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5200 Sales 86-90


Curt Vendel

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Yeah, I don't get this either. I clearly remember a renaissance for the Atari 2600, but the 5200? Not so much. It practically vanished from store shelves after 1985, if not sooner. No new games were released for the 5200 either, unlike the 2600 which had Solaris, Dark Chambers, Midnight Magic, and Secret Quest.

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How is it possible that Super Breakout was the top seller in 86 and 87? Aside from being a fairly poor 5200 game, didn't it come with most 5200 systems?

I think they count sales of the 5200 as sales of SB as it was a pack-in. The thing that doesn't make ANY sense to me is that Pac-Man replaced SB as the pack-in after a short time. So you'd think it would be Pac-Man that was the top seller. Unless they were just dumping SB carts a $5 or less.

 

Tempest

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How is it possible that Super Breakout was the top seller in 86 and 87? Aside from being a fairly poor 5200 game, didn't it come with most 5200 systems?

I think they count sales of the 5200 as sales of SB as it was a pack-in. The thing that doesn't make ANY sense to me is that Pac-Man replaced SB as the pack-in after a short time. So you'd think it would be Pac-Man that was the top seller. Unless they were just dumping SB carts a $5 or less.

 

Tempest

 

I explained the Tramiel's re-release of the 5200 (to dump inventory) in this post:

Show us your 5200 collection

 

During the small-shipping-box 5200 re-release, Super Breakout was once again the pack-in.

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wow that data was so sad reading between the lines

 

it is suprising how they were able to move that old stock but the price was right those numbers sound about right cause i remember kb toys had bargin bins of games pretty cheap i think $4.99 or so in 90 my 5200 was boxed up in the garage and i was facinated with my atari lynx and sega genesis

 

i still had appreciation for the 2600 and was buying games from my friends for about $2 cause they all wanted gameboy games

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BUT YOU COULDN'T FIND 5200 GAMES ON STORE SHELVES IN THE LATE EIGHTIES!!! AIIIIGH!!!

The last 2 titles I purchased, actually Mom and Dad was in 87 Toy's R Us had Ballblazer and Qix in crushed boxes in a bargin bin for 10.00 each. And there

was only a couple of copies left. After that I only ever saw 2600 and 7800 stuff in Kaybee and Circus World.

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BUT YOU COULDN'T FIND 5200 GAMES ON STORE SHELVES IN THE LATE EIGHTIES!!! AIIIIGH!!!

As limited as distribution may have been, some stores must have been carrying them. There were a few '86 releases (Gremlins, Rescue on Fractalus, etc.) and I'm sure Atari wouldn't have expected distributors and retailers to carry just those few titles. They had to have been shipping old stocks of other titles as well.

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Adding to my earlier comment, I wouldn't be surprised if Atari Corp. released Gremlins et al simply to get some distributors to carry 5200 games again so they could unload their unsold stock of old games. They would've had a pretty tough sell trying to get anyone to take 5200 stuff off their hands without some new titles. They probably told distributors that they were going to release 10-15 new games for the 5200, only to end up delivering just a few.

 

Just a thought.

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Wasn't Gremlins released in 1986, not 1984, because Steven Spielberg threatened to sue Atari?

If I'm not mistaken, Gremlins wasn't released in 1984 because it was finished at around the time Tramiel took over Atari. And according to the sales figures, it looks like Gremlins was actually released in 1987, not 1986.

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I gotta admit, stronger sales numbers than I suspected. Although I think the wholesale pricing between $1-$5 probably helped!

 

Also, to keep it in perspective, this is the number of units that went out to warehouses and vendors, not necessarily how many managed to be sold at retail. Look at the O'Shea's effect-- they reportedly had 3 million Atari games in a warehouse nearly 20 years ago, and every one of them was on an Atari sales sheet somewhere. (As of last I heard, there's still about 1 million in a cave across the state from me. lol) So in 1990, Atari could say 3 million 2600 and 7800 carts were sold, when in reality they were, but not to end users.

 

And of course, I wouldn't logically expect a company the size of Atari to produce more of a single title than there are systems to play them on, but most of us know the E.T. story by now! :)

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So if I read it right, they sold almost 1.9 million games. I assume it is mostly stock they already had. That makes most of it profit from selling Atari's old products that the Tramiels had bought for next to nothing. When you don't have to do much of anything except ship it out, even if every game profited them only $2 on average, they got $3.8 million for nothing. Wow.

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