a microprocessor. That they were willing to sell us for eight dollars, and all of a sudden, our eyes were opened, and we said, we can do a von Neumann architecture, program-based, put cartridges with ROMs …”

“He was opinionated, but he was never wrong in his opinions. You didn't have to worry if you empowered Steve to do something. It happened. I mean, Steve had one speed. It was full on.”

“Twenty-eight million bucks.”

“There was this clash of cultures that got to be really ugly, and ultimately they got tired of me, and I got tired of them, and I was fired.”

“Before I sold to Warner, we were selling games. These were coin-operated games, remember? We were selling them for about 1500 dollars. During their lifetime, in CoinDrop, they'd earned 30 to 50,000 dollars.”