I don't know how much this topic has been debated, but was the outdated hardware also part of the reason of failure? I mean, the Atari 7800 had only 48KB of memory while a lot of other machines of the day had over 100. The processor, 6502, was pretty outdated at the time--it ran at 1.19GHz or 1.79GHz when clocked, while even the cheapest of ran a safe 3MHz.
From a technical standpoint, the Atari 7800 was badly outdated. Those specs on an Atari 2600 or 5200 would have been fine, but by time it came to 1986 the market doodling with the over 10MHz range.
Now, you may say that my theory leaves out two things: price & the crash. Well, yes, those are two good points, but the ZX81 -- the cheapest computer of the 80s (priced at $100) had 64KB of space and ran at 3.25MHz. At the price of $140, the Atari 7800, and considering the success of the 2600 and 5200, it made me think: why didn't Atari just come up with it's OWN processor? Atari was a huge company, why not create their own?
Although the Atari 7800 didn't fail with sales, heck it had 1.77 million of them, but I see a reason why developers weren't enthusiastic about developing games: for it's day, it was outdated. Their games had to be pretty limited to fit the RQ of the Atari 7800.
Alright, thanks for reading, this was just sorta a question I had for the community:
Was the outdated hardware another reason for failure in the Atari 7800? (Yes or No)
Please note I am in no way trying to bash the 7800, it was a good system.
From a technical standpoint, the Atari 7800 was badly outdated. Those specs on an Atari 2600 or 5200 would have been fine, but by time it came to 1986 the market doodling with the over 10MHz range.
Now, you may say that my theory leaves out two things: price & the crash. Well, yes, those are two good points, but the ZX81 -- the cheapest computer of the 80s (priced at $100) had 64KB of space and ran at 3.25MHz. At the price of $140, the Atari 7800, and considering the success of the 2600 and 5200, it made me think: why didn't Atari just come up with it's OWN processor? Atari was a huge company, why not create their own?
Although the Atari 7800 didn't fail with sales, heck it had 1.77 million of them, but I see a reason why developers weren't enthusiastic about developing games: for it's day, it was outdated. Their games had to be pretty limited to fit the RQ of the Atari 7800.
Alright, thanks for reading, this was just sorta a question I had for the community:
Was the outdated hardware another reason for failure in the Atari 7800? (Yes or No)
Please note I am in no way trying to bash the 7800, it was a good system.