I think the Wii by Nintendo is getting games that once again are fun for people who don’t want to make a career out of figuring out how to run a 47-button controller... I think that the business right now should be much, much bigger than it is. If it were evenly spread over all demographics and age groups, it'd be huge. But it’s not. It's basically an 18 to 28 year-old male dominated business of about 15 million. That’s where most of the traffic is. Casual games on the net add to that, but they're all network-based.

Wait, wait, wait. Back up, Bushnell! A 47-button controller? Oh man, would we love to see that! (Playing it, well, that's another matter.)

Bushnell Interview [Next-Gen]

And Bushnell estimated the number of games he'd be able to serve through uWink at 600 trillion games across 100,000 restaurants Ambitious - but hey, it's Nolan Bushnell, right?

When we covered Bushnell's recent talk at Wedbush Morgan's annual management access conference, we heard him say that he misses the idea of gaming as a social activity, since the decline of arcades, and that part of what he hopes to do with uWink is to revive that group spirit and keep multiplayer that's actually in-person alive.

In the GameDaily interview, he cited an example - Pong used to be a hot tool for chicks to pick up guys at bars?

"What's the essence of that game experience?" Bushnell asks, pausing before answering his own question. "The essence of that game experience is the social experience."

And there's a precedent for such things. "Pong was highly social," he reminds us. Bushnell recalls the early days when the game was introduced to bars. "It was okay for a woman to pull a guy off the bar stool to come and play with her, because it was only a two player game. And so it was like a constant girl's choice in a bar. And it was right at the point of women's liberation...and the number of people who said they've met their husband or wife playing Pong over the years, you know, I bet over a thousand people have said that."

Interview: Nolan Bushnell's 600 Trillion Games [GameDaily]

In an interview with Multiplayer, Bushnell said that the writers Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman really seemed to get what Atari stood for and that despite the numerous pitches for similar stories, this was the first he's backed.

“There’s been a lot of books [about Atari],” he said. “Some correct, some incorrect. I’ve kind of gotten used to being portrayed by others. I kind of thought that this [a movie] might happen. I kind of thought that it wouldn’t happen until maybe after I was in the ground for a little while. [laughs]”

Hit up Multiplayer for the full interview with Bushnell and his thoughts on previous brushes with Hollywood fame.

Atari Founder ‘Thrilled’ To Be Played By Leonardo DiCaprio, Talks ‘Atari’ Movie [Multiplayer]

The Hollywood Reporter describes "Atari" as drawing on themes of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." I was hoping it'd be a movie adaptation of "Space War" — just two ships drifting to the center of the screen, shooting each other. Maybe a love interest. Somewhere. Maybe not.

Wherever the story ends up, it sounds like it's getting very serious treatment, and the outlook sounds favorable for a well made biography. Plus I love period pieces, even if I've lived in the period described.

Leonardo Di Caprio to Star in 'Atari' [The Hollywood Reporter, via ComingSoon.net, thanks reader D Elfman]

In addition to founding Atari, Bushnell also founded Chuck-e-Cheese's, and now he's into social gaming. His current project is UWink, a social gaming-focused restaurant chain with touch screen consoles at every table where users can not only order food and drink, but also play games together. UWink is set to open its second restaurant in Hollywood soon.

"Social games aren't sitting in boxer shorts in your basement," Bushnell said. "It's being out, having fun, being able to hi-five people around the table, and it's a bridge between traditional board games, which are highly social experiences in the home, and a video game. The idea is to create games in which the conversations among the people are as important as the gameplay itself."

One more thing on Bushnell's list of current projects? "Think of the holodeck come true," he said:

"It's an immersive game - totally revolutionary, totally new."

Lastly, Bushnell had plenty to add in a panel discussion that focused on the broadening casual and non-traditional game market. He sits on the board of NeoEdge, a tech company that enables advertisers to deliver 30-second spots in that casual gaming arena. And he thinks the industry has only begun scratching the surface as far as the amount of revenue available from advertising:

"People in the U.S. watch about 28, 27 hours of television per week, and they play about 7-8 hours of games per week. On a parity basis, that says there should be somewhere between 25 and 30 billion dollars of ads available for the game business... [but there's] less than a billion now," he said.

