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What was the crash of 1983 like?


maxellnormalbias

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My opinion is, you probably weren't a teenager in the early 1980s if you refer to it as "the video game crash of 1983". Then again, most of us who were teenagers at the time weren't business insiders either. All I knew at the time is the feeling that home video games were going to die off with the companies that made them, and it wouldn't be until Nintendo brought forth the NES to prove that opinion to be wrong.

Edited by Vic George 2K3
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If you were a kid in 1983 (I was 13), there was no crash-only an abundance of cheap cartridges begining to appear in most major retailers, only businesses felt the pain, here in the UK there was already a natural progression towards home computers which were not much more expensive than the games consoles but had more flexibility and far cheaper software.

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Hmmm. Good question. I was in high school then, and had Atari. Friends were split between Atari and Intellivision at that time. BUT.....it was right around that time (1982/1983) that a lot of us started moving towards home computers, and away from the consoles. I went Atari (400...then 800xl). Some friends did too...one or two went C64. So when things started to collapse on the consoles, I think we kind of noticed....in that fewer new games were coming out, and there were lots of $4.99 games in bins at Kay-Bee and other stores. But we didn't actually care about it, because we were all looking forward to the new games being released on the computers. By then, the consoles were an afterthought. Like, yeah I might want this one game, but whatever...I'd rather be playing the next Infocom adventure on the computer.

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The crash was like getting kicked in the sack so hard you taste balls for a month.

 

I think crash is a harsh term. Definitely it applied if you were a video game manufacturer, but for the end user it was more of an evolution.

I agree.

 

"2600 crash" is more accurate imo than "game crash". Other game makers were affected by the turmoil, the 2600 was a huge part of the game market, but the actual crash talked about was a 2600 event imo. It had to have had a small window. The games backed up into distributors who flat out stopped buying 2600 games and I don't think they willingly (contract fulfillment only) bought any more. At least that was my impression. The selling season leading up to Christmas 82 must have been the trigger. So many companies had started, each with several games, retailers had made lots of money on 2600 games Christmas 81 wanted every game they could get so the channel was flooded. People say it was because of so many crappy games, there were lots of crappy games. But I think the same thing would have happened even if every game had been at a Pitfall level. 20 to 50 "hit" games all coming out for Christmas 82 still would have swamped game players and the channel still would have backed up. Lots of suppliers + lots of retailers wanting to cash in and there you go.

 

The timeline from my perspective:

 

June 82 CES I went with Games by Apollo and buyers were buying every 2600 game.

 

At VentureVision we had "sold" 10,000 Rescue Terra I to a single distributor around Aug 82. It took something like 6-8 weeks for the ROM to be made. When we got the ROMs in late 82, don't remember exactly, we started assembling the carts and boxes. Robert Hester called the buyer at the distributor. "He doesn't work here any more." "We're not buying games any more". For us the crash happened at that moment. For the buyer who got fired the crash happened a little before that.

 

My little brother sold a few door to door. We hooked up with some multi-level marketing dudes to "sell" the games but that fell through...luckily because it was a gray legal area. But selling 2600 thru distributors didn't seem possible at any price.

 

It did go on for awhile. Like when a motorcycle slams into a car there's the oh crap time period (maybe I can pull this off), then the impact (crap), then the flying thru the air (hey this isn't so bad), then the rolling down the street (oh crap this is bad). The more money a company had in reserve the longer they could roll down the street. For VentureVision it was more like hitting a wall...not much rolling.

 

Jan 83 CES VentureVision had a tiny booth and zero interest. The Games by Apollo "booth" was a large space with nothing but a folding chair and Pat Roper sitting there ready to sell whatever he could I guess. At least that's how I remember it.

 

March 83 I sold Innerspace to Imagic. When I walked thru their offices it was a ghost town...I don't know why, maybe they had the day off or something, but my impression it was the 2600 crash rippling through them.

