AMEIJ@vax.oxford.ac.UK (Jan Ameij) (02/01/90)
So, Rich Covert is terribly cross that Atari have started selling the STe over here first, eh? Well, everything has to be sold somewhere first, and it seems fairly logical to release the STe in the area where ST's do best. Why should everything be sold in the USA first? The idea that this degrades America to the status of a Third World Country is a) insulting to LDC's, b) insulting to Europe (should we have got it after the USA to confirm our status) and c) indicative of the sort of inferiority complex that hardware scrolling won't cure. Honestly, some people. Jan Ameij. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If democracy means Coke, Pepsi, Apple Pie and Apple Corp, I vote Communist.
covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (02/06/90)
In article <9002020807.AA08400@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, AMEIJ@vax.oxford.ac.UK (Jan Ameij) writes: > So, Rich Covert is terribly cross that Atari have started selling the STe over > here first, eh? Well, everything has to be sold somewhere first, and it seems > fairly logical to release the STe in the area where ST's do best. Why should > everything be sold in the USA first? The idea that this degrades America to the > status of a Third World Country is a) insulting to LDC's, b) insulting to > Europe (should we have got it after the USA to confirm our status) and c) > indicative of the sort of inferiority complex that hardware scrolling won't > cure. > > Honestly, some people. > > Jan Ameij. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > If democracy means Coke, Pepsi, Apple Pie and Apple Corp, I vote Communist. Jan, the USA market is being relegated to Third World Status by the marketing of Atari Corp. There is no other explanation for Atari Corp selling new products in Europe first. As far as the USA market being so much smaller than the Europoen market, that is the fault of Atari Corp. If Atari Corp were to aggresively market the Atari ST/TT computers here in the USA, than the USA market would be bigger then the Europeon market. Atari Corp made a committment in 1989 to market new products here in the USA first. But you can see just how much an Atari promise is worth. Heck, we still can't get STes, or the Atari PC line. Maybe though Atari Corp is just an indication of the overall decline of the entire USA. More and more hi tech is being developed in The Far East and Europe and USA is losing ground every day. Just look at high definition television. The Japanese are leading the USA in that area. The is NO REASON for Atari STs to be so poorly marketed here in the USA. With a better marketing and distribution system, the USA could easily lead Europe in sales of Atari products! The Atari has many advantages over Macs and Amigas. but, here is the USA, marketing is King Kong. Without good marketing, your product is dead. And Atari Corp has never had decent marketing and dsitribution here in the USA. Heck, I just started learning to use PageStream 1.8 this weekend. And PgS 1.8 is every bit as good as any Mac program, and costs 1/3 the price of some of the Mac DTPs. So, Sts could be easily sold as DTP systems. I find that there is very little work that I have to do on my Spectre 128 that I can't do on my ST4. -- Richard E. Covert, Lead Engineer of Software Tools Group AG Communications Systems, Phoenix AZ (602) - 581-4652 TCP/IP: covertr@gtephx UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!covertr
jvance@ics.uci.edu (Joachim Patrick Vance) (02/09/90)
In article <4876ef20.14a1f@force.UUCP> covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) writes: > (stuff deleted..) > >The is NO REASON for Atari STs to be so poorly marketed here in the USA. >With a better marketing and distribution system, the USA could easily lead >Europe in sales of Atari products! > (more deleted..) >Without good marketing, your product is dead. And Atari Corp has >never had decent marketing and dsitribution here in the USA. Sure, there is a great reason, and you hit it on the nose. Atari has *NEVER* been any good at marketing in the U.S. And they don't seem to be heading in the right direction yet either. Atari is able to make decent to good products inexpensively and they sell them where people appreciate that, Europe mainly, and most other countries except the U.S. Marketing here takes a lot of know how that Atari just doesn't have. Besides, the cost that it takes to meet the FCC regulations in the U.S. just doesn't seem to fit with Atari's "make 'em as cheap as possible" policy. The end result: America doesn't get many computers from Atari. -- Joachim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What do my .sig and UCI have in common? | | jvance@ics.uci.edu | - - - - - - - - - | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ They're both Under Construction Indefinately.|
ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) (02/10/90)
In article <25D25D4C.14957@paris.ics.uci.edu> jvance@ics.uci.edu (Joachim Vance) writes: >In article <4876ef20.14a1f@force.UUCP> covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) >writes: >> (stuff deleted..) >> >>The is NO REASON for Atari STs to be so poorly marketed here in the USA. >>With a better marketing and distribution system, the USA could easily lead >>Europe in sales of Atari products! >> (more deleted..) >>Without good marketing, your product is dead. And Atari Corp has >>never had decent marketing and dsitribution here in the USA. > > Sure, there is a great reason, and you hit it on the nose. >Atari has *NEVER* been any good at marketing in the U.S. >And they don't seem to be heading in the right direction yet either. >Atari is able to make decent to good products >inexpensively and they sell them where people appreciate that, >Europe mainly, and most other countries except the U.S. Marketing I think there is a misunderstanding here. HOw possible is it for someone in the US to even have the chance to "appreciate" the ST if they have never been "informed" or made aware that the machines even exist! >here takes a lot of know how that Atari just doesn't have. Besides, I think the "know-how" is there... it's just a matter of "choice" and taking a risk. Atari obviously doesn't believe their company and products are competitive with Apple and Commodore and so on.. otherwise they would clearly be in the ring together... when a company doesn't believe in their own product.. it's hard for consumers to. >the cost that it takes to meet the FCC regulations in the U.S. just >doesn't seem to fit with Atari's "make 'em as cheap as possible" Have you checked out the cost of a MacPlus lately...? Every product goes through the FCC test... or is there a conspiracy against ATARI..? I used to tell my students that they were far better off buying an ST than putting cash into a Mac. I caught myself last night when a student was going out the door... I couldn't HONESTLY tell them this anymore. >policy. The end result: America doesn't get many computers from Atari. > >-- >Joachim And many who own ATARI's are selling them and buying into other systems. -kevin ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu
