The company had put together a decent line-up of launch games, but interest soon waned in the console, mainly due to its oddball design, its lack of third-party support, and its lack of interest from its core audience. The system first arrived in 2012, with a game unit combined with a tablet-like controller. prev nextįor a company that had produced a number of hot-selling consoles, the Wii U was a surprising failure for Nintendo. was a lackluster effort, it was pretty stunning that someone could put it together within just over a month's time. Atari was sold and divided just a year later, but would eventually return to the industry to make new products, like the Atari Jaguar.īut, again, Warshaw wasn't to blame, and while E.T. As a result, some corners were cut, and the game wasn't nearly as fleshed out as they could have been.Īnd Atari paid a record amount of money for the license, around $25 million, so it was putting a lot of hope into the game, even though it only managed to sell 1.5 million copies. So what went wrong? Well, first of all, Howard Scott Warshaw was given very little time to get the game put together – a mere five weeks. is (incorrectly) blamed for causing the downfall of the video game industry in 1983, though oversaturation is truly to blame. Alas, it did the opposite, and it actually led the company to bury copies in the New Mexico desert, amongst other assets. for Atari 2600 was produced in record numbers, with the company hoping it would send copies flying off the shelves with the hype from the film. Perhaps the most notable of the bunch, Atari's adaptation of E.T.