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172-513: Atari ( / ə ˈ t ɑːr i / ) is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames). The original Atari, Inc. , founded in Sunnyvale, California , United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney , was a pioneer in arcade games , home video game consoles , and home computers . The company's products, such as Pong and

344-681: A General Electric 15-inch black and white television screen as the monitor, specially modified for the game. In the rudimentary algorithm constructed by Bushnell, the enemy ships fire towards the quadrant of the screen that the player's rocket is in, rather than directly at the player's rocket. As Syzygy and Nutting prepared for the MOA show, Bushnell learned that another pair of engineers, Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, were also creating an arcade version of Spacewar! In August 1971 Bushnell called Pitts and Tuck, who were operating as Mini-Computer Applications, so that they could meet and discuss their solutions to

516-400: A US district court in 1992. In 1991, Atari released its PCs ABC386SXII and ABC386DXII based on Intel's i386 chip. In 1993, Atari positioned its Jaguar as the only 64-bit interactive media entertainment system available, but it sold poorly. It would be the last home console to be produced by Atari and the last to be produced by an American manufacturer until Microsoft 's introduction of

688-483: A crowdfunding campaign in order to minimize any financial risk to the parent company. On September 26, 2017, Atari sent out a press release about the new " Atari VCS ", which confirmed more details about the console. It runs a Linux operating system, with full access to the underlying OS, but it have a custom interface designed for the TV. On January 27, 2020, Atari announced a deal with GSD Group to build Atari Hotels, with

860-556: A quarter , or two quarters if the machine is adjusted against the instruction manual's recommendations for optimal pricing. The game displays distorted characters if the player or computer scores pass 9, and each score independently resets to 0 for both visual and gameplay purposes if it reaches 16. In the two-player version of the game, a second game mode is added featuring two player-controlled rockets fighting each other instead of computer-controlled ships. The modified control panel contains two sets of controls, with joysticks replacing

1032-439: A target audience . Marketers tend to treat brands as more than the difference between the actual cost of a product and its selling price; rather brands represent the sum of all valuable qualities of a product to the consumer and are often treated as the total investment in brand building activities including marketing communications. Consumers may look on branding as an aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote

1204-469: A titulus pictus . The inscription typically specified information such as place of origin, destination, type of product and occasionally quality claims or the name of the manufacturer. Roman marks or inscriptions were applied to a very wide variety of goods, including, pots, ceramics, amphorae (storage/shipping containers) and on factory-produced oil-lamps. Carbonized loaves of bread , found at Herculaneum , indicate that some bakers stamped their bread with

1376-636: A brand may recognize that advertising touchpoints are most effective during the pre-purchase experience stage therefore they may target their advertisements to new customers rather than to existing customers. Overall, a brand has the ability to strengthen brand equity by using IMC branding communications through touchpoints. Brand communication is important in ensuring brand success in the business world and refers to how businesses transmit their brand messages, characteristics and attributes to their consumers . One method of brand communication that companies can exploit involves electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). eWOM

1548-400: A brand may showcase its primary attribute as environmental friendliness. However, a brand's attributes alone are not enough to persuade a customer into purchasing the product. These attributes must be communicated through benefits , which are more emotional translations. If a brand's attribute is being environmentally friendly, customers will receive the benefit of feeling that they are helping

1720-403: A brand name is a "memory heuristic": a convenient way to remember preferred product choices. A brand name is not to be confused with a trademark which refers to the brand name or part of a brand that is legally protected. For example, Coca-Cola not only protects the brand name, Coca-Cola , but also protects the distinctive Spencerian script and the contoured shape of the bottle. Brand identity

1892-463: A brand with consumers. For example, a jingle or background music can have a positive effect on brand recognition, purchasing behaviour and brand recall. Therefore, when looking to communicate a brand with chosen consumers, companies should investigate a channel of communication that is most suitable for their short-term and long-term aims and should choose a method of communication that is most likely to reach their target consumers. The match-up between

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2064-478: A brand, the more they trusted the brand. This suggests that a company could look to employ a social-media campaign to gain consumer trust and loyalty as well as in the pursuit of communicating brand messages. McKee (2014) also looked into brand communication and states that when communicating a brand, a company should look to simplify its message as this will lead to more value being portrayed as well as an increased chance of target consumers recalling and recognizing

2236-518: A broad range of goods. In 1266, makers' marks on bread became compulsory in England. The Italians used brands in the form of watermarks on paper in the 13th century. Blind stamps , hallmarks , and silver-makers' marks —all types of brand—became widely used across Europe during this period. Hallmarks, although known from the 4th-century, especially in Byzantium, only came into general use during

2408-412: A category is differentiated from its competing brands, and thus the brand helps customers & potential customers understand which brand satisfies their needs. Thus, the brand offers the customer a short-cut to understanding the different product or service offerings that make up a particular category. Brand awareness is a key step in the customer's purchase decision process, since some kind of awareness

2580-417: A certain attractive quality or characteristic (see also brand promise). From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services can command higher prices. Where two products resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such as a generic , store-branded product), potential purchasers may often select the more expensive branded product on the basis of the perceived quality of

2752-479: A computer having to control it, and from there the pair came up with the idea of building hardware components to handle parts of the game on behalf of the computer. Bushnell and Dabney began to design custom hardware to run the game's functions, and in January 1971 they had a dot moving on a screen. Bushnell drafted a letter dated January 26 to order six Data Nova computers. He did not send the letter, however; near

2924-1021: A corporation hopes to accomplish, and to explain why customers should choose one brand over its competitors. Brand personality refers to "the set of human personality traits that are both applicable to and relevant for brands." Marketers and consumer researchers often argue that brands can be imbued with human-like characteristics which resonate with potential consumers. Such personality traits can assist marketers to create unique, brands that are differentiated from rival brands. Aaker conceptualized brand personality as consisting of five broad dimensions, namely: sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful), excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up to date), competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful), sophistication (glamorous, upper class, charming), and ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough). Subsequent research studies have suggested that Aaker's dimensions of brand personality are relatively stable across different industries, market segments and over time. Much of

3096-472: A different stage in a customer's cognitive ability to address the brand in a given circumstance. Marketers typically identify two distinct types of brand awareness; namely brand recall (also known as unaided recall or occasionally spontaneous recall ) and brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall ). These types of awareness operate in entirely different ways with important implications for marketing strategy and advertising. Brand recognition

3268-608: A free round of gameplay. The game is enclosed in a custom fiberglass cabinet , which Bushnell designed to look futuristic. Bushnell and Dabney designed the game in 1970–71 to be a coin-operated version of Spacewar! . After the pair were unable to find a way to economically run the game on a minicomputer such as the Data General Nova , they hit upon the idea of instead replacing the central computer with custom-designed hardware created to run just that game. While they were working on an early proof of concept , Bushnell found

3440-415: A futuristic entertainment device, marking the first appearance of a video game in a movie. In June 1972, Bushnell and Dabney quit Nutting Associates after Bushnell was unable to convince Nutting to give him a 33 percent stake in the company, and moved to incorporate Syzygy Engineering; they instead named it Atari due to another company with a similar name. Bushnell later stated that he was encouraged by

3612-462: A given category, when prompted with a brand name, a larger number of consumers are typically able to recognize it. Brand recognition is most successful when people can elicit recognition without being explicitly exposed to the company's name, but rather through visual signifiers like logos, slogans, and colors. For example, Disney successfully branded its particular script font (originally created for Walt Disney's "signature" logo ), which it used in

