If you're looking for the point that Atari
died, it would be the acquisition of Federated
I was a software engineer at Atari then. We were all pretty mystified about why Jack wanted to buy a retailer. (Jack also tried to turn engineers into salespeople for a while, having us "adopt" stores and try to sell computers there. That did not go well).
I have the feeling that Jack, Sam and Gary Tramiel really only understood the art of the slightly crooked deal; that's how they saw the business world. Secondarily, they understood computer hardware, because a lot of that world involved striking deals with suppliers, and that was the level they were happy working in.
The world of software was largely opaque to them, and they never really invested much in it, and never understood how to run long-term and larger scale projects. Ultimately that marginalized them and they lost to competition (Windows / Mac) that did understand software.
I have the feeling that Jack, Sam and Gary Tramiel really only understood the art of the slightly crooked deal; that's how they saw the business world. Secondarily, they understood computer hardware, because a lot of that world involved striking deals with suppliers, and that was the level they were happy working in.
The world of software was largely opaque to them, and they never really invested much in it, and never understood how to run long-term and larger scale projects. Ultimately that marginalized them and they lost to competition (Windows / Mac) that did understand software.