Games
Initially, at least a half-dozen ECS-supporting software titles were slated to roll out along with the ECS, with more to follow. Unfortunately, as noted above, by the time the ECS made its retail debut in 1983 a new management team had taken over at Mattel Electronics which was no longer interested in selling or promoting hardware add-ons, which they viewed as money-losers that had tied up too much of the company's capital for too little return. (Perhaps not without some justification, given the history of the long-delayed, never-released Keyboard Component and the lower-than-expected sales of the Intellivoice module.) The Marketing and Applications departments were also not particularly enthusiastic about the ECS unit, since it really didn't add any revolutionary features to the system and it was a struggle to come up with game ideas that would justify requiring the user to have one.
As a result, the ECS was not well-promoted, and few of the planned software titles were released before Richard Chang's "Design & Development" group was closed down in August 1983, effectively halting further work on ECS-supporting titles. A very few titles that were already well in progress were eventually completed, but none of them made it to production before Mattel Electronics ceased operations in January 1984.
Read more about this topic: Entertainment Computer System
Famous quotes containing the word games:
“Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“In 1600 the specialization of games and pastimes did not extend beyond infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults. . . . Conversely, adults used to play games which today only children play.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)