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3784-472: A handful of orders or none at the show. Nutting ordered a large production run regardless, on the expectation that the distributors would come around with further exposure. The game entered initial production sometime in November or December, and began full production around the end of January 1972. Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units of Computer Space , an optimistic decision given that

3956-493: A high level of brand equity. Brand owners manage their brands carefully to create shareholder value . Brand valuation is a management technique that ascribes a monetary value to a brand. The word brand , originally meaning a burning piece of wood, comes from a Middle English brand , meaning "torch", from an Old English brand . It became to also mean the mark from burning with a branding iron. Branding and labeling have an ancient history. Branding probably began with

4128-417: A hit arcade game at the time would sell around 2,000 units, though a handful had reached 10,000. Reception to the game from distributors was mixed. While some were excited by the game, others felt it confusing and would amount to nothing more than a passing fad at best. By spring 1972 the game had sold over 1,000 units, and according to Bushnell in 1976 ended up selling between 1,300 and 1,500 units. While this

4300-544: A hit game. While the game was successful and validated Syzygy's belief in the future of arcade video games, selling over 1,000 cabinets by mid-1972 and ultimately 1,300–1,500 units, it was not the runaway success that Nutting had hoped for. The game spawned one clone game, Star Trek (1972), and Nutting produced a two-player version of Computer Space in 1973 without involvement from Bushnell and Dabney. The pair left Nutting in June 1972 and incorporated Syzygy as Atari , launching

4472-468: A joystick to control the rocket's movement, but found that it broke too easily, failing to last a single night in a location test. The Galaxy Game designers had run into the same issue, but had solved it with expensive customized military surplus joysticks. The cabinet displayed the Nutting Associates name and logo, along with the term "Syzygy engineered". Nutting displayed four cabinets at

4644-507: A low-involvement purchasing decision. Brand recognition is often the mode of brand awareness that operates in retail shopping environments. When presented with a product at the point-of-sale, or after viewing its visual packaging, consumers are able to recognize the brand and may be able to associate it with attributes or meanings acquired through exposure to promotion or word-of-mouth referrals. In contrast to brand recall, where few consumers are able to spontaneously recall brand names within

4816-717: A manufacturer for the game in Nutting Associates . Working in partnership with Nutting, the pair completed the game and ran their first location test in August 1971, a few months prior to the display of a similar prototype called Galaxy Game , also based on Spacewar! . It was first shown to industry press and distributors at the annual Music Operators of America (MOA) Expo in October. With encouraging initial interest, though mixed responses from distributors, Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units, anticipating

4988-418: A monitor, which prohibited the original Spacewar! or any game of the time from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. The original developers of Spacewar! considered ways to monetize the game, but saw no options given the high price of the computer on which it ran. Computer Space , which would not be released until 1971, was the first commercial video game based on Spacewar! . In Computer Space ,

5160-609: A more powerful variant of the Nova, sold for US$ 8,000, running a single game of Spacewar! at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in December 1968, though that solution would have been too expensive for an arcade game, which typically cost US$ 1,000 at the time. Unable to put the game idea out of his mind, however, Bushnell soon thought of a way to manipulate the video signal on the screen with hardware without

5332-563: A new corporation jointly with Namco subsequently named Atari Games Corporation, which took control of Atari's coin-operated games division. The rights to Atari, Inc.'s game properties were shared between the two companies: Atari Corporation receiving the trademarks and the home rights, while Atari Games receiving the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade products. In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse-merged with disk-drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS) and effectively perished. In 1998, Hasbro Interactive, part of

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5504-697: A non-exclusive license to run a cryptocurrency online casino on Atari's website, based on the Atari Token. The group partnering with Atari opened a new company in Gibraltar called Atari Chain LTD. In March 2021, Atari extended its partnership with ICICB Group for the development of Atari branded hotels, and the first hotels will be constructed at selected locations outside the United States, with Dubai , Gibraltar and Spain . In late 2021, Wade Rosen became

5676-496: A nonoperating subsidiary until 1992. Meanwhile, Namco later lost interest in operating Atari Games. In 1987, Namco sold 33% of its shares to a group of employees led by then-president Hideyuki Nakajima. He had been the president of Atari Games since 1985. Atari Ireland was a subsidiary of Atari Games that manufactured their games for the European market; while under Namco, Atari Ireland also manufactured Sega 's Hang-On (1985) for

5848-408: A position in the game when a group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972. In 1973, Atari secretly spawned a competitor called Kee Games , headed by Nolan's next-door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market nearly

6020-423: A prior manager of Dabney's with their prototype, but found no interest. The major arcade game manufacturers were based out of Chicago at the time, limiting their ability to demonstrate their idea to an existing firm. During a dentist appointment in early 1971, Bushnell told the dentist about the game and that he was looking for a manufacturer; the dentist in turn referred him to another patient of his, Dave Ralstin,

6192-490: A privately held company. On April 30, 2008, Atari, Inc. announced its intentions to accept Infogrames' buyout offer and to merge with Infogrames. On October 8, 2008, IESA completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary. On December 9, 2008, Atari announced that it had acquired Cryptic Studios , an MMORPG developer. Namco Bandai purchased a 34% stake in Atari Europe on May 14, 2009, paving

6364-460: A prototype based on a Data General Nova. Over the summer they made plans for developing the game, and in the early fall they were joined by Larry Bryan, a computer programmer who also worked at Ampex. Bushnell and Dabney put US$ 100 each into a partnership, named Syzygy by Bryan, in order to purchase components. They soon ran into difficulties with their planned design: the computer was not powerful enough to run multiple simultaneous games and refresh

6536-399: A receiver, it runs the risk of the receiver incorrectly interpreting the message. Therefore, a brand should use appropriate communication channels to positively "…affect how the psychological and physical aspects of a brand are perceived". In order for brands to effectively communicate to customers, marketers must "…consider all touch point |s, or sources of contact, that a customer has with

6708-423: A ribbed top surface, and a rise at the back of the console; two versions were announced: one with a traditional wood veneer front, and the other with a glass front. Connectivity options were revealed, including HDMI , USB (x4), and SD card – the console was said to support both classic and current games. Also, according to an official company statement of June 22, 2017, the product was to be initially launched via

6880-549: A settlement in 1994, with Atari Games paying Nintendo cash damages and the use of several patent licenses. In April 1996, after an unsuccessful bid by Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell , the company was sold to WMS Industries , owners of the Williams, Bally , and Midway arcade brands, which restored the use of the Atari Games name. On November 19, 1999, Atari Games Corporation was renamed Midway Games West Inc., resulting in

7052-473: A strategic personality for a product or company, so that "brand" now suggests the values and promises that a consumer may perceive and buy into. Over time, the practice of branding objects extended to a broader range of packaging and goods offered for sale including oil , wine , cosmetics , and fish sauce and, in the 21st century, extends even further into services (such as legal , financial and medical ), political parties and people 's stage names. In

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7224-473: A television screen displaying images being controlled by a person in front of it, rather than displaying a broadcast from a remote television station. While the game did not meet the high hopes of Nutting, it was successful enough that Nutting produced a two-player version of the game in July 1973 built by Steve Bristow with a green fiberglass cabinet; the design was initially contracted to Bushnell, but his design

