This happened when I was very young, so I obviously don’t remember it, but many of the effects of the crash explain some of the things I saw when I was a young gamer.
In the late 70’s and very early 80’s, console gaming was becoming popular. There were way more competitors then I was aware of, including: Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Bally Astrocade, ColecoVision, Coleco Gemini, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Fairchild Channel F System II, Magnavox Odyssey2, Mattel Intellivision and Intellivision II, Sears Tele-Games, Tandyvision, and Vectrex. Many of these had next-generation systems planned too (like the Atari 7800).
There was also stiff competition form the personal computer world with such competitors as: Atari 400 and 800, Radio Shack’s Color Computer, and Commodore VIC-20 and C64.
Each of these systems had its own game library. On top of this, there were issues with game programmers wanting more credit and more money. Activision spun off from Atari in 1979 to create their own games to sell for the Atari. There was a court case, but Activision won, and was allowed to continue. This spawned dozens of clones. Dozens of major companies (including Quaker Oats… I wonder if they got Brimley to do the commercials?!?) created video game divisions who were all creating 3rd party games for all the above-listed systems. They created such nightmares as Chase the Chuck Wagon (which was created in partnership with Purina dog food. Trade in your dog food UPCs for a copy of the game!), Skeet Shoot, and Lost Luggage… which were all TERRIBLY low quality games (go figure).
Then there was the E.T. debacle. Atari produced a video game version of E. T. The Extra Terrestrial, which they overproduced expecting high sales, but rushed to come out, leading to a [FAIL]ure of a game. It had terrible sales, due to word of mouth of it’s crappiness, and since they paid a fortune for the marketing rights, they lost a ton of money. It’s believed that Atari dumped hundreds of copies E. T. cartridges in an Arizona (or New Mexico, depending on your source) landfill.
They even made terrible ports of Pac-Man (which is a practice that continues today). The Atari port led to Atari celebrating “Atari National Pac-Man Day, on April 3rd, 1982″ – an event I’d like to celebrate every April 3rd from now on. Atari manufactured twelve million cartridges and sold seven million units. Ouch.
The market was completely saturated with dozens of competitors creating terrible games. The stores were taking heavy losses from returns of bad products, and the distributors didn’t have any money to return to them. Retailers were selling $30 games (that’d be like an $80 game today) for $5 on clearance… just to get SOME money back.
The bottom fell out, and the whole industry crashed.
Years later, Nintendo came on scene. It met serious resistance from retailers who considered video games a “fad.” They renamed Famicom to the NES, and made wording changes so that it wasn’t a “console,” it was an “entertainment system.” ROB the robot was added to marketing so it was more like selling a toy.
The other big difference was that Nintendo fought against 3rd party game creation. They used a control chip so that only Nintendo licensed games (the Nintendo Golden Seal of Approval) could play on the NES (except for that crazy Quattro Adventure game). I basically understand it like a region code on DVDs. They also limited 3rd parties to 5 games per year, and made them pay for manufacturing up front, so if the game bombed, Nintendo wasn’t at a loss. They got around competition laws by saying they were doing it to protect the quality of the games.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Source: Where else.
Subscribe / RSS