 

April 83 I started in Chris Horseman's group at Atari. Rita, his AA, showed me where to get office supplies. The huge cabinet was stuffed with supplies. Rita said Atari wanted them to buy lots of supplies to shelter profit from taxes. They'd been sheltered from the storm.

 

June 83 Atari announced a $283 million loss. OK, that's not good. Then a $536 million loss. OK, that's starting to be serious cash. This again leads me to think the crash happened in late 82. That Atari had enough reserves to roll down the street for a couple of quarters to me doesn't really mean the crash was going on throughout this period. The crash had already happened. Plus Atari had other irons in the fire so there was a case for Atari maybe pulling it out but the 2600 bubble had popped.

 

Nintendo didn't try to get Atari to sell their unit until late 84. The 2600 crash was clearly over for everyone by then.

 

To me games didn't move from the 2600 to other platforms. It certainly appears to be the case looking at a timeline but internally I think the 2600 bubble just popped. There were so many carts available it would have taken months to clear the retail inventory. Game makers who could had to switch to other platforms, computers, whatever. Sitting around doing more 2600 games didn't make a lot of sense although I guess Atari kept hammering away to some degree.

 

Tramiel had no interest in games until his computer line was pretty dead.

 

For game players "the crash" was a boon. Tons of games for cheap. That's no crash. So I do think the term "crash" mainly related to the 2600 game makers.

 

People did loose their homes. But that's the business.

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Just loads and loads of dirt-cheap games. Though I do remember a bit of consternation about trying to decide what really *is* the future of electronics. Would it be computers? When would the next console come out?

Soon enough I lost all interest in cart systems, practically destroyed all my systems and sold the rest, and went full-tilt on the computer bandwagon.

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When Disco died, nobody said, WOW! These are great times for the consumer! Let's pick-up some great albums for a fraction of what they once went for, and build our collection!!

 

The record companies couldn't give disco records away. The same pretty much applies to Atari 2600 games. No one over age 11(in mid to late '83) wanted them. Why? Because (the arcade ports) weren't even close to the arcade version. As far as the original games go, there were some good ones, i.e. "Pitfall I & II, HERO, River Raid, - - o.k. Activision games were pretty decent. But the rest, with just a few exceptions, wouldn't hold your interest long. Some made you sick to your stomach.

 

I placed most of my trust in Atari, to make games more faithful to the arcade. It is their system - I figured, they would, at some point, make a better cartridge, which was capable of playing games closer to their arcade counterpart. It was obvious, the technology they were currently using, wasn't very advanced, as Activision, kicked Atari's butt at every turn.

 

I held my breath and prayed, that Atari would release "Pac-man" on a cartridge with greater "computer power", as I envisioned ROM an RAM back then. Of course, what the world got wasn't even remotely close to what the Arcade offered. In fact, it's as-if Atari wanted the game to be terrible.

 

Pac-man shook the faith of most Atari fans. I realized, Atari had no interest in improving their games, so I quit buying. I mean, anyone willing to screw up Pac-man, sooo badly, had no interest in ever improving games for the system. The phrase "Atari sucks" soon followed and sales declined rapidly.

 

Anyway, the third-party games were flowing like a river and everyone bought because they were cheap, compared to Atari and Activision games - $7.99 - $12.99 each. By mid '83 the cheap games were so bad, I walked away from my 2600. I didn't even want to check out Activision games anymore. The 2600 was so tarnished at this point - kinda like those Disco records. The world agreed and the bargain bins followed. Time to move on with sports......

 

Let me go a different route with this...

 

Most kids love Taylor Swift(insert vomit here). What if, your daughter could ONLY see her in concert, at several thousand bucks a ticket. But you could buy a knock-off version CD, for your home system, for $39.99. Add to the market, Taylor Swift "knock-offs" who knock-off the knock-off! This is kinda what Atari 2600 games were like. Imagine how disappointed your daughter would be!

 

It was all about the arcade....Atari was fun for a bit - but the arcade is what really sparkled!

