The real cause of the 1983 video game crash

[Atari Hacker]

To tell you the truth, many people blame it on E.T and Pacman, but those games didn't cause it. E.T is a game that if you don't have a manual, you won't know what to do, and it was a disappointment. Pacman was just having hardware limitation problems, the Atari wasn't strong enough to handle arcade perfect games.

 

The real reason I THINK is that it was an overblown market, with too much games. The Atari didn't have a lockout chip like the NES, so many game developers were rushing their games to the market and hope for success. Some game companies that are good that I can name at the top of my head are:

 

Imagic

Coleco

Activision

Mattel

Atari

 

I might of missed out on a few, but that's not the point. Stores couldn't handle all of those games, so consumers just ignored video games, because they couldn't tell which were good, and which were bad.

 

The NES made it to the market because it was advertised as a toy.

 

And that is how I think the video game crash happened.

[jetset]

They may not have been THE reason, but both games were hyped so much and then sucked so bad they can't be left out of the equation.

[jaybird3rd]

As with any other complex market change, the "crash" was not the result of only a single cause. The market was still relatively small, and a lot of companies saw video games as a way of making a quick buck, so there were indeed too many publishers pushing too much product into the sales channels. Some of them (Activision, Imagic, etc.) made some real contributions and produced some high-quality product, but too many of the others polluted the market with bad product, which damaged the level of demand even further.

 

I discussed some of the financial factors in this post (in the context of a great "behind-the-scenes" documentary about Imagic called "All In The Game"), and some of the major publishers before and after the crash in this post. That period foreshadowed the dot-com boom of about fifteen years later, but unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been very much scholarly writing about it so far (although Leonard Herman's work comes to mind as a notable exception).

[AlvinKarpis]

Pacman was just having hardware limitation problems, the Atari wasn't strong enough to handle arcade perfect games.

 

Wait a second

 

You have claimed more then once that Pacman was an "unfinished prototype"

 

Now you saying that "Pacman was just having hardware limitation problems, the Atari wasn't strong enough to handle arcade perfect games"

 

Which one is it? It seems like all the posts you make you are trying to stir something up

[jalidi]

The video game market was just supremely oversaturated in 1983. You had the Astrocade, the Arcadia, the Odyssey, the Intellivision, and Vectrex, to name a few, all vying for a slice of the pie, and even Atari was competing with itself with the 5200 and the 7800 then-planned for a 1984 release.

 

Video game sales hit 3 billion in 1983 and then dropped to 100 million in 1985 causing all of these consoles to get wiped out.

 

That plus all the crap games everyone was putting out... and they weren't a cheap purchase, either. People got burned a few times and simply stopped buying, they totally lost faith. ET and Pacman were just a symptom of a much bigger problem, that of the loss of quality control at Atari, which treated its programmers and engineers like dirt and refused to give game designers credit on their software. Lots of them jumped ship or just quit.

 

The ongoing loss of talent and good third-party support really hurt and by 1983 the whole industry went into meltdown, Atari falling harder than the rest.

[maiki]

As David Crane said, the crash was (mainly) caused by amateurs sticking their nose into the industry producing crap which then got sold for cheap thus destroying sales of otherwise profitable quality games.... Also I think people were naturally moving from Atari to the more capable gaming home computers like Commodore 64.

[littleman jack]

As David Crane said, the crash was (mainly) caused by amateurs sticking their nose into the industry producing crap which then got sold for cheap thus destroying sales of otherwise profitable quality games.... Also I think people were naturally moving from Atari to the more capable gaming home computers like Commodore 64.

 

A lot of people did move away from game consoles and bought home computers like the Commodore 64, the Atari XLs and XEs, The Texas Instrument computers, and the Tandy computers. Most definitely had some effect. But as several people stated above, there were a bunch of reasons, including a flood of stinky games and the tanking economy. Remember, the games were really expensive. If adjusted for inflation, many were at least as much, if not more, than XBox 360 games now.

[bomberpunk]

i'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, but...

 

1) Pac-Man & E.T. did not singlehandedly crash the videogame industry. anyone who says otherwise is pretty ignorant.

2) Activision's games were for the most part better than Atari's own. they were more polished if nothing else.

3) the flooding of the market, the ripoffs, the carbon copies, the quantity over quality... those are the factors that put the industry in a fetal position.

[Zedex]

The crash only really affected North American video game consoles. Computers were affected by a totally different crash, caused by Commodore's race to the bottom business tactics. It started with TI, and soon Coleco Adam, PCjr, and the Mattel Aquarius withdrew from the market. By 1984, control of the computer market was in the hands of Commodore, Apple and Atari, with Tandy trying to stay afloat in the lower end, and IBM dominating the high end business class. But the years from 1983 to 1986 were the golden age of home computer games. When the NES came out, many people who didn't have the money for computers flocked to it. These kind of people probably didn't have any system other than an Atari or a Coleco, so the crash seemed more widespread, and the NES would have "saved all of gaming". But the NES only saved console games, and consoles are only one part of the picture.

