Atari's 1200XL should have been a success of the 8-bit home computing era: modern, compact, designed to compete with the breakout Commodore 64, and good-looking to boot. But it was a fiasco, writes Paul Lefebvre, due to poor compatibility with Atari 400/800 software and a high price tag. Most interesting, though, was what might be described as a reverse Osborne effect: the existence of the 1200XL made older models more attractive.
The introduction of the 1200XL caused sales of the [Atari] 800 to increase as by then it was selling for much less than the 1200XL and worked with all the currently available software and peripherals. … In what was becoming a pattern for Atari, the 1200XL was discontinued in June 1983 about six months after it was introduced (the Atari 5200 console from 1982 was also discontinued rather quickly). To replace it, the 800XL and 600XL computers were announced at CES. These computers were much more reasonably priced, had built-in BASIC and became the most successful Atari 8-bit computers.
I'm fascinated by that peculiar moment in the home computer industry where manufacturers were trying to dial-in the perfect 8-bit system to compete with the C64. Atari and Commodore moved quickly to launch 16-bit machines, but were famously bad at marketing those newer models and it's no wonder Wintel and Apple carved them up by the early 90s. The more you learn about key limitations of 8-bit processors the more you can see why it was a technological tar pit—and the more you can play "fantasy system." (Every game ends with the Motorola 68000; reality bites)
The photo above, from Steve's, shows how good-lookin' those late Atari 8-bits were (compare to the bland beigeness of the 16-bit ST). Perhaps the custodians of the Atari marque can add a smaller one at the top to go with all its other retrogaming oddities.
