From: aa399@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Len Stys)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Falcon
Date: 28 Jul 92 03:32:49 GMT
Reply-To: aa399@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Len Stys)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


In a previous article, yegerleh@cortez.ecn.purdue.edu (James D Yegerlehner) says:

>Well, I actually think things are different this time. Two-three weeks
>from now is way too optimistic. But think about it.  The hand-writing
>was on the wall when the annual report came out showing that Atari
>annual revenues were down from $4?? M to $2?? M in 1991. Everyone
>knows the trend is bad.  Then, on top of it, everyone in the ST
>community knows this new machine is coming out, which makes things
>even worse. Now almost nobody is buying an ST; I can imagine
>that revenues have really dried up since word of the Falcon has
>gotten around. I hope they can just stay solvent until revenues
>start rolling in from it. But this all is _very_ strong incentive
>to get the thing out the door soon; if they don't they might
>just plain run out of cash and go belly up.

I can't agree with you more.  Everything that you have said makes sense.

Though, the logical step for Atari would be to sell the Falcon 030
in its strongest market first, Germany.

Let's face it, Atari does not have a lot of money to spend at the
moment.  Atari should not even attempt to push the Falcon 030 in the
United States until it has about $20 million for advertising.

I bet it starts being sold in Germany at the end of September, a major
advertising campaign from October to December in that country.

The UK and all the other European countries MAYBE December.

The United States... February or March.
But I believe Atari will push the Lynx with a major advertising campaign
for this Christmas.  The Lynx seems to be a good product for them
to make money off of (or at least the games for it).

>
>All of this is in contrast to prior years when the TT and MegaSTE 
>were being announced. They were fat and happy. Well, at least 
>profitable. Deadlines slipped and no-one really cared that much.

You are right.  But one thing that is really sad is that the first
"what looks like a winner" product that Atari is planning to release
will probably not get the welcome it deserves of advertisements.

>
>One other thought. Doesn't it make you kind of sick to think
>what could have happened if the Tramiels had, instead of 
>spending that $160 million on Federated, spent it on developing 
>the ST? Just think how many systems software and hardware 
>engineers they could have hired with that.  They could have kept
>the ST years ahead of the other platforms, advertised it heavily,
>underwritten the porting of major apps to it, etc. The ST could
>be a major player now. Sigh...

Yes, it does make me sick.  Why buy K-Mart size stores to sell your
personal computers in?  I can't believe it...

I could list a lot of other goof-ups as well.

>
>Jim
> 
>

P.S. When the Falcon 030 is released, I think we are all going to have
to get together and give software companies a wake-up call.  The present
amount of new ST software released in the U.S. is close to nothing
and European software are becomming very few.  


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