This is I think the second piece I've read about Atari that mentions how much cheaper ram was just a short time later. I think during the development of the 2600, ram prices dropped an incredible amount but the design was set and plans on a new gen system were seen as way too forward thinking. At the time, the idea was this was a set appliance like a tv or radio, at least early on, that could last a decade or even decades and the idea that it should be regularly replaced as technology advances was something that industry hadn't fully grasped.

So to me, its tragic the home console market got so hot before ram got affordable because it was a limitation in game design. I wonder what the 2600 would have look like delayed a year or two and taken into account cheaper ram and other components. I imagine it could have had Colecovision-level graphics, which would have been a huge step up. Currently, its hard to view those old 2600 games as anything but overly simplistic and kinda ugly.

Battlezone with more ram would have been something else too, instead of just a dumb tank shooter. Three years later the Star Wars vector game was released and the difference between the two is like night and day. One feels like a technology demo and the other like a full-fledged video game.