[high voltage]

Crash was in 84, btw, NES was in late 86, so, crash - NES not really a connection (The AVS was released in 1984, but it was a big disaster for Nintendo).

 

Atari MADE arcades, so they knew what to do when doing conversions for the VCS, and the VCS handled many conversions very well (Battlezone, Kangaroo, Moon Patrol, Combat, Phoenix to name a few).

I think you better start Racing the beam for some knowledge when bringing up Pac-Man

 

Computers were not affected at all from the crash, CGW mentioned the best computer games between 84 - 89, and loads of them too.

 

The NES was not advertised as a toy (as Nintendo not commited themselves to the...is it...12 Dec?, some toy-paying cut off day...read Game Over). Or they did first and later did not because of December, who knows with Nintendo.

Edited November 6, 2011 by high voltage

[Rom Hunter]

- Way too much cheap and badly programmed VCS games.

 

- Homecomputers replacing the consoles.

 

- The cracked software for homecomputers was for free!

 

I still remember playing Pitfall II at my house when a friend of mine (owning a C64) came by saying he just received a cracked copy of Pitfall II on a tape cassette that looked way better.

 

After checking his version out, I switched over to the C64 within a week.

 

For me there was no video game crash at all, I just went on playing video games an a home computer, instead of a console.

 

[Pioneer4x4]

E.T is a game that if you don't have a manual, you won't know what to do, and it was a disappointment.

I'd like to see someone with no knowledge of it's game play, play, let alone beat, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Riddle of the Sphynx with out the manual. And those are both very good games. I actually touched on the point of manuals on my post about Seaweed Assault. I tried a typical knee-jerk attempt of gameplay without reading, then read the manual, and tripled my score (It still sucked, but still tripled it!).

EVERYONE that bought ET got the manual. Only the people 5,10,15,20,25, damn near 30 years later that grab it for a buck loose, then try it and die in 10 seconds, never to try again are dissappointed. (OK, not only them, but mainly them)

[20ohm20]

For me there was no video game crash at all, I just went on playing video games an a home computer, instead of a console.

 

This. After the Atari 2600 I had a TI-99/4A followed by a Commodore 64 and an Apple //e. From then on, I played video games on computers only until I bought a Xbox360 in 2008.

[Dr Manhattan]

Shovelware.

[IntellivisionDude]

When i was younger i never knew there was a video game crash. Got my first system ever the Intellivision II in 1983, and played that until the controllers didn't work anymore, that was somewhere around 90/91 i think. Plus my mother was still buying me late release INTV games from Toys R Us around 88/89. And i had friends who had Nintendo's, so i always had games around me.

Edited November 7, 2011 by IntellivisionDude

[Torr]

All the cheap shoddy games that came out of cheap shoddy companies shouldn't have done that much damage, I mean, people KNOW you get what you pay for. Not saying that expensive means good, but when you're diggin thru a bin of 'media', be it books, movies, or this case games. you KNOW that since everything in the bin is by people you never heard of or probably will again, is at one third the price of all the stuff you DO recognize, and it all has cheap art/box/etc... you KNOW you're getting crap, there will be some diamonds in the rough, but if you had 30 dollars and could get 1 Atari or Activision game, but instead decided to get three $10 games with shit boxart, by some company you never heard of, the games appearing to be ripoffs of games you know, then you cheated yourself, the companies didn't.

It's like DVDs at WalMart, I can hit the bargain bin and by a shitload of shitty DVDs for 2 bucks each, or I can just buy ONE movie that I know will be worth the $20 bucks i spent on it. Bins full of shitty DVDs aren't causing a movie crash anytime soon, and I seriously doubt companies like Froggo are what killed the Atari.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[accousticguitar]

A lot of people did move away from game consoles and bought home computers like the Commodore 64, the Atari XLs and XEs, The Texas Instrument computers, and the Tandy computers. Most definitely had some effect. But as several people stated above, there were a bunch of reasons, including a flood of stinky games and the tanking economy. Remember, the games were really expensive. If adjusted for inflation, many were at least as much, if not more, than XBox 360 games now.

Only one person so far has mentioned that tanking economy. I think that was a large factor. The tanking economy reduced demand for video games while dozens of new companies were making millions of games to flood the market with. Demand went down while inventory went up, and that is not a healthy market for producers. These are not the only factors, of course, but I think they are large ones.

[Stan]

As mentioned, PC was the big thing, though yeah, the market was saturated with suckage. Personally, I also do not recall there being any sort of crash, it just seemed like there was a brief shift to PC, and then back to console. But programmers and people who worked in the industry will tell you different sometimes. I know Scott Marshall, who programmed Crossbow for the 7800, and he'll tell you all about it.