7396-425: A time limit—adjustable by the operator—of 60 to 150 seconds, with a default of 90; when the time limit is reached, the game ends if the player's score is lower than the computer's. If it is higher, the black and white colors invert in a "hyperspace" feature, and another round begins for free; the game continues on to new rounds with the display colors inverting indefinitely if the player continues to win. One round costs

7568-414: A trademark from the late 1870s, with great success. Pears' soap , Campbell's soup , Coca-Cola , Juicy Fruit chewing gum and Aunt Jemima pancake mix were also among the first products to be "branded" in an effort to increase the consumer's familiarity with the product's merits. Other brands which date from that era, such as Ben's Original rice and Kellogg's breakfast cereal, furnish illustrations of

7740-407: A trademark in the form of a 'White Rabbit", which signified good luck and was particularly relevant to women, who were the primary purchasers. Details in the image show a white rabbit crushing herbs, and text includes advice to shoppers to look for the stone white rabbit in front of the maker's shop. In ancient Rome , a commercial brand or inscription applied to objects offered for sale was known as

7912-509: A visual or verbal cue. For example, when looking to satisfy a category need such as a toilet paper, the customer would firstly be presented with multiple brands to choose from. Once the customer is visually or verbally faced with a brand, they may remember being introduced to it before. When given a cue, consumers able to retrieve the memory node associated with the brand exhibit brand recognition. Often, this form of brand awareness assists customers in choosing one brand over another when faced with

8084-531: A wholly owned subsidiary. IESA renamed itself Atari SA in 2009 which remains the status quo . It sought bankruptcy protection under French law in 2013. On the other hand, Atari's post-1984 arcade titles is the property of Warner Bros. Games since receiving the assets following Midway's bankruptcy in 2009. As of 2023, Atari's focus was on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and blockchain ". In 2024 Atari terminated all connections to cryptocurrency to once again focus solely on video games. The name comes from

8256-586: A year in which to tackle the company's problems. He began a massive restructuring of the company and worked with Warner Communications in May 1984 to create "NATCO" (an acronym for New Atari Company). NATCO further streamlined the company's facilities, personnel, and spending. Unknown to James Morgan and the senior management of Atari, Warner had been in talks with Tramel Technology to buy Atari's consumer electronics and home computer divisions. Negotiating until close to midnight on July 1, 1984, Jack Tramiel purchased most of

8428-540: Is a graphics display connected to a computer," and contributor Martin Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT ". Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: the PDP-1 was priced at US$ 120,000 (equivalent to about $ 1,209,000 in 2023) and only 53 were ever sold, most without

8600-413: Is a brand's personality . Quite literally, one can easily describe a successful brand identity as if it were a person. This form of brand identity has proven to be the most advantageous in maintaining long-lasting relationships with consumers, as it gives them a sense of personal interaction with the brand Collectively, all four forms of brand identification help to deliver a powerful meaning behind what

8772-420: Is a collection of individual components, such as a name, a design, a set of images, a slogan, a vision, writing style, a particular font or a symbol etc. which sets the brand aside from others. For a company to exude a strong sense of brand identity, it must have an in-depth understanding of its target market, competitors and the surrounding business environment. Brand identity includes both the core identity and

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8944-401: Is a derivative of the 1962 computer game Spacewar! , which is possibly the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features a rocket controlled by the player engaged in a missile battle with a pair of hardware-controlled flying saucers set against a starfield background. The goal is to score more hits than the enemy spaceships within a set time period, which awards

9116-403: Is a fundamental asset to a brand's equity , the worth of a brand's identity would become obsolete without ongoing brand communication. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) relates to how a brand transmits a clear consistent message to its stakeholders . Five key components comprise IMC: The effectiveness of a brand's communication is determined by how accurately the customer perceives

9288-469: Is a precondition to purchasing. That is, customers will not consider a brand if they are not aware of it. Brand awareness is a key component in understanding the effectiveness both of a brand's identity and of its communication methods. Successful brands are those that consistently generate a high level of brand awareness, as this can be the pivotal factor in securing customer transactions. Various forms of brand awareness can be identified. Each form reflects

9460-410: Is a relatively new approach [Phelps et al., 2004] identified to communicate with consumers. One popular method of eWOM involves social networking sites (SNSs) such as Twitter . A study found that consumers classed their relationship with a brand as closer if that brand was active on a specific social media site (Twitter). Research further found that the more consumers "retweeted" and communicated with

9632-505: Is not authorized to represent Atari or its brands in any manner. In March 2024, Atari announced that it will work with coin-op manufacturer Alan-1 to bring Atari Recharged titles on arcades . This would mark the return of the Atari brand in the arcade space after 25 years, when San Francisco Rush 2049 was released. Brand The practice of branding—in the original literal sense of marking by burning—is thought to have begun with

9804-421: Is often little to differentiate between several types of products in the 21st century, hence branding is among a few remaining forms of product differentiation . Brand equity is the measurable totality of a brand's worth and is validated by observing the effectiveness of these branding components. When a customer is familiar with a brand or favors it incomparably over its competitors, a corporation has reached

9976-442: Is one of the initial phases of brand awareness and validates whether or not a customer remembers being pre-exposed to the brand. Brand recognition (also known as aided brand recall ) refers to consumers' ability to correctly differentiate a brand when they come into contact with it. This does not necessarily require consumers to identify or recall the brand name. When customers experience brand recognition, they are triggered by either

10148-406: Is stronger than brand recognition, as the brand must be firmly cemented in the consumer's memory to enable unassisted remembrance. This gives the company huge advantage over its competitors because the customer is already willing to buy or at least know the company offering available in the market. Thus, brand recall is a confirmation that previous branding touchpoints have successfully fermented in

10320-564: Is the herbal paste known as chyawanprash , consumed for its purported health benefits and attributed to a revered rishi (or seer) named Chyawan. One well-documented early example of a highly developed brand is that of White Rabbit sewing needles, dating from China's Song dynasty (960 to 1127 CE). A copper printing plate used to print posters contained a message which roughly translates as: "Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop: We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine-quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time." The plate also includes

10492-547: The 1040STF and the Mega ST with a bit image manipulator chip, and launched its first parallel computer . The ATW-800 Transputer was based on the Inmos T800 CPU, which had a 32/64-bit architecture, ran at 15 million instructions per second (MIPS) and housed a Charity videochip that supported 16 million colors. The company continued to experiment with parallel computing aiming at B2B customers and graphic designers, but

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10664-505: The Atari 2600 , helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. In 1984, as a result of the video game crash of 1983 , the assets of the home console and computer divisions of the original Atari Inc. were sold off to Jack Tramiel 's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation , while the remaining part of Atari, Inc. was renamed Atari Games Inc . In early 1985, Warner established

10836-445: The Atari 5200 . It was unsuccessful due to incompatibility with the 2600 game library, a small quantity of dedicated games, and notoriously unreliable controllers. Porting arcade games to home systems with inferior hardware was difficult. The ported version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 omitted many of the visual features of the original to compensate for the lack of ROM space and the hardware struggled when multiple ghosts appeared on

11008-582: The Federated Group for $ 67.3 million, securing shelf space in over 60 stores in California, Arizona, Texas and Kansas at a time when major American electronics outlets were reluctant to carry Atari-branded computers, and two-thirds of Atari's PC production was sold in Europe. The Federated Group (not related to Federated Department Stores ) was sold to Silo in 1989. In 1988, the company unveiled

