Atari 520STM: To help you destroy the aliens, we've massacred the price The Atari 520STM was fundamentally the same machine as the previous ST model, except that it came with a built-in TV modulator and had its OS and GEM graphics manager supplied in ROM. The "special offer" retail price of £450 (around [[450|1987]] in [[now]]) included the external floppy drive and mouse, together with the word-processor package "1st Word". The use of a TV via a modulator as a monitor - without a TV licence - got a boost within a year of the STM's launch when the UK's Home Office clarified its position on the issue, stating that "If a television set is used solely as a monitor in conjunction with a home computer or video game machine, a [TV] licence is not required". That was as long as anyone visited by the TV detector van could provide that they hadn't received broadcast television on it[source: "Ruling on TVs used as monitors", POCW, 28th August 1987, p. 6]. [extra: jeff_minter_yourcomp_1987_12-m.webp|Jeff "yak" Minter, © YC December 1987|180]The STM had been launched in the UK at the first Atari Computer Show at the Novotel in London, along with Atari's return to games consoles in the shape of the £70 7800. Also there was software legend Jeff Minter, once a Commodore stalwart until switching sides upon the advent of the original ST, who was there to show off his recent creation - a software lightshow called Colourspace[source: "Minter takes on first Atari show", POCW, 13th March 1986, p. 4]. However, within a year of its launch, the STM's future was already in doubt thanks to the release of the STFM ("ST, Floppy, Modulator), which with a planned price cut in September 1987 to £299 would take it to the same price as the non-floppy STM. [picture: yak_commhoriz_dec85.webp|An advert for Yak's Progress - a collection featuring eight of Minter's ruminant-themed games, including Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time, and a version of Colourspace for the BBC Micro. From Commodore Horizons, December 1985] At this point it was thought that 45,000 STs had been sold in the UK, but this was set to increase with the signing of High-Street retailers Dixons and Comet[source: "Atari 520STFM: price cut planned for September", POCW, 17th July 1987, p. 11]. This move came quite some time after Atari had announced that it was opening up its distribution to include mass market outlets in the US. This particular move, in the spring of 1986, would however leave its previous speciality computer shops with the new 1040ST, whilst the 130ST and the 800XL were quietly dropped. Also announced was the fact that Atari had sold over one million video game systems in 1985, and that it was resurrecting its plans for the 7800 - an Atari 800 in a different box - with an expected retail price of only $80. The venerable 2600 was due to be updated with a more compact form-factor, and the company reckoned that it still had "several good years of life" left in it[source: Atari back in gear, Yankee Doodles, David Ahl, PCW< April 1986, p. 86]. There were however worrying signs of complacency, as whilst the ST appeared to be taking over the world, it was also said that the company was in something of a deep sleep, especially when it came to its relations with software developers. Commodore had been having severe financial problems, which led to it negotiating a $150 million overdraft in order to stay afloat. This contributed to the company failing to invest money in developing and selling its Amiga, and helped give Atari a head start. However, Guy Kewney, writing in May 1986's PCW, sugested that Atari had "solved" many of Commodore's problems, not through money, but by ducking them. he wrote: ~"The machine wasn't ready, so they shipped incomplete STs. The software was in pre-Beta release versions, but they shipped it anyway. And when you opened the box, you found that things that were supposedly included in the price (like BASIC) weren't there. If you asked Atari why not, it just lied. Atari said it was there, honestly". This created enemies among software developers, with the situation leading to Sig Hartmann - Atari's head of software and formerly at Commodore - having to apologise to assembled programmers at the Atari Show in London earlier in 1986, saying: ~"We'll try to improve communications with you, and we thank you for your patience". Lack of early machines had led to programmers in the US developing on Apple's Macintosh - a "difficult beast to control" - whilst those in the UK had been practicing on Sinclair's QL. Both these machines used similar CPUs to the ST, but the QL was much cheaper and more accessible. The head-start meant that there were lots of UK software houses on the Atari stand for 1985's PCW show, but by early 1986 Atari was suggesting that the proportion of US-written software far outweighed the UK stuff. This seems to have boiled down to the lack of support from Atari in the UK for its developers, with one UK programmer saying: ~"Our program is out, but we couldn't have done it through the UK support people, because there weren't any. We had a direct-line number of a systems writer in Sunnyvale, California[source: Atari in a deep sleep, Newsprint, PCW, May 1986, p. 78]". Towards the end of 1986 it had been rumoured that Atari's Jack Tramiel wanted to buy back his old company - Commodore - in order to secure access to the Amiga's follow-up chips, then currently in development. Atari already had an active lawsuit attempting to establish that the Amiga's chips belonged to it, a position based on the fact that Atari (before Tramiel) had invested £500,000 in Hi-Toro, the company founded by former Atari employee and chip developer Jay Miner, in order to help it develop the chips for their new "Lorraine" machine - chips which Atari was interested in. The "Lorraine" machine would become the Amiga but the company needed more investment to bring it to market. This investment was supplied when Commodore unexpectedly bought the company, whereupon it almost immediately cancelled all existing contracts, included the one with Atari. The worry, for Amiga fans at least, was that if Tramiel managed to oust Irving Gould, the enigmatic Canadian financier behind Commodore who toppled Tramiel in a boardroom coup, and buy back Commodore, he would kill off the Amiga and put the new chips in the Atari ST instead[source: "Taking the wraps off the Ammiga 2500", PCW, January 1987, p. 112]. The 520STM had been around since the summer of 1986, where it was on special offer during June and July in four "cost-cutting bundles", for example with a disk drive down from £548 to £499 ([[499|1986]] in [[now]]) or with a monochrome monitor at £699 ([[699|1986]]) down from £846. Atari UK's marketing manager Rob Harding said of the deals, somewhat uninspiringly, that "the packages would appeal to a broad base of users"[source: "Atari special offer on 520", POCW, 19th June 1986, p. 4]. There were continuing rumours of prices cuts from the beginning of 1987, although perhaps not quite down to the £199 price point that some pundits were suggesting. Atari UK Managing Director Bob Gleadow was denying such drastic cuts, but did point to competition from Amstrad as a reason for a price trim, saying that the Brentford Boys had "created a price perception at £399"[source: "Atari boss talks about the new micros", POCW, 1st January 1987, p. 4].