The Story of the Atari XE Game System, Video Game Console or Computer? - Video Game Retrospective

this is the atari xe game system it's a computer or is it a game console or is it a computer or is it a game console or is it a computer or is it a game console or is it a computer hello and welcome to video game retrospective today we're taking a look at this not sure if i should call it gorgeous or ugly atari xe game system let's get into it so it's not really possible to discuss the story of the xegs without first discussing this man jack trammell although his name is not quite as well known as that of steve jobs or bill gates it probably should be jack was many things a holocaust survivor a military man and founder of the company that would create the best-selling computer of all time the commodore 64. jack founded commodore in the bronx in 1953 as a typewriter repair company through the years jack would build his business from repairing typewriters to selling typewriters to selling mechanical adding machines which would lead him to his first million dollar expansion selling electronic calculators through the 60s and 70s jack was a pragmatic man not afraid to go to japan to learn the tricks of the trade or work with outside companies like commodore's long-standing relationship with texas instruments or moss technologies a chip manufacturer that commodore would end up purchasing outright under jack's leadership commodore would then move to computers when the calculator market began to cool down they would find great success with the commodore pet the vic-20 and then the commodore 64. jack trammell had shared control of commodore with canadian businessman and investor irving gould since 1966 to say that the men did not get along well would be an understatement jack's management style was frequently the cause of friction between the two jack was headstrong and stubborn as well as being infamous for his micromanaging all work stopped when jack was out of the office by his own order jack also had a tendency to want to fill every possible niche in a market sometimes that would lead to massive success like the computer line but at several different points it would lead commodore to near bankruptcy causing irving gould to have to inject millions of dollars to save the company a heated company board meeting on january 13 1984 would end with jack storming out of the room and never returning to commodore it's worth noting that we still don't know exactly what caused the argument that led to the breakup everyone who attended the meeting has shared a completely different version of the story jack was now out of a job but flush with cash thanks to a solid golden parachute and would then use that money to purchase the consumer division of atari from warner communication atari had been bleeding money since the north american video game crash in 1983 and warner was happy to cut them loose with this a new era started at atari goal number one was to turn the company's finances around and start making a profit the most well-known way this was done was with the release of the new next-gen home computer in the atari st atari would then take their aging 600 xl and 800 xl computers and update them with some quality of life changes and snazzy new cases based on the atari st these were the atari 65e and the 130e okay now we can finally talk about the atari xe game system jack and his team wanted a new game console to compete with the nintendo entertainment system and the sega master system what they did was take the 65e computer and put it into a new uh let's say interesting case to sell as a video game console that's right internally the xe gs is exactly the same as the low end computer atari was selling at the same time the way atari hoped to distinguish it from their computer line was with the sweeping marketing campaign targeted at kids and by selling the system in two different packages there was the basic package which contained only the console itself and a cx40 joystick the same joystick included with the atari 2600 since its release in 1977 but this time it's gray then you have the deluxe set which came with the previously mentioned console and joystick as well as the keyboard the game bug hunt and the xg1 light gun the package would essentially make your setup a full computer with the notable exception of not coming with a floppy disk drive atari never sold a disk drive specifically for the xe gs but it remains fully compatible with other 8-bit line disk drives one of the strangest things about atari's strategy was that they continued to sell their other game consoles at the same time refusing to discontinue them for their hot new system to put this into perspective here's a spread page from the 1988 sears christmas catalog advertising the xcgs right alongside the 7800 and the 2600 junior it's pretty easy to see that rather than earning new fans atari was really just segmenting their already existing market share while atari had to worry about how and where each of these systems would be displayed in retail stores and how to avoid consumers getting confused this means that atari was pushing retail stores to carry the 2600 7800 xegs 65e 130e and the atari st all at the same time that was an impossible request stores didn't have the shelf space to sell all of them most stores would pick one or two devices from the list to sell and would place them in radically different areas of the store adding to consumer confusion i've heard a lot of different takes on the xcgs some people have claimed it to be a pretty big failure while others have claimed it to be a pretty big success so which is correct well after spending far far too much time researching that exact question i have to say both first let's go over the case that