11180-597: The Japanese term atari , used while playing the ancient board game Go . The word atari means "to hit a target" in Japanese; in Go, it indicates a situation where a player will be able to capture one or more stones of the opponent in the next move. The Atari logo was designed by George Opperman , who was Atari's first in-house graphic designer, and drawn by Evelyn Seto. The design is known as "Fuji" for its resemblance to

11352-422: The Japanese mountain , although the logo's origins are unrelated to it. Opperman designed the logo intending for the silhouette to look like the letter A as in Atari and for its three "prongs" to resemble players and the midline of the "court" in the company's first hit game, Pong . In 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a small engineering company, Syzygy Engineering, that designed Computer Space ,

11524-784: The Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE); large numbers of seals survive from the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley (3,300–1,300 BCE) where the local community depended heavily on trade; cylinder seals came into use in Ur in Mesopotamia in around 3,000 BCE, and facilitated the labelling of goods and property; and the use of maker's marks on pottery was commonplace in both ancient Greece and Rome. Identity marks, such as stamps on ceramics, were also used in ancient Egypt. Diana Twede has argued that

11696-527: The Xbox in 2001. By 1996, a series of successful lawsuits had left Atari with millions of dollars in the bank, but the failure of the Lynx and Jaguar left Atari without a product to sell. Tramiel and his family also wanted out of the business. The result was a rapid succession of changes in ownership. In July 1996, Atari merged with JTS Inc. , a short-lived maker of hard disk drives, to form JTS Corp. Atari's role in

11868-419: The ancient Egyptians , who are known to have engaged in livestock branding and branded slaves as early as 2,700 BCE. Branding was used to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot branding iron . If a person stole any of the cattle, anyone else who saw the symbol could deduce the actual owner. The term has been extended to mean

12040-481: The "consumer packaging functions of protection, utility and communication have been necessary whenever packages were the object of transactions". She has shown that amphorae used in Mediterranean trade between 1,500 and 500 BCE exhibited a wide variety of shapes and markings, which consumers used to glean information about the type of goods and the quality. The systematic use of stamped labels dates from around

12212-484: The "cool" factor. This began the modern practice now known as branding , where the consumers buy the brand instead of the product and rely on the brand name instead of a retailer's recommendation. The process of giving a brand "human" characteristics represented, at least in part, a response to consumer concerns about mass-produced goods. The Quaker Oats Company began using the image of the Quaker Man in place of

12384-400: The "…potential to add positive – or suppress negative – associations to the brand's equity" Thus, a brand's IMC should cohesively deliver positive messages through appropriate touch points associated with its target market. One methodology involves using sensory stimuli touch points to activate customer emotion. For example, if a brand consistently uses a pleasant smell as a primary touchpoint,

12556-518: The 1st century CE. The use of hallmarks , a type of brand, on precious metals dates to around the 4th century CE. A series of five marks occurs on Byzantine silver dating from this period. Some of the earliest use of maker's marks, dating to about 1,300 BCE, have been found in India. The oldest generic brand in continuous use, known in India since the Vedic period ( c.  1100 BCE to 500 BCE),

12728-478: The 2600 had a lifespan of about three years; it then set forth to build the most powerful machine possible within that time frame. Mid-way into their effort the home computer revolution took off, leading to the addition of a keyboard and features to produce the Atari 800 and its smaller sibling, the 400. The new machines had some success when they finally became available in quantity in 1980. From this platform Atari released their next-generation game console in 1982,

12900-606: The 6th century BCE. A vase manufactured around 490 BCE bears the inscription " Sophilos painted me", indicating that the object was both fabricated and painted by a single potter. Branding may have been necessary to support the extensive trade in such pots. For example, 3rd-century Gaulish pots bearing the names of well-known potters and the place of manufacture (such as Attianus of Lezoux , Tetturo of Lezoux and Cinnamus of Vichy ) have been found as far away as Essex and Hadrian's Wall in England. English potters based at Colchester and Chichester used stamps on their ceramic wares by

13072-495: The Atari 130XE; Atari User Groups received early sneak-preview samples of the new Atari 520ST's, and major retailer shipments hit store shelves in September 1985 of Atari's new 32-bit Atari ST computers. In 1986, Atari launched two consoles designed under Warner — the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800 console (which saw limited release in 1984). Atari rebounded, earning a $ 25 million profit that year. In 1987, Atari acquired

13244-541: The Atari Games name no longer being used, with San Francisco Rush 2049 being the final Atari-branded arcade release. On March 13, 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive for $ 5 million, less than a fifth of what Warner Communications had paid 22 years earlier. This transaction primarily involved the brand and intellectual property, which now fell under the Atari Interactive division of Hasbro Interactive. Two years after Atari's "death",

13416-600: The Atari brand with the launch of three new games featuring a prominent Atari branding on their boxarts: Splashdown , MX Rider and TransWorld Surf . Infogrames used Atari as a brand name for games aimed at 18–34 year olds. Other Infogrames games under the Atari name included V-Rally 3 , Neverwinter Nights , Stuntman and Enter the Matrix . On May 8, 2003, IESA had its majority-owned but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames, Inc. officially renamed Atari, Inc. , renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept

13588-622: The European market. Atari Games continued to manufacture arcade games and units, and starting in 1988, also sold cartridges for the Nintendo Entertainment System under the Tengen brand name, including a version of Tetris . The companies exchanged a number of lawsuits in the late 1980s related to disputes over the rights to Tetris and Tengen's circumvention of Nintendo's lockout chip, which prevented third parties from creating unauthorized games. The suit finally reached

13760-401: The MOA show, one each in red, blue, white, and yellow, with the implication that the game was already in production, though they were in fact the only four cabinets then produced. These initial cabinets were in solid colors, though later ones would use a sparkle finish. The cabinets were damaged during transport, and one monitor was broken; Syzygy repaired the three working cabinets and opened up

13932-534: The Medieval period. British silversmiths introduced hallmarks for silver in 1300. Some brands still in existence as of 2018 date from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries' period of mass-production. Bass Brewery , the British brewery founded in 1777, became a pioneer in international brand marketing. Many years before 1855, Bass applied a red triangle to casks of its pale ale. In 1876, its red-triangle brand became

14104-506: The Stanford laboratory, and the two agreed to work together to try and design a prototype of the game. Bushnell had some experience with computers and digital engineering but not enough to create the game on his own, while the older Dabney was more experienced with analog and hardware engineering, as he had designed video processing and control circuits and power supplies. After agreeing on an initial idea, Bushnell and Dabney began designing

14276-430: The amount of work that the game had to perform to update the screen: instead of refreshing the entire screen for any change, like Spacewar! , each element could be moved independently of the others. The ships themselves are drawn on the screen as a pattern of dots, rather than connected lines, and were essentially hardwired bitmaps , and are considered an early form of the concept of sprite graphics. The cabinet includes

14448-544: The assets of the home computing and game console divisions of Atari for $ 240 million in promissory notes and stocks. Warner gained a 20% stake in Tramel Technology, which was renamed Atari Corporation. Warner retained the arcade division, continuing it under the name Atari Games , but sold it to Namco in 1985. Warner also sold the Ataritel division to Mitsubishi . Under Tramiel's ownership, Atari Corp. used

14620-476: The atrium, and bearing labels as follows: Scaurus' fish sauce was known by people across the Mediterranean to be of very high quality, and its reputation traveled as far away as modern France. In both Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, archaeological evidence also points to evidence of branding and labeling in relatively common use across a broad range of goods. Wine jars, for example, were stamped with names, such as "Lassius" and "L. Eumachius"; probably references to

