Trade In Cart
0|$0.00
> Classic Systems  
RCA Studio 2
 

RCA Studio 2
RCA executives had been kicking themselves ever since they let Ralph Baer's system slip through their fingers and into the hands of Magnavox. Because of this, RCA was busy trying to catch up with the video game console explosion of the late seventies.

The RCA Studio II was styled very much after the Pong units of the time, with one glaring exception; it had a cartridge port similar to the Fairchild Channel F. Another less important difference was that the Studio II had numeric keypads for controllers instead of the paddles that were standard among the Pong games of the era.

Both the RCA Studio II and Fairchild Channel F were doomed to failure because of the looming presence of the Second Generation Atari VCS/2600 on the horizon.



JT August  starsabre@att.net  on Sunday, March 5, 2000 at 20:37:47 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
The RCA Studio II failure was more self induced than to blame on Atari.  The system had many limitations that made it ineffective as a competitor against Atari.  The numeric keypad controllers were key.  They were clumsy and awkard to use.  Also, RCA had its own baggage that hindered the system.  Atari was still struggling with Distribution, while the Studio II was simply added to the well established RCA distribution flow. Atari recognized that to gain market share, they had to advertise aggressively, and did so.  RCA did very little advertising, thinking that the unit's presence in RCA retailers would be pretty much sufficient.  Atari was aggresively developing games, and had over 20 carts by the first Christmas, whereas RCA ultimately developed only seven total, and none of the games were particularly impressive. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------