exspes@bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) (02/13/90)
In article <4876ef20.14a1f@force.UUCP> covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) writes: > >Jan, the USA market is being relegated to Third World Status by the marketing >of Atari Corp. There is no other explanation for Atari Corp selling new products >in Europe first. As far as the USA market being so much smaller than the Europoen >market, that is the fault of Atari Corp. If Atari Corp were to aggresively market >the Atari ST/TT computers here in the USA, than the USA market would be bigger >then the Europeon market. There is ONE good reason for selling to Europe first. In general, FCC type approval is harder to get than the corresponding approvals in Europe. So, Atari can begin selling the machines over here before they have been tightened down to FCC specs. Or, in other words, it may be that Europe is being used to 'bug-chase' the machines before they are released in the States, rather than being favored. Certainly, if problems DO occur with the early versions of a machine, it is better to have them surface in the market which is potentially smaller, rather than in the one which is potentially large. -- Paul Smee, Univ of Bristol Comp Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW, Tel +44 272 303132 Smee@bristol.ac.uk :-) (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you MUST)
csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod ) (02/15/90)
exspes@bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) writes: >There is ONE good reason for selling to Europe first. In general, FCC type >approval is harder to get than the corresponding approvals in Europe. So, >Atari can begin selling the machines over here before they have been >tightened down to FCC specs. Or, in other words, it may be that Europe is >being used to 'bug-chase' the machines before they are released in the >States, rather than being favored. Certainly, if problems DO occur with the >early versions of a machine, it is better to have them surface in the market >which is potentially smaller, rather than in the one which is potentially >large. We don't like these ideas very much here in Europe. First of all, why should the US FCC restrictions be tighter than ours? Any facts about this? Second, the US appears to us as a PC-sick country. Users don't seem ready to change over to 68000 computers (except, of course, the Mac). Third, after five years of software and hardware development for the ST, the European market has proven to be more flexible and powerful than the US market; European applications set the pace for ST software development. Many good reasons for ATARI to favor Europe. Claus Brod
erwinh@solist.htsa.aha.nl (Chaos Conquerer) (02/16/90)
Can someone please explain how they come to the story that the market in the States is so much bigger than the market in Europe ?? As for what I have read, the market potential of the States for Atari isn't verylarge, as there are millions of console sold in the States. As for Europe the number of consoles is much smaller, thus having a larger potential for Personal Computers (I don't mean the PC here, as this computer has sold ten times more in the States than in Europe) I may have a wrong point here, but still this how I feel about this issue. Erwinh
aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson) (02/19/90)
In article <1990Feb13.115340.5645@bath.ac.uk> exspes@bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) writes: >There is ONE good reason for selling to Europe first. In general, FCC type >approval is harder to get than the corresponding approvals in Europe. So, >Atari can begin selling the machines over here before they have been >tightened down to FCC specs. Or, in other words, it may be that Europe is >being used to 'bug-chase' the machines before they are released in the >States, rather than being favored. Certainly, if problems DO occur with the >early versions of a machine, it is better to have them surface in the market >which is potentially smaller, rather than in the one which is potentially >large. Personally, I believe Atari UK were forced into distributing the STE before Christmas simply because they'd run out of STFMs. This can be seen if you read the trashy ST Format this month when they again slag off the STE as a 'Christmas turkey' and tell us that 'What went wrong?' was that the wonderful British games companies were not given enough time to test out their games on the new STE to see if they still worked. I can see their point - the software houses might have had enough time to correct their illegal coding and hopefully old game stocks would have been sold out by the time the STE was launched, leaving a new stack of 'STE friendly' games on the shelves - if the STE was launched, say, now... ST Format, in their article 'The STE - what went wrong?' claim in their opening paragraph that except for 'one or two' programmers who were disappointed with the machine everyone was eagerly awaiting the STE's launch. This is quite a turn-around when you consider it was them who, a few months ago, published the article in which a large group of programmers slagged off the machine. Instead of their 'Lets slag-the-STE' attitude, they've now taken on an 'What-a-damn-shame-we- were-really-hoping-the-STE-would-be-great-what-a-shame-for-all-those- readers-who-bought-one-and-now-can't-get-Kick Off-to-work' At least when the STE finally makes it to the US there shouldn't be any of this nonsense since all the problems with the STE will have been discovered by the Europeans (guess that includes the Brits!). Hopefully Atari's image will be inhanced by a squeaky clean launch with no ensuing problems rather than damaged as it undoubtably has been in the UK. Of course we wouldn't have these problems if programmers didn't feel that accessing the hardware is justifiable, ah well... Mark. PS. Would Atari consider quietly releasing TOS 1.61 which fixed the simple bugs in TOS 1.6? People can live with bugs that they never see, but having to install an AUTO folder on EVERY disk they use is a bit of a bugger. (I hope this letter isn't screwed up - my terminal certainly is..)