14792-524: The barrels used, effectively using a corporate trademark as a quasi-brand. Factories established following the Industrial Revolution introduced mass-produced goods and needed to sell their products to a wider market—that is, to customers previously familiar only with locally produced goods. It became apparent that a generic package of soap had difficulty competing with familiar, local products. Packaged-goods manufacturers needed to convince

14964-427: The beginnings of brand management. This trend continued to the 1980s, and as of 2018 is quantified by marketers in concepts such as brand value and brand equity . Naomi Klein has described this development as "brand equity mania". In 1988, for example, Philip Morris Companies purchased Kraft Foods Inc. for six times what the company was worth on paper. Business analysts reported that what they really purchased

15136-624: The board as a representative for Blubay holdings. As of March 31, 2011, the board of directors consisted of Frank Dangeard, Jim Wilson, Tom Virden, Gene Davis and Alexandra Fichelson. On January 21, 2013, the four related companies Atari, Atari Interactive, Humongous , and California US Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. All three Ataris emerged from bankruptcy one year later and

15308-401: The brand and is termed the consumer's brand experience . The brand is often intended to create an emotional response and recognition, leading to potential loyalty and repeat purchases. The brand experience is a brand's action perceived by a person. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image , is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people, consisting of all

15480-412: The brand has a much higher chance of creating a positive lasting effect on its customers' senses as well as memory. Another way a brand can ensure that it is utilizing the best communication channel is by focusing on touchpoints that suit particular areas associated with customer experience . As suggested Figure 2, certain touch points link with a specific stage in customer-brand-involvement. For example,

15652-410: The brand made a comeback with Hasbro immediately stating the development of new remakes of Atari classics, starting with Centipede released on Windows PCs later that year. The brand name changed hands again in December 2000 when French software publisher Infogrames took over Hasbro Interactive. In October 2001, Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA, now Atari SA ) announced that it was "reinventing"

15824-413: The brand or on the basis of the reputation of the brand owner. Brand awareness involves a customer's ability to recall and/or recognize brands, logos, and branded advertising. Brands help customers to understand which brands or products belong to which product or service category. Brands assist customers to understand the constellation of benefits offered by individual brands, and how a given brand within

15996-425: The brand". Touch points represent the channel stage in the traditional communication model, where a message travels from the sender to the receiver. Any point where a customer has an interaction with the brand - whether watching a television advertisement, hearing about a brand through word of mouth or even noticing a branded license plate – defines a touchpoint. According to Dahlen et al. (2010), every touchpoint has

16168-400: The brand's intended message through its IMC. Although IMC is a broad strategic concept, the most crucial brand communication elements are pinpointed to how the brand sends a message and what touch points the brand uses to connect with its customers [Chitty 2005]. One can analyze the traditional communication model into several consecutive steps: When a brand communicates a brand identity to

16340-509: The brand, he or she is more likely to try other products offered by the company – such as chocolate-chip cookies, for example. Brand development, often performed by a design team , takes time to produce. A brand name is the part of a brand that can be spoken or written and identifies a product, service or company and sets it apart from other comparable products within a category. A brand name may include words, phrases, signs, symbols, designs, or any combination of these elements. For consumers,

16512-455: The brand. In 2012 Riefler stated that if the company communicating a brand is a global organization or has future global aims, that company should look to employ a method of communication that is globally appealing to their consumers, and subsequently choose a method of communication with will be internationally understood. One way a company can do this involves choosing a product or service's brand name, as this name will need to be suitable for

16684-501: The consumer through branding. Producers began by attaching simple stone seals to products which, over time, gave way to clay seals bearing impressed images, often associated with the producer's personal identity thus giving the product a personality. Not all historians agree that these markings are comparable with modern brands or labels, with some suggesting that the early pictorial brands or simple thumbprints used in pottery should be termed proto-brands while other historians argue that

16856-506: The creation of the cabinet itself, including the coin slot, control panel, and power supply, and designed a sound system that could make a noise like a rocket engine. By August 1971, an initial prototype of the game—now named Computer Space to be similar to Computer Quiz —was complete, and Syzygy moved on to location testing. They installed the game at the Dutch Goose bar near Stanford University, where it met with great success. Nutting

17028-545: The direction of its motion, though it can rotate at a constant rate. The flying saucers stay in place or glide in a zig-zag pattern around the screen in tandem, with one staying a constant distance directly below the other. If a ship or missile moves past one edge of the screen, it reappears on the other side in a wraparound effect. While the missile is in flight, the player can turn it left or right by turning their rocket. Player controls are clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, forward thrust, and firing missiles. Whenever

17200-448: The direction of the company, the discontinuation of the pinball division, and most importantly, the notion of discontinuing the 2600. In 1978, Kee Games was disbanded. In December of that year, Bushnell was fired as chairman and co-CEO following an argument with Manny Gerard. He decided to leave the company rather than take an advisory role. The development of a successor to the 2600 started as soon as it shipped. The original team estimated

17372-415: The end of January, he tried to run their program on a local Nova, and found that they had miscalculated the requirements. Even with several of the functions removed from the program, now named Cosmic Combat , the computer still could not run multiple instances at once. Although upset, Bushnell soon realized that it would be possible to entirely replace the Nova with custom hardware, and that the cost to build

17544-414: The entering of the social casino gaming industry with Atari Casino. Frederic Chesnais, who now heads all three companies, stated that their entire operations consist of a staff of 10 people. On June 22, 2014, Atari announced a new corporate strategy that would include a focus on "new audiences", specifically " LGBT , social casinos, real-money gambling, and YouTube ". On June 8, 2017, a short teaser video

17716-401: The entire computer system is a state machine made of 7400-series integrated circuits , with monochrome graphic elements held in diode arrays. The arrays, which Bushnell designed to let him rotate the rocket in 16 directions with only 4 arrays, are laid out in the shape of the ships, to make it obvious to game operators what would need to be replaced if something broke. These arrays reduced

17888-516: The environment by associating with the brand. Aside from attributes and benefits, a brand's identity may also involve branding to focus on representing its core set of values . If a company is seen to symbolize specific values, it will, in turn, attract customers who also believe in these values. For example, Nike's brand represents the value of a " just do it " attitude. Thus, this form of brand identification attracts customers who also share this same value. Even more extensive than its perceived values

18060-414: The extended identity. The core identity reflects consistent long-term associations with the brand; whereas the extended identity involves the intricate details of the brand that help generate a constant motif. According to Kotler et al. (2009), a brand's identity may deliver four levels of meaning: A brand's attributes are a set of labels with which the corporation wishes to be associated. For example,

18232-419: The first arcade video game, Computer Space had a strong influence on future video game design, such as using terms and designs from prior mechanical arcade games, and providing a template for transforming a medium previously designed and played on research mainframes into a commercial model for general consumers. It directly inspired several video games and game designers, such as Steve Bristow, who came up with

18404-600: The first breaking ground in Phoenix in mid-2020. Additional hotels were also planned in Las Vegas , Denver , Chicago , Austin , Seattle , San Francisco , and San Jose . The company plans to make the hotel experience immersive and accessible to all ages. Hotels are planned to include virtual and augmented reality technologies. On December 16, 2020, Atari shipped the first units of the Atari VCS exclusive to backers of