"We think there's a massive opportunity to get rid of that inefficiency with a lot more ad-supported gameplay... and not only should we be getting more revenue on a per game basis, but the gameplay should be significantly more valuable to an advertiser."

Also on the panel were Kathy Vrabeck, president of Casual Entertainment for Electronic Arts; John Koller, senior marketing manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America; Doug Clemmer, president of Valusoft & THQ Wireless, and WildTangent founder and chairman Alex St. John - and among other things, the panelists all agreed that greater ad support in games could accelerate the growth of digital distribution, free-to-play games, and ultimately, the death of that $60 retail box.

I don't believe those kinds of ads are very effective.

But In our research for a new book about the Atari VCS, Nick Montfort and I discovered that Death Race is in fact not the first film adaptation in games. That honor goes to none other than Shark Jaws, by Atari.

According to our sources, Nolan Bushnell tried to license Jaws for use in a videogame, but failed. Eager to take advantage of the shark fear hype after the release of Steven Spielberg's popular film, Atari decided to make the game anyway. As the flyer reads, "now you and your locations can cash in on the popularity, interest and profits associated with sharks."

The game is pretty simple. The player controls a diver trying to catch a fish while avoiding a shark. Graphics are raster, and black and white.

Like Death Race, this too was an unofficial game, and in that sense it's not quite right to use the word "license" — and Atari cleverly played up the illegitimate Jaws affiliation by making "JAWS" appear in huge letters on the cabinet, with "shark" in much smaller type beside it. In fact, Atari was so concerned about possible recourse that Bushnell created a whole other company, dubbed Horror Games, to market and sell the game. Ever the clever trickster, that Bushnell. And how times have changed.

Shark Jaws [Arcade Flyers]

I had to come up with a game people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk in a bar could play.

Bushnell clarifies his stance on innovation later, claiming that too much of what's published today is "just bigger, faster, better."

Nolan saves the real venom for the Grand Theft Auto series, saying that it "values antisocial behavior" and the particular title at which he heaps his most scorn.

Fortunately, the uWink business man doesn't loathe all games. He praises games like Dance Dance Revolution, Tetris, Guitar Hero and Spore, alongside the Wii, as beacons of innovation. He may be cranky, but he may also have a point on some counts.

Kill the Editors! [GameTap]

Nolan Bushnell hits Game Head to talk UWink, Atari and the current state of the industry. My favorite part: When he smack talks Ralph H. Baer, saying the man behind the first Pong, light gun and Simon wasn't very good at invention and that "nobody uses his stuff."

Wow, get a couple of Rasberry Mojitos in Bushnell and he starts talking the shit. Brian Crecente

I think Sony shot themselves in the foot... there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base. They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live... a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don't buy hardware, they buy software.

Atari Founder Likes Xbox360, Disses PS3 [Red Herring]

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell's latest restaurant uWink opened yesterday in Woodland Hills, California. Bushnell's previous restaurant Chuck E. Cheese was centered around arcade games, pizza and animatronic animals. His latest is geared more towards casual games and booze. There's food, too, but the key here is booze. The restaurant has a nice big bar, stocked with various types of alcohol. The drink menu comes via touch screen, so go ahead and order that 11th Tom Collins. You'll get no sass from the touch screen!

Kotaku reader Matthew was on hand at uWink's opening and sent us a review (after the jump) and a smattering of pictures (also after the jump). Brian Ashcraft

The restaurant was pretty neat very nice staff and atmosphere. It wasn't a terrible location (except it's in one the crappiest malls in the Valley). On the interactive and gaming side there's a touch screen where you order everything and play games while u wait.

The touch screen is pretty responsive except that some of the games require fast response time and it didn't really allow for that. Otherwise you can play something of the equivelant of fancy cell phone games with other members of your party such as the Amazing Trivia Game and a game called Shootout where you toss a basketball. Or you can play by yourself.

All the prices of food are clearly displayed as well as there nutritional value. The only real problem my friend and I had was that when we ordered a "build it yourself burger," the prices of the extra stuff such as bacon and cheese was not tallied, but did show up on the bill. So we disputed it saying that it [the touch screen] never told us, and we got a burger taken off the bill. Everything else went pretty smoothly.

