Nolan Bushnell Quotes

102 Nolan Bushnell Quotes

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We all like to exercise but exercise is boring… so if we could spice it up a little bit.
Nolan Bushnell

Keep playing, have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously, and love the web.
Nolan Bushnell

[On employing Steve Jobs] You could always figure out a way to make room for smart people.
Nolan Bushnell

[More on Steve Job’s body odor issues whilst working at Atari] We decided to have a night shift in engineering. He was the only one in it.
Nolan Bushnell

Breakout was the game that launched Nintendo. They unmercifully copied it and released it in Japan.
Nolan Bushnell

[On the Atari 2600] The cartridges we could build for about three bucks and we could sell them at retail for about twenty. That’s a nice margin… But it was basically obsolete the day we shipped it.
Nolan Bushnell

When we launched the [Atari] 2600 we thought we could build twenty games… I actually made a huge mistake on launch. The mistake was that we had nine cartridges ready to go and we thought that the average uptake of the units would be about three cartridges per player. But it turned out that when we shipped it every player that we sold everybody bought every cartridge we had available. And so we had half of the units out in the market with no cartridges other than the one that was built into it… That decision cost us about $20 million dollars in margin. Big, big mistake.
Nolan Bushnell

I'm a businessman and I took the attitude that if I can license something for less than what it would cost to litigate, why not do it.
Nolan Bushnell

I left the company in 1978, and I really had massive, massive disagreements with how Warner was running the company. I really saw that they were going to totally screw it up. The only thing that I was wrong about is that it took them two years longer than I thought it would.
Nolan Bushnell

[On his biggest regret] Selling Atari when I did - I think that's my biggest regret. And I probably should have gotten back heavily into the games business in the late Eighties. But I was operating under this theory at the time that the way to have an interesting life was to reinvent yourself every five or six years.
Nolan Bushnell



[On Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak] The two Steves were young and excited, but I was not convinced that they were ready for the bruising business world.
Nolan Bushnell

I hate to lose.
Nolan Bushnell

I like games where you can use stealth and guile. As you get older, it's like the difference between playing squash and racketball. Squash is an older man's game, because if you're stealthy and wily, you can beat a better-co-ordinated and stronger, younger person.
Nolan Bushnell

Giving prizes is a good way for our sponsors to reach the kind of people that they want to sell their products to.
Nolan Bushnell

Phil Harrison is a very smart man, and he knows the games business. I really hope he can put some of the lustre back on it.
Nolan Bushnell

[On the current incarnation of Atari in 2009] I believe Atari should stand for technical innovation, and doing things a little differently - and I hope that's the direction they take.
Nolan Bushnell

[In 2007] You really have to cross your T's and dot your I's long before you ever start on the project. I don't think people perceive that about me. I work hard.
Nolan Bushnell

[On his first impressions of Steve Jobs] Brilliant, curious, aggressive.
Nolan Bushnell

Fundamentally, you can't alter history.
Nolan Bushnell

The fun thing about business is that it's never static.
Nolan Bushnell



Any business that does not innovate will fail over time.
Nolan Bushnell

I don't think people understand how much hard work innovation is.
Nolan Bushnell



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