18576-426: The first registered trademark issued by the British government. Guinness World Records recognizes Tate & Lyle (of Lyle's Golden Syrup ) as Britain's, and the world's, oldest branding and packaging, with its green-and-gold packaging having remained almost unchanged since 1885. Twinings tea has used the same logo – capitalized font beneath a lion crest – since 1787, making it

18748-642: The fourth century BCE. In largely pre-literate society, the shape of the amphora and its pictorial markings conveyed information about the contents, region of origin and even the identity of the producer, which were understood to convey information about product quality. David Wengrow has argued that branding became necessary following the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE, when large-scale economies started mass-producing commodities such as alcoholic drinks, cosmetics and textiles. These ancient societies imposed strict forms of quality-control over commodities, and also needed to convey value to

18920-425: The fourth to demonstrate the internals to attendees. The game was popular with viewers, with a crowded display area, and trade magazine Cash Box called it "very promising" and "very glamorous". Game distributors, however, were hesitant about the game, with concerns raised about the game's potential, reliability, and the embedded monitor's attractiveness to thieves; recollections are mixed as to whether Nutting took

19092-405: The game business operates. In 1969, after graduating from college, Bushnell worked as an engineer in California for Ampex , an electronics company that worked in audio and video recording technology. While at a club for playing the board game Go , Bushnell met researcher Jim Stein, who worked for Stanford University 's Artificial Intelligence Project ; Bushnell learned from him that Spacewar!

19264-577: The game but also hired Bushnell as their chief engineer. Furthermore, Syzygy Engineering retained ownership of the game, even though Nutting agreed to give Syzygy space to build the prototype and to manufacture the game once complete. Syzygy would be paid five percent of each cabinet sold. Bushnell negotiated to work on Cosmic Combat outside of normal working hours until it went into production in order to keep it conceptually separate from his new job at Nutting, so as to prevent Nutting from later claiming ownership due to paying for time or materials spent building

19436-456: The game console and home computer markets, Atari was never able to duplicate the success of the 2600. These problems were followed by the video game crash of 1983 , with losses that totaled more than $ 500 million. Warner's stock price slid from $ 60 to $ 20, and the company began searching for a buyer for its troubled division. In 1983, Ray Kassar resigned. Financial problems continued to mount and Kassar's successor, James J. Morgan , had less than

19608-515: The game. Dabney remained at Ampex until the summer, when he resigned to join Bushnell at Nutting, as he was initially unwilling to leave the stable job he had worked at for ten years without more proof that the game could be a success. Once he moved to Nutting, Bushnell took over the majority of the engineering work for the game; Dabney has stated that he advised Bushnell on some of the design. After Dabney joined Bushnell at Nutting, he helped with

19780-424: The gravitational field of a central star; neither of these features could be run on the dedicated circuits the pair were making, so the game was cut down to a single-player game wherein the player would fight against two computer-controlled spaceships in open space. In January 1971, Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy Engineering as an official company, now with a cash amount of US$ 350 each. They approached Ampex and

19952-411: The high cost of the cabinet. Computer Space debuted at the MOA show on October 15–17, 1971. Dabney's wooden cabinet for the initial prototype was replaced with a curvy, futuristic fiberglass cabinet designed by Bushnell with modelling clay and built by a swimming pool manufacturer. A control panel extended from the main body of the cabinet and contained the four control buttons; Syzygy had hoped to use

20124-497: The idea for Tank (1974) to correct the perceived shortcomings of the game by having easier-to-control tanks instead, and Jerry Lawson , the designer of the Fairchild Channel F home console (1976). It also influenced Larry Rosenthal, who was partially inspired to make the vector graphics -based Space Wars (1977) by his dislike of Computer Space ' s simplification of Spacewar! , and Ed Logg , who combined

20296-436: The information and expectations associated with a product, with a service, or with the companies providing them. Marketers or product managers that responsible for branding, seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics, which make it special or unique. A brand can, therefore, become one of

20468-428: The license from Atari. Atari Flashback Portable is a handheld game console sold since 2016. In April 2011, Atari re-released their back catalogue of arcade and Atari 2600 games to be played on mobile devices. On March 6, 2008, IESA made an offer to Atari, Inc. to buy out all remaining public shares for a value of $ 1.68 per share, or $ 11 million total. The offer would make IESA sole owner of Atari, Inc., thus making it

20640-430: The literature on branding suggests that consumers prefer brands with personalities that are congruent with their own. Consumers may distinguish the psychological aspect (brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand) of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with

20812-415: The load on the computer by replacing subroutines —such as displaying the background stars—with specialized hardware, but it proved insufficient; even reducing the number of monitors was not enough. By the end of November 1970, Bushnell decided to abandon the project as untenable; Dabney had stopped working on the design a while before. It is unclear if the pair were aware that Data General had demonstrated

20984-467: The locations in which the game did well, like the Dutch Goose playtest location, were generally located near university campuses; the general market for coin-operated games, however, was in working-class bars, where the patrons were less interested in deciphering a complicated game. In the documentary Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession , Bushnell explained, "Sure, I loved it, and all my friends loved it, but all my friends were engineers. It

21156-419: The logo for go.com . Unlike brand recognition, brand recall (also known as unaided brand recall or spontaneous brand recall ) is the ability of the customer retrieving the brand correctly from memory. Rather than being given a choice of multiple brands to satisfy a need, consumers are faced with a need first, and then must recall a brand from their memory to satisfy that need. This level of brand awareness

21328-473: The market that the public could place just as much trust in the non-local product. Gradually, manufacturers began using personal identifiers to differentiate their goods from generic products on the market. Marketers generally began to realize that brands, to which personalities were attached, outsold rival brands. By the 1880s, large manufacturers had learned to imbue their brands' identity with personality traits such as youthfulness, fun, sex appeal, luxury or

21500-540: The marketplace that it aims to enter. It is important that if a company wishes to develop a global market, the company name will also need to be suitable in different cultures and not cause offense or be misunderstood. When communicating a brand, a company needs to be aware that they must not just visually communicate their brand message and should take advantage of portraying their message through multi-sensory information. One article suggests that other senses, apart from vision, need to be targeted when trying to communicate

21672-400: The minds of its consumers. Marketing-mix modeling can help marketing leaders optimize how they spend marketing budgets to maximize the impact on brand awareness or on sales. Managing brands for value creation will often involve applying marketing-mix modeling techniques in conjunction with brand valuation . Brands typically comprise various elements, such as: Although brand identity

21844-569: The modern era, the concept of branding has expanded to include deployment by a manager of the marketing and communication techniques and tools that help to distinguish a company or products from competitors, aiming to create a lasting impression in the minds of customers . The key components that form a brand's toolbox include a brand's identity, personality, product design , brand communication (such as by logos and trademarks ), brand awareness , brand loyalty , and various branding ( brand management ) strategies. Many companies believe that there

22016-401: The monitors as fast as was needed to make the games playable. Bryan realized this soon after starting work on the project in August 1970 while trying to design the code needed to run the games, and he left the project before Syzygy was officially formed without ever contributing any money. Bushnell and Dabney continued working on the design for several more months. The pair attempted to reduce

22188-433: The most enduring campaigns of the 20th-century. Brand advertisers began to imbue goods and services with a personality, based on the insight that consumers searched for brands with personalities that matched their own. Effective branding, attached to strong brand values, can result in higher sales of not only one product, but of other products associated with that brand. If a customer loves Pillsbury biscuits and trusts