Some stuff was non-operational such as certain games or incorrect pictures as it was there first day so I don't hold it against them. Oh, and they give you RFID cards to order your food with. You just swipe it on the side of your console, and it will split the bill for you. Also, the checkout function didn't work so we had to go up to the front desk and have human interaction that sort of ruined the whole experience. But other than that I would go back again.

Oh, and one more thing: They said they were gonna have something else outside. So I guess that wasn't finished either. The pics with those white orb things on the table—that's supposed to be for some sort of projection game like the ones on the floor in malls.

Got plans for October 16th? Atari and Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell is opening his first uWink video game diner in Woodland Hills, California. Here's how it works: Customers order food or drinks via touch-screens built into their tables. The computers even make cocktail recommendations based on a personality quiz. And customers can pay to play casual video games while they eat or wait for their food. Sound kinda cool, but totally missing an animatronic band. Brian Ashcraft

Eat at uWink Next Week [GameSetWatch]

Here's the deal with this very fashionable old-school console:

A few years ago, we were contracted to assist in the production of NEW Atari 7800 units. They were to be emblazoned with Nolan Bushnell's signature, a large Atari logo on the front of the case, and "Signature Series" over on the right.

Unfortunately, this project never entered production, and very few of these 7800's were built. In fact, the 7800 pictured in this auction has one of the pre-production plastic housings, with the guts of a production 7800 unit inside. While new 7800 motherboards were designed (by us!) for this new product, very few of these motherboards exist, and only one board was ever populated.

Look, you have less than 2 days to snag this piece of obsessive collecting history. Auction price at time of publish was $560 so sell that kidney if you have to and get bidding! Michael McWhertor

Rare Nolan Bushnell Signature Series Atari 7800 Console

ME: "Did you check out the show?"
BUSHNELL: "No, I haven't had a chance. I just got in."
ME: "What are you interested in?"
BUSHNELL: "Some peripherals, mostly."
ME: "What do you think of the Wii's name?"
BUSHNELL: "It's horrible, but it'll work. I bet they ran into some problems with the Revolution name."
ME: "Whaddaya mean? Somebody had it?"
BUSHNELL: "Yeah, probably. That's what I think. The name 'Revolution' is too good."

In a recent interview, Silent Hill scribe Roger Avary gushes, we mean gushes about gaming. He says,

I've long been a Silent Hill fan — since the PS1 days. I've been gaming since the 70's, when I built my first computer, a Rockwell KIM-1. My first program was a modification of Wumpus, which I had seen on mainframes at Hughes Aircraft. It was machine coded with a hex keypad, and an LED readout. No storage, when you turned it off your program vanished. Before this time I was privy to be one of the first people to play the original Pong at the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park, which had begun my love affair with videogames. Nolan Bushnell, the inventor of Pong, has long been one of my heroes...right up there alongside Kubrick. It was my love affair with the Atari 800 that nearly diverted me from my future as a film maker. But the fact of the matter is that there's less math in film, and I'm kind of a people person...so I followed cinema. Little did I know that the two worlds would converge for me. I love movies, but I also love videogames. I collect and restore vintage Atari XY monitor games like Lunar Lander and Battlezone — only vector, only Atari. I also have a massive collection of Atari computers. Gaming is in my blood — so it's only natural for me to adapt games into films and vice versa.

...and...

I hope the fans love it. I have been a little concerned with the build up. I mean, some people make it seem like the future of game to film adaptations rests on the success of Silent Hill. When there's so much expectation to nail something that so many hold beloved — well, you can imagine the anxiety. I'd like the movie to be judged by the fans as a movie. Cinema is a passive experience, and the interactivity of a game is an entirely different experience, with its own strengths and weaknesses. The gamers need to remember that they give up control in a movie theater, "we control the vertical..."

Holy mackerel! If the film is half good (and the film is not butchered by studio bigwigs), Roger's our boy. Kick Uwe Boll from his throne of clay and tell the gaming gods, we've found a new king. Avary is currently adapting a video game for himself to direct. "It's for Atari," says the writer/director. We're hip just as long as Marc Ecko is not involved.