Edited by AtariKid81
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See I never cared (or even knew about arcades), I became an Atari VCS fan because of Pac-Man, I played it at my American friend over and over and over.. He had Yar's Revenge, told me look, good game here. Back I went playing Pac-Man.

To me Pac-Man was to the VCS what SMB was to NES owners.

Once I got my own VCS, I got Ms. Pac-Man as well, shop didn't stock Pac-Man, so I thought, the wife will do good. And I was right, Ms. Pac-Man was even better.

Edited by high voltage
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I bought Donna Summer albums for cheap. It was great.

 

I've heard that crappy games killed the market and I believed it too. Wanted to believe it. But there are problems with that.

 

1. In June 82 every 2600 game produced went into retail. By say Nov 82 almost no game could get shelf space. In that short a time period the millions of 2600 players suddenly decided the games were crap and stopped buying? I don't think that's possible. Normally there's a pretty gradual fall off. Disco didn't die because of crappy music, taste just changed.

 

2. There were still some pretty great games being made. Why didn't their sales go through the roof? If a retailer had 50 titles for sale and only one was selling they'd cal their distributor and scream for more of that game.

 

Arcade ports sold well but so did original titles. I thought Pac-Man played great. That the ghosts flickered or mazes weren't exact reproductions weren't an issue for me. And it didn't seem to be a problem for sales.

 

I really wish it was true that crappy games killed the 2600, or that ET was so crappy it stopped sales. That would mean the masses demand quality. I'd love to live in such a world. But that's really never been true for any product. Once the masses start buying quality flies out the window.

 

By sales I mean sales of new games into the channel. That's what crashed. I assume lots of 2600 carts were sold at retail Christmas 82 but the channel was still flooded. There were lots of small game producers who couldn't do what was really needed, buy back games from retail. If it had just been say Atari, Activision and Imagic selling games they could have pulled back 50%, 70%, whatever it took, out of retail. The smaller companies couldn't do that. And if lots of companies couldn't do that then there was little reason for the bigger companies to.

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One thing baffles me, I heard stories that Tramiel was very interested in video games, as he wanted the Atari 7800 straight when taking over Atari.

Here's why I don't think any of the Tramiels were interested in games.

 

IMO Tramiel bought Atari mainly for the name, to instantly become a "real" company. To produce a home computer to crush Commodore. To show the world Commodore had been wrong to fire Jack. Same deal as Steve Jobs and Next only in his case it worked. They didn't need the money that's for sure. If Jack built Atari back up as a game company that wouldn't have crushed Commodore. It had to be a product that completed directly with Commodore.

 

When he took over there were three kind of groups of engineers he kept on. First was the team he already had who I think were all from Commodore. 100% focus on producing a computer that would crush Commodore. They'd been already working on the ST for I don't know how long before the Atari deal.

 

The second group I was in, Atari engineers tasked to work on the ST. We all at a games background I think. They didn't ask us if we wanted to do games or the ST, we were assigned to the ST. Which was fine with us. Games sure seemed dead to us and home computers the future. Not really as black and white as that but in our business, being engineers focused on the mass market, we always wanted to be on the next big thing. If your interest is in producing games you don't task game developers to work on a home computer.

 

The third group were 2600 game developers from Atari. Now this is the most interesting part and one I don't really understand. I don't know how many there were, my impression is a handful. I didn't know any of them but some others on the ST team did so I heard second hand stuff. I heard that Tramiel gave them cubicles and charged them the cost of office space, utilities, phones, equipment, etc...to be deducted from future royalties. I doubt that's exactly true, but something strange was going on. They were in a different section of the building, I never saw them. I think they'd all left withing a few weeks.

 

It was bizarre because if Tramiel had no interest in games why bother to keep these dudes at all? I have no idea. But it sure didn't seem like a serious attempt at producing any new games. There was no support, nothing. Maybe there were some contract issues? I don't know.

