How did Atari lose money on home computers?

"How the heck was Atari still losing money on computers in 1982?

They had great hardware; the Atari 800 was Jay Miner's penultimate masterwork before he went on to design the Amiga chipset; it was still considered good as late as the mid-eighties.

The great hardware didn't languish in obscurity; Atari was one of the best-known brand names in the industry.

Nor did it lack software support; Atari was perfectly positioned to support their machines with cartridge versions of arcade games, and Star Raiders is still cited as a killer application for home computers."