Full Interview Here [FiringSquad]

Atari founder and Gaming's Grandfather, Nolan Bushnell, has found a location for the first uWink Bistro. At the techy restaurant, food and drinks will be ordered via touch screen and games played at each table. The fare will include pizza, burgers and shakes.

The uWink Bistro will be located in the Westfield Promenade in Woodland Hills, California. "For almost a year, we have been searching for the right location for our initial uWink Bistro," said Bushnell. "We are thrilled that we have finally found this site: the demographics, the space and the pre-existing kitchen are all in line with our business model."

Last year in Kyoto, I heard Bushnell speak about the uWink Bistro. The idea sounded intriguing, and it should be interesting to see if how his restaurant will be received. I can't help but think Chuck E. Cheese for adults — minus the animatronic rodent.

Full Release [Business Wire]

Bushnell, the founder of Atari, said there were 44 million gamers in the United States in 1982 during the height of the Atari craze, but now there are only 18 million. He didn't cite his sources for those figures, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he did his research right.

Where did all these customers go? Bushnell said he thinks most were driven away by the "complexity" of modern games and women were turned off to all the violence. He even slammed the PS2 controller for being "scary" with all the inscrutable triangles, squares and circles.

I think he's right. I think there's something seriously wrong with the video game industry. It's so obsessed with its own young hipster propaganda that it's turning away anyone who isn't youthful or a hipster. You don't need an MBA from Stanford to figure out that's a stupid business strategy.

This attitude is pervasive in the industry. When I was working at Yahoo Games, I was astounded to learn that the majority of people who visited the site were older than 30 and almost half of them were women. Who are these people, demographically? Mostly folks who stay at home to take care of their kids and play casual games to pass the time, instead of watching soap operas. In other words, housewives. I thought this would be viewed as a bonanza: an audience as large as NBC's daytime who watched their computer screen without blinking for hours on end. The makers of Tide and Palmolive would kill to reach them. Instead, the advertising and marketing people at Yahoo viewed this as a disaster, a product management failure. They wanted to be associated with the handful of people who know who Tony Hawk is — ignoring the vastly larger and more captive casual game audience.

Here's a confession. Before I started working on Kotaku, I thought Nintendo was dead. I consider myself a hardcore gamer. I love first-person shooters, real-time strategy and multiplayer deathmatches. That's why my ranking of game machines has been the PC, Xbox, PlayStation and GameCube, in that order. I was sure the DS was going to be a flop, especially in comparison with the PSP. I had fallen in the same trap as the rest of the industry — it's gotta be hipper, more powerful, more edgy, more hardcore to succeed. Except things haven't turned out that way. So far, the DS is more than holding its own. The objective of one of the most popular and most lauded games of the year was tending puppies. And the source of Nintendo's continuing profitability (compared with Sony's decline) is concentration on casual gamers, women and older folks. (Don't get me started on Sony's idiotic policy of crippling the overpriced PSP, ham-fisted "street" advertising and the suicidal inclusion of DRM on music CDs.)

That's why I'm gonna place my next-generation console bet is on the dark horse, the Nintendo Revolution. I went from ridiculing Nintendo for not targeting the hardcore to someone who thinks it's a brilliant business strategy.

I'm not advocating that the industry stop working on Halo 3 to concentrate on Hexic. I'm saying the industry should probably step back to think of ways to grow. I wouldn't want to be in any business that has lost more than half of its customers in just 25 years. Jeez, the coal mining industry is doing better in comparison.

It starts with, perhaps, redefining the word "gamer." If the industry wants to thrive, the definition better be more inclusive.

In an interview with Wired, Pong designer Nolan Bushnell talks about his new restaurant venture, his next-gen Chuck E. Cheese, uWink, and a new game — he's calling it Ping. Bushnell wants to bring games back "to their role as a social facilitator, the way party games help people to interact." He maintains that Pong is "responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of marriages." Bushnell's desire for games to become social facilitators seems noble, but he ignores the fact that other game types can be facilitators instead, suggesting that consumers need to be in a place like uWink or an arcade for said social interactions. Kind of flies in the face of digital communities like Xbox Live and most MMOs, doesn't it?

The Player [Wired]