[Miss 2600]

When i was younger i never knew there was a video game crash.

 

Same here. The crash may have helped me out if it made the console cheaper in the Sears Wish Book because that is the reason my parents finally bought me one. I remember my dad buying me games like Raiders of the Lost Ark really cheap at Toys R Us. That was probably around 1983/84.

[+cmart604]

A lot of people did move away from game consoles and bought home computers like the Commodore 64, the Atari XLs and XEs, The Texas Instrument computers, and the Tandy computers. Most definitely had some effect. But as several people stated above, there were a bunch of reasons, including a flood of stinky games and the tanking economy. Remember, the games were really expensive. If adjusted for inflation, many were at least as much, if not more, than XBox 360 games now.

Only one person so far has mentioned that tanking economy. I think that was a large factor. The tanking economy reduced demand for video games while dozens of new companies were making millions of games to flood the market with. Demand went down while inventory went up, and that is not a healthy market for producers. These are not the only factors, of course, but I think they are large ones.

 

 

Not sure I agree with this, the recession was in 1981-1982, 1983 to 1990 was a period of economic expansion, and a pretty notable one at that. What's more interesting to me was the fact that the videogame business exploded in the not quite two years of the recession... I'm more prone to agree with the shovelware explanation.

Edited November 7, 2011 by cmart604

[retroillucid]

I just wish another game crash soon! ..... please!

[Schizophretard]

I don't remember a video game crash either but to be fair I was born in 81. From my point of view there was Atari and then it was replaced with Nintendo. People just wanted the new thing. It's been like that my whole life. In my house, NES caused the crash of Atari, Sega Genesis and SNES cause the crash of the NES.... PS2 replaced PS1 and PS3 replaced the PS2. If Atari would of accepted Nintendo's offer to release the NES under Atari's name then it would feel like the transition from PS1 to PS2. Every system seems like it booms at first, crashes, and then is replaced with a new console. The only difference is now they plan ahead and have a console ready for the next crash. Atari didn't because they didn't have a video game history to know it would boom, crash, and them boom again. They thought it would just be an eternal boom. Video game companies are prepared for it now. Nintendo probably already has the next 10 models of the DS ready to use for the next 5 years.

[Impaler_26]

E.T is a game that if you don't have a manual, you won't know what to do, and it was a disappointment.

 

Not really. I got E.T. in the late 80's and i didn't have the manual. It took me some time but eventually i figured out what to do and i was able to finish the game.

IMO E.T. is a very good game and i had (and still have) lots of fun playing it.

[opeygon]

I love how the OP lists the reasons why HE thinks the crash happened. As if he is the first to think of this haha! I've heard that explanation a hundred times before.

 

Only one person so far has mentioned that tanking economy. I think that was a large factor. The tanking economy reduced demand for video games while dozens of new companies were making millions of games to flood the market with. Demand went down while inventory went up, and that is not a healthy market for producers. These are not the only factors, of course, but I think they are large ones.

 

I'm with accousticguitar on this one. I lived through that economy as a kid and I watched my parents struggle every day. It was a big deal when we got a new 2600 game. It did not happen often. When the crash was in full effect we could afford new games though, as they were discounted heavily by that point. So the economy certainly effected my experience during that time. No one has mentioned it because many of those who like to analyze what happened during that era weren't actually there and have no frame of reference other than what they read on the internet.

[AlvinKarpis]

I remember the huge bins of games for $5.00 at Kay-Bee Toys in the mid 80s

 

I also remember the Activision games were still behind the counter and more expensive

 

My mom would always tell me to look through the $5.00 bins but I would always tell her no, I would rather have one copy of Kaboom! or Freeway then five copies of games that I knew I would hate after getting home and playing them

 

Even as a kid I knew this

 

I had no clue that there was a crash either, my thought process was that Kay-Bee or Toys R Us had bought way to many games for X-mas and had to mark them down to sell them

 

It was just like the Video Rental stores that would have blowout sales and sell the VHS tapes that they had many copies of for like $20 (remember this was back when a VHS movie would cost like $89.99) which was great because everybody rented back then, so being able to buy your favorite movie for $20 was great

 

Thats how I thought it was for Kay-Bee and Toys R Us, they were just trying to sell off extra inventory

 

Of course from 84 to 86 (I got my NES January of 87) time was a blur, so it wasnt like it took forever for the NES to come along and blow me away

 

Then it was back to paying $49.99+ for games, im sure my dad hated it, but my mom didnt care, she always bought us the games we asked for (for Easter, X-mas and Birthdays, I was lucky to have two brothers who like me always asked for games)

 

So yes like the others I hd no clue there was a video game crash, there were games all over the toy stores back then