the xegs was successful the most important fact for this argument is that atari sold the xegs at a profit you see many companies will sell consoles at a loss losing money on each system sale in order to get them in more people's homes and then hopefully make that money back in software sales a great example of this would be sony's playstation 3 which at launch sold for several hundred dollars less than what it cost sony to actually make the ps3 however some companies will choose to design a lower cost system that from launch sells for more than what it costs to produce microsoft went down that route with the xbox 360. this is what atari would do with the xe gs since it was based on hardware that in some variant or another atari had been selling since 1979 cost of production was cheap very cheap even at the gs's starting price of 159.99 atari was making a great profit on each system sold that means that the gs would be a success regardless of how many systems actually sold it was an extreme low risk strategy the easy profits atari made off of this system for the five years it was on the market would be a godsend for atari as they really struggled with having money on hand in the 90s due to declining sales and serious r d costs for upcoming systems like the atari falcon and their final game console the atari jaguar now for how the xegs was a failure well it failed in its primary goal beat nintendo in 1987 nintendo had a stranglehold on the video game market in north america atari had tried to break nintendo's monopoly with the release of the 7800 in 1986 and that had already proven to not be the success atari had been hoping for despite spending a boatload of cash on marketing atari hoped that the xegs would fare better thanks to its inclusion of game console-esque features like having a light gun while having the unique selling point of also being a full computer let's see how did that play out the nes sold 62 million units with 24 million of those in the united states alone and the xegs sold well that's actually hard to say atari had always been very secretive of their sales numbers accurate numbers are hard to place we know they sold 100 000 units in 1987 which was the system's best year by far i would place the overall sales of the xe over the five years it was on sale somewhere between 200k and 300k regardless of the actual number that's a drop in the bucket compared to the nes software was interesting on the xegs since it was 100 compatible with the other members of the atari 8-bit family games for it were simply repackaged into new blue xegs boxes around 30 games were given the blue box treatment from a variety of publishers like the softworks factory broderbund and lucasfilm games some games didn't even go that far and just had stickers slapped on the original boxes saying something along the lines of also compatible with the xe game system our xegs was purchased on ebay for 165 dollars coming with the system keyboard joystick light gun and manuals basically we got everything except the outer box on the top of our system you'll see the interesting colored buttons and the angled cartridge slot it's a very unique look on the left side is the rather awkwardly angled keyboard port which matches the equally awkward joystick ports on the right side on the back is the power connector sio bus connector rf out channel selector composite video out and audio out on the keyboard you can see this giant help button which i find hilarious for some reason all right now that we've talked about the history of the system let's give it some ratings first up is rarity rarity gets a 4 out of 5. atari obviously didn't sell too many of these systems making it one of the rarest consoles they ever made well at least of those that actually left the prototype stage price gets a 3 out of 5. the xegs remains fairly inexpensive despite its rarity largely due to the lack of demand however in recent times the price has seemed to increase somewhat aesthetics uh well uh jeez uh depending on who you ask the unique look of the xegs makes it either the ugliest computer of all time or one of the coolest i'm personally not really sure how i feel about it to be on the safe side i'm going to give it both a one out of five and a five out of five games games get a four out of five since the xdgs is fully compatible with the atari 8-bit line you have well over a decade worth of games to play not counting modern homebrew applications convenience gets a three out of five it's real nice that it includes composite output out of the box but it doesn't offer anything better than that without mods it's also worth noting that just like the nes zapper the light gun won't work with any modern displays stick to using it on a crt well thanks for watching this video about the atari xe gs if you would please please make sure to you know subscribe and uh leave us a comment down below what your favorite game on the atari 8-bit platform is and uh if you wouldn't mind uh you can join our discord server and if you really want to see us cover way more video game consoles we've got tons in store for you guys please make sure to support us on patreon do it do it [Music] you

Channel: Newsmakers Games

Views: 79,658

Keywords: atari xe, atari 8 bit, atari, atari 8 bit computer, atari 8-bit family, atari xegs, atari 65xe, atari 8-bit, atari computer, xegs, atari xe game system, the story of atari, xe, atari history, atari xe video game system, atari xegs games, atari xe review, atari xegs history, atari xegs story, video game history, atari vs nintendo, atari computer history, review of atari xegs, xe games system, xe gamesystem, atari xe games, system review, retro gaming history, retro games

Id: etkeJCOgdZs

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020