Atari's Annual Shareholders Meeting (Jun.26,1993)
From: Atari SIG (xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Date: 02/19/94-08:18:31 PM Z
From: xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Atari SIG)
Subject: Atari's Annual Shareholders Meeting (Jun.26,1993)
Date: Sat Feb 19 20:18:31 1994
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:: Volume 2 - Issue 11 ATARI EXPLORER ONLINE 26 June 1993 ::
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//// ATARI'S ANNUAL SHAREHOLDERS MEETING
Atari Corporation hosted their annual shareholders meeting on Friday,
June 25th at the corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale. The routine
business of the corporation was handled in a perfunctory fashion, with
the board of directors being re-elected for another term. A proposal
that the board of directors had recommended to do a 10:1 reverse stock
split was rebuffed. The board reversed their position on the issue,
due to the increases in the price of the stock over the last few
weeks. There was a limited amount of discussion by the shareholders
about the reversal of position by the board. Clearly, there was no
dissension during the discussion. The meeting was run by Atari Corp.
CEO Sam Tramiel, with the entire board of directors present, including
Jack Tramiel.
On display for the shareholders were a number of Lynx machines in a
tower style Lynx kiosk, two Atari Falcon030s, and a Jaguar Development
system! After the formal portions of the meeting, Atari conducted an
informal discussion time of questions and answers hosted by Sam
Tramiel. Sam showed the shareholders the futuristic style Jaguar case
housing, and discussed the system in detail with the shareholders.
John Skrutch provided demonstrations of game titles under development,
including Side Shooter, Space Pirates and Cybermorph. The titles were
loaded off of various media, including CD-ROM from Jaguar develop
systems that included a TT030, 386DX II PC machine, and a Jaguar
development system. The Jaguar's 24 bit color, real time morphing, and
full shading effects were stunning!!
During the question and answer session, Sam Tramiel declined to name
sales projections for the Jaguar, preferring to only re-iterate that
the machine will be sold in New York and San Francisco beginning this
October. Atari plans to support the machine heavily with television
advertising, and expects all major retailers to place orders for the
Jaguar. Plans call for Atari to have five titles ready to ship with
the Jaguar, plus third party development titles. Sam projected that
the fourth quarter would be "a wash" for shareholders. Although Atari
expects terrific sales for the Jaguar, the heavy promotional costs
will offset those profits. However, Atari expects the Jaguar to power
a terrific 1994!
Sam was asked about plans for the Lynx, and he indicated that most
sales in the home entertainment market are for the console based
units. As the Jaguar commercials start to run, Atari plans on
including Lynx promotional information along with the Jaguar, in much
the same fashion as Sega promotes the Genesis and then tags Game Gear
at the end of the commercial. When asked about the Atari Falcon030,
Sam indicated that the computer business is still very tough,
dominated by MS-DOS clones. The on-going price wars in the computer
business make it difficult to be profitable in that business. Atari is
committed to the computer business though, and Sam clearly indicated
that there would be successors to the Atari Falcon030.
The Jaguar comes with two megabytes of RAM, a 64 bit custom RISC
processor, and a full 64 bit bus. The DSP chip is not a Motorola DSP
as in the Falcon030, but rather a Atari custom DSP chip that is a
subset of the RISC processor. There is a cartridge slot on top of the
Jaguar case, which will also serve as a connection point for the
Jaguar CD ROM unit, which will in turn have a cartridge port for
"piggy backing" cartridges into it. Several shareholders commented on
the capabilities of the Jaguar that appear to exceed what many
computers have, and Sam stated that consideration was being given to
creating a Jaguar PC card as well as using Jaguar technology in future
Atari Computers like the Falcon.
A shareholder asked about the "made in America" statement in the
Jaguar press release. Since Atari doesn't own its own manufacturing
facilities, who will be making the Jaguar for them? Sam replied that
there would be an announcement made next week as to the manufacturer
of the Jaguar. After the meeting the one manufacturer that was heard
mentioned was IBM!!!
At the conclusion of the informal time, Sam invited shareholders to
remain to take a look at the Jaguar, Falcon030, and Lynx products.
Shareholders were also able to chat with important Atari staffers like
Richard Miller, John Skrutch, Leonard Tramiel and others about the
Jaguar. Many shareholders took the opportunity to put the Jaguar
through its paces on various game titles under the watchful eye of
Atari staff.
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