 

The company name...Atari Corp. If Tramiel had even the slightest interest in games he sure as heck wouldn't have allowed "Atari Games" to be the name for the coin op business at the very least. And more likely he would have kept the coin op division. Starting a game company and not taking the coin op wouldn't make sense. Warner would have been thrilled to have Tramiel take coin op too. Coin op was too small and no hope of being a huge market for a company like Warner.

 

In late 84 some engineers, myself included, were called into a late night meeting with some Japanese business guys and the Tramiels. All we were told was to be polite and "evaluate" the hardware these guys were showing. But they had zero interest in the hardware. It was a game console, looked like an NES but I for some reason always thought they were from Sony. Maybe I thought Sony made the NES. Any ways the Tramiels had zero interest in a game console. Zero interest in producing games for it. It wasn't the console, just zero interest in games.

 

When we made the ST I don't remember anyone ever saying the word "game". After the ST shipped the engineers kind of just did whatever we liked that we thought could help ST sales. Dave Staugas created Neochrome. Jim Eisenstein worked on a fast software bit blit which was about as close as we got to games. I did a knock off of Apple's Switcher and then ST Writer. But no one did a game. Zero interest from the Tramiels or us. We were focused on what a home computer could do. At that time we didn't see computers and game consoles being the same. Hardware was still really expensive. Our thinking was a console is always going to have way better game horse power. Competing against that with a general purpose home computer would be dumb. Even Amiga wasn't considered a serious game platform and that was a kick ass machine. Obviously it could do great games, but not well enough to dominate the market. For mass market products you had to dominate.

 

It wasn't until after I left Atari in Jan 86 that they called me to do some work on the 7800 game Desert Falcon, fix a few bugs for the final release. That was the first I heard of any interest in games. By that time it was clear the concept of a cheap powerful computer without software was not going to work and the ST was doomed.

 

My impression of Jack Tramiel, and I sure didn't know him very well at all, is he was a hardware dude. I've seen this several times, hardware dudes generally don't get software at all, on any level. Steve Jobs is the only exception I can think of but I'm sure there are others. Hardware dudes take more risk, work way harder, probably have to be way smarter to produce a product that has way less profit margin than a single software app running on their hardware. They just can't wrap their head around that inequity. Games is a software business. The Tramiels were never interested in software of any kind much less games. My impression is the game thing came after the ST had no hope. A few people, may be only one, who did understand games convinced the Tramiels to try that business. And why not? They owned freaking Atari. That's as good a start as a game company could have. But I don't think that was enough. You still need people at the top who understand the market, believe in the concept. So imo the credit for Atari's push back into games in 86 and later should go to a few people under the Tramiels. My guess is they probably had to fight the Tramiels every step of the way. That the Tramiels went along at all was most likely because of the success of the NES.

 

This is not to say the Tramiels were dumb for missing the next game wave. I don't remember anyone saying games would come back. People who were still hammering away at games were considered odd. At that time Warner was on it's way to losing a billion dollars in a year. That's when most people had never heard the word "billion" before. Looked pretty dead.

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Steve Jobs may have gotten software, but he still didn't get games. Jobs' and Tramiel's biggest missed opportunity was always games. Games drove so much of the business and they didn't realize it. If they didn't want to think about games, all they had to do was hire someone with enthusiasm for games to handle that part of the business and give them free reign.

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[sNIP]

Let's see... 1983.

 

People who were still playing consoles and hadn't moved on to playing games on home computers found games cheap and plentiful. Games that used to be $40 were $5, and even then most people didn't care because they were playing games on home computers or had moved on to playing Trivial Pursuit, Laser Tag, Teddy Ruxpin, and all sorts of other things.

 

Some arcades closed, but many survived. Arcade machines were stil commonly found in bowling alleys, grocery stores, and convenience stores.

 

Neither I nor anyone else I knew heard of a "video game crash" at the time. Everyone knew Atari had problems, but they deserved it from making so many crap games. Mattel stopped making the Intellivision but we didn't care because we were playing much better games on home computers. The death of ColecoVision was a disappointment, but not that big a loss became... wait for it... we were playing games on our home computers.