22360-579: The most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace . This means that building a strong brand helps to distinguish a product from similar ones and differentiate it from competitors. The art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management . The orientation of an entire organization towards its brand is called brand orientation . Brand orientation develops in response to market intelligence . Careful brand management seeks to make products or services relevant and meaningful to

22532-491: The movement buttons on some machines. While studying at the University of Utah , electrical engineering student Nolan Bushnell had a part-time job at an amusement arcade , where he became familiar with arcade electro-mechanical games such as Chicago Coin 's racing game Speedway (1969), watching customers play and helping to maintain the machinery, while learning how it worked and developing his understanding of how

22704-564: The name of the producer. The use of identity marks on products declined following the fall of the Roman Empire . In the European Middle Ages , heraldry developed a language of visual symbolism which would feed into the evolution of branding, and with the rise of the merchant guilds the use of marks resurfaced and was applied to specific types of goods. By the 13th century, the use of maker's marks had become evident on

22876-558: The new CEO of Atari. Unlike his predecessor, Rosen's strategy for Atari is a re-focus on retro gaming and Atari's classic franchises. On 18 April 2022, Atari announced the termination of all license agreements with ICICB Group and its subsidiaries ("ICICB"). The license agreements between Atari and ICICB, including the Atari Chain Limited license (the "Joint Venture") and the related licenses including hotel and casino licenses, have been terminated effective 18 April 2022. ICICB

23048-445: The new company largely became that of holder for the Atari properties and minor support, and consequently the name largely disappeared from the market. Video game magazines reported it as Atari exiting the video game business. The end of an era — Atari's story is one that certainly should never be forgotten by anyone who has ever enjoyed a videogame. After the sale of the consumer electronics and computer divisions to Jack Tramiel, Atari

23220-499: The new owner of the Atari brand after buying Hasbro Interactive in 2001, renaming it Infogrames Interactive, which intermittently published Atari-branded home titles. In 2003, it renamed the division Atari Interactive. Another IESA division called Infogrames Inc., which was founded as GT Interactive, changed its name to Atari, Inc. the same year, licensing the Atari name and logo from its fellow subsidiary. In 2008, IESA completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc.'s outstanding stock, making it

23392-405: The original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment. The original Atari holdings division purchased from Hasbro, Hasbro Interactive, was also made a separate corporate entity renamed as Atari Interactive . Between 2004 and 2011, Atari produced and marketed Atari Flashback retro consoles , reminiscent of the Atari 2600 design. Since 2011, these consoles have been produced by AtGames under

23564-413: The player controls a rocket as it attempts to shoot a pair of flying saucers while avoiding their fire. The game has the three ships flying on a two-dimensional plane set against the backdrop of a starfield. Missiles are fired one at a time, and there is a cooldown period between launches. The player's rocket remains in motion even when the player is not accelerating, and rotating the ship does not change

23736-452: The player is hit by a missile or flying saucer, the screen flashes and the player's rocket spins rapidly and disappears before reappearing in the same location. If a flying saucer is hit by a missile, the screen flashes, and the saucer briefly disappears. Counters on the right side of the screen track the number of times both the player's rocket and the saucers have been destroyed, as well as how long that round of gameplay has lasted. A round has

23908-657: The practice of branding livestock to deter theft. Images of the branding of cattle occur in ancient Egyptian tombs dating to around 2,700 BCE. Over time, purchasers realized that the brand provided information about origin as well as about ownership, and could serve as a guide to quality. Branding was adapted by farmers, potters, and traders for use on other types of goods such as pottery and ceramics. Forms of branding or proto-branding emerged spontaneously and independently throughout Africa, Asia and Europe at different times, depending on local conditions. Seals , which acted as quasi-brands, have been found on early Chinese products of

24080-473: The presence of these simple markings does not imply that mature brand management practices operated. Scholarly studies have found evidence of branding, packaging, and labeling in antiquity. Archaeological evidence of potters' stamps has been found across the breadth of the Roman Empire and in ancient Greece . Stamps were used on bricks, pottery, and storage containers as well as on fine ceramics. Pottery marking had become commonplace in ancient Greece by

24252-517: The problem of running Spacewar! on an inexpensive computer. Pitts and Tuck were developing a prototype machine of Galaxy Game when they met with Bushnell; the game, however, while a faithful recreation of Spacewar! , ran on an externally-connected DEC PDP-11 with a Hewlett-Packard 1300A Electrostatic Display, and the total cost of the prototype unit was US$ 20,000 (equivalent to about $ 150,000 in 2023). The Syzygy duo were relieved, though also somewhat disappointed, to find that Galaxy Game

24424-518: The producer's name. Roman glassmakers branded their works, with the name of Ennion appearing most prominently. One merchant that made good use of the titulus pictus was Umbricius Scaurus, a manufacturer of fish sauce (also known as garum ) in Pompeii, c.  35 CE . Mosaic patterns in the atrium of his house feature images of amphorae bearing his personal brand and quality claims. The mosaic depicts four different amphora, one at each corner of

24596-409: The product, the consumer lifestyle, and the endorser is important for the effectiveness of brand communication. Computer Space Computer Space is a space combat arcade video game released in 1971. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game . Computer Space

24768-515: The remaining stock of game console inventory to keep the company afloat while they finished development on a 16/32-bit computer system, the Atari ST . ("ST" stands for "sixteen/thirty-two", referring to the machines' 16-bit bus and 32-bit processor core.) In April 1985, they released an update to the 8-bit computer line, the Atari 65XE, the first in the Atari XE series. June 1985 saw the release of

24940-582: The sales manager for Nutting Associates in Mountain View, California. Nutting had been founded in 1966 on the basis of Computer Quiz , an analog quiz arcade game, and by 1971 was looking for another hit game. After meeting with Bushnell, Nutting felt that his game was the potential success it needed to replace falling sales of Computer Quiz updates, as quiz games were growing less popular and it did not have an engineering team that could design successful new games. Nutting not only agreed to manufacture

25112-399: The same game to different distributors, each getting an "exclusive" deal. Joe Keenan's management of the subsidiary led to his appointment as president of Atari when Kee was absorbed into the company in 1974. In 1975, Atari's Grass Valley, California subsidiary Cyan Engineering started the development of a flexible console that was capable of playing the four existing Atari games. The result

25284-454: The screen creating a flickering effect. Under Warner and Atari's chairman and CEO, Raymond Kassar , the company achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600s and computers. At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income and was the fastest-growing company in US history at the time. It ran into problems in the early 1980s. Faced with fierce competition and price wars in

25456-461: The spring of 1970, however, he saw an ad for the Data General Nova computer, which cost only US$ 4,000 (equivalent to about $ 31,000 in 2023), and thought again about his Spacewar! arcade game idea. He believed that at that price the game would be economically viable if he were able to connect four monitors and coin slots to allow multiple games to run simultaneously. He showed his office mate and fellow Ampex engineer Ted Dabney Spacewar! at

25628-553: The success of Computer Space in regards to future game ideas, as he had never before created something that made so much money, and additionally felt that his time at Nutting gave him confidence in running his own company because he "couldn't screw it up more than they did". Nutting Associates did not make any further Computer Space games before closing in 1976. Bushnell's enthusiasm was soon vindicated, as Atari's first game, Pong , went on to substantially greater success than Computer Space . Although not as influential as Pong , as