 

Sure, that's a consumer perspective from someone that was a teenager at the time. Seriously, I didn't hear about "the video game crash" until around 2005.

 

X2. Well Put.

 

I don't really remember things changing much for me at all as far as my gaming habits. I still played the heck out of my 2600, Colecovision, and C64. The big thing I remember were the bins of bargain games everywhere. Grocery stores, drug stores, everywhere. Piles and piles for as little as .99. I wish I had picked up more at the time honestly. I guess I was lucky to at least pick up several tougher Coleco titles for $10 each at KayBee.

 

Games were popping up in stores in those grab pile bins you see DVD's in now.

 

I was 16 at the time, just got a car, a job, and was chasing girls and beer anyway. The few games I did play were on my C64 and most of those I typed in from magazines as I was programming and BBS'ing at that point. BBS GT's were a good place to meet girls who were as geeky (and horny) as us.

Edited by Zonie
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Steve Jobs may have gotten software, but he still didn't get games. Jobs' and Tramiel's biggest missed opportunity was always games. Games drove so much of the business and they didn't realize it. If they didn't want to think about games, all they had to do was hire someone with enthusiasm for games to handle that part of the business and give them free reign.

I think Steve Jobs did OK with Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more games available for the iPhone products than the total sum of all games ever made for all other game consoles. Or that total time spent playing games on iPhones isn't 10, 20, maybe 100 times more than time currently spent on consoles today. My bet is the iPhone is the most successful game platform of all time and Jobs wasn't even trying.

 

I've been involved with more than a dozen startups and I've not yet met a founder or CEO that would ever hire someone to create the business. These are driven people with their own ideas and goals. They want to create something. On the other side of the equation finding someone with the skills needed to create a successful game company isn't really very easy. Finding one that's also dumb enough to do it for someone else I think is probably impossible.

 

I think there are some pretty good examples of how difficult that is to do. Warner buying Atari for example. Giving other people free reign sounds good but these are people, and people can't help think they know better at least some of time. I think Atari would probably still be around and be huge if Bushnell had actually been given free reign. Probably would have bought Apple at some point. I think it was Warner's intention to give Bushnell free reign, but they couldn't. It's not in the nature of business people.

Edited by DanOliver
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Magazines like CGW had loads of game reviews for Apple ][, A8, C64 and early PC. so computer gaming took over from console gaming. Activision managed to do the jump from console to computer successfully. Others like Spectravideo, Imagic and Tigervision did the same. When did Atari start to support computers? They covered the lot, PC, C64, Ti99, Apple. That must have been the old Atari.

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1- I would never ask anyone to develop my IP. I would never license it out. I would never ask anyone to take the reigns. It is not in my nature. I would only sell the whole kit & kaboodle at retirement time. And then it would be someone else's to do with as they please.

 

2- Most of the "games" on smartphones are those skinner box trainers. I'm hesitant to call them games. But without a doubt, smartphones have become the biggest platform the world over.

 

3- I disliked the marketing during the transition years. There never was a crash. The marketing flunkies would claim consoles are out and computers are in. And people flocked like the sheep they are.

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I think Steve Jobs did OK with Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't more games available for the iPhone products than the total sum of all games ever made for all other game consoles. Or that total time spent playing games on iPhones isn't 10, 20, maybe 100 times more than time currently spent on consoles today. My bet is the iPhone is the most successful game platform of all time and Jobs wasn't even trying.

 

I've been involved with more than a dozen startups and I've not yet met a founder or CEO that would ever hire someone to create the business. These are driven people with their own ideas and goals. They want to create something. On the other side of the equation finding someone with the skills needed to create a successful game company isn't really very easy. Finding one that's also dumb enough to do it for someone else I think is probably impossible.

 

I think there are some pretty good examples of how difficult that