25800-429: The successful Pong (1972) as their next arcade game. Computer Space ' s release marked the ending of the early history of video games and the start of the commercial video game industry . At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers and technicians with access to computers, primarily at research institutions and large companies. One of these games

25972-536: The systems crowdfunding campaign. Atari urged the backers to give feedback on the system so that the company could make changes to improve the product on its official launch. The consoles only ship to North America , Australia , and New Zealand . In 2020, Atari launched its decentralized cryptocurrency Atari Token in equal partnership with the ICICB Group. Atari Group announced in March 2020 that it granted ICICB

26144-418: The toy company Hasbro , acquired all Atari Corporation–related properties from JTS, as part of a subsidiary which it then renamed to Atari Interactive. Meanwhile, Atari Games was acquired by Midway Games in 1996, and effectively retired the Atari name on arcades by 2000 to avoid public confusion with Hasbro's Atari home releases. Infogrames Entertainment (IESA) – precursor of the present-day Atari SA – became

26316-460: The transputer line failed to achieve commercial success. In 1989, Atari released the Atari Lynx , the first ever handheld console with a color display and a backlit screen, to much fanfare. A shortage of parts kept the system from being released nationwide for the 1989 Christmas season, and the Lynx lost market share to Nintendo's Game Boy , which, despite only having a black and white display,

26488-476: The trend. By the early 1900s, trade press publications, advertising agencies , and advertising experts began producing books and pamphlets exhorting manufacturers to bypass retailers and to advertise directly to consumers with strongly branded messages. Around 1900, advertising guru James Walter Thompson published a housing advertisement explaining trademark advertising. This was an early commercial explanation of what scholars now recognize as modern branding and

26660-418: The way for its acquisition from IESA. Atari had significant financial issues for several years prior, with losses in the tens of millions since 2005. In May 2009, Infogrames Entertainment SA, the parent company of Atari, and Atari Interactive, announced it would change its name to Atari SA. In April 2010, Atari SA board member and former CEO David Gardner resigned. Original Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell joined

26832-400: The way in which consumers had started to develop relationships with their brands in a social/psychological/anthropological sense. Advertisers began to use motivational research and consumer research to gather insights into consumer purchasing. Strong branded campaigns for Chrysler and Exxon /Esso, using insights drawn from research into psychology and cultural anthropology , led to some of

27004-406: The whole game's computing systems would be much lower. As a result, they would not need to have multiple instances of the game running on the same machine in order to be profitable. On the other hand, the custom hardware was not as powerful as the more expensive Nova computer, which meant that the pair needed to make gameplay modifications. Spacewar! was a two-player game featuring dogfights around

27176-511: The world's first commercially available arcade video game, for Nutting Associates. On June 27, 1972, the two incorporated Atari, Inc. and soon hired Al Alcorn as their first design engineer. Bushnell asked Alcorn to produce an arcade version of the Magnavox Odyssey 's Tennis game, which would be named Pong . Before Atari's incorporation, Bushnell considered various terms from the game Go , eventually choosing atari , referencing

27348-417: The world's oldest in continuous use. A characteristic feature of 19th-century mass-marketing was the widespread use of branding, originating with the advent of packaged goods . Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap , from local communities to centralized factories . When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or company insignia on

27520-566: Was Spacewar! , created in 1962 for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 by Steve Russell and others in the programming community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . This two-player game has the players engage in a dogfight between two spaceships while maneuvering on a two-dimensional plane in the gravity well of a star, set against the backdrop of a starfield. The game

27692-399: Was a commercial success, making over US$ 1,000,000 (equivalent to about $ 7,284,000 in 2023), it was a disappointment to Nutting, which had been hoping for a large-scale success like Computer Quiz . The game's relative lack of success was attributed to the complexity of its controls and a steep learning curve , which pushed away customers used to less complex games. Bushnell noted that

27864-443: Was a little too complicated for the guy with the beer in the bar ." Bushnell has also stated that part of the difficulty lay in the novelty of the game; he said that even a few years later the controls and gameplay would have been more understandable to players who would have seen other video games by then. Conversely, Bushnell and Dabney have said that the game's novelty was also part of its appeal to players—most people had never seen

28036-466: Was cheaper, had better battery life and had much higher availability. Tramiel emphasized computers over game consoles, but Atari's proprietary computer architecture and operating system fell victim to the success of the Wintel platform while the game market revived. In 1989, Atari Corp. sued Nintendo for $ 250 million, alleging it had an illegal monopoly. Atari eventually lost the case when it was rejected by

28208-607: Was copied to several of the early computer installations in American academic institutions after its initial release, making it probably the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. Spacewar! was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time, later migrating to early microcomputer systems. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of Spacewar! blossoms spontaneously wherever there

28380-418: Was either uncompleted or unused. Bushnell and Dabney did not work further on the game, and it was not a large success. Although the biggest successes in arcade games at the time generally spawned a dozen copycat games, only a single Computer Space clone is known, produced in 1972 by For-Play Manufacturers as Star Trek . A custom white Computer Space cabinet appeared in the 1973 film Soylent Green as

28552-516: Was heartened by the response and rushed to make several finished cabinets for the Music Operators of America (MOA) Music & Amusement Machines Exposition in October. Further location tests found a less enthusiastic response from customers confused by the game mechanics and controls, and Syzygy hurriedly adjusted the game's instructions to try to be more understandable to players. The final Computer Space design uses no microprocessor ;

28724-404: Was not using an innovative solution Syzygy had missed to build an economically-competitive arcade game. Pitts and Tuck, conversely, felt that Computer Space was a pale imitation of Spacewar! , while Galaxy Game was a superior adaptation of the game. They eventually produced two game prototypes, both displayed in the Stanford student union building, but never produced the game commercially due to

28896-411: Was released, promoting a new product; and the following week Chesnais confirmed the company was developing a new game console – the hardware was stated to be based on PC technology, and still under development. In mid July 2017 an Atari press release confirmed the existence of the aforementioned new hardware, referred to as the "Ataribox". The box design was derived from early Atari designs (e.g. 2600) with

29068-402: Was renamed Atari Games Corporation . Atari Games retained most of the same employees and managers from the coin-operated games division and continued many of the divisions projects from before the transition. In 1985, a controlling interest in the coin-operated games division was sold to Namco , which also took the Atari Games name. Warner renamed Atari Games to Atari Holdings, which continued as

29240-539: Was running on the laboratory's PDP-6 , and played the game against him there when visiting. Bushnell had previously worked during the summer at Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah as a manager of the games department overseeing the arcade games, and when he saw Spacewar! he believed that an arcade game version of the game would be very popular. The high price of computers capable of running the game, however, meant that any such arcade game would not be economically feasible. In

29412-669: Was the Atari Video Computer System , or VCS (later renamed 2600 when the 5200 was released). The introductory price of $ 199 (equivalent to $ 1,066 in 2023) included a console, two joysticks, a pair of paddles, and the Combat game cartridge. Bushnell knew he had another potential hit on his hands but bringing the machine to market would be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for $ 28 million. Nolan continued to have disagreements with Warner Management over

29584-435: Was the brand name. With the rise of mass media in the early 20th century, companies adopted techniques that allowed their messages to stand out. Slogans , mascots , and jingles began to appear on radio in the 1920s and in early television in the 1930s . Soap manufacturers sponsored many of the earliest radio drama series, and the genre became known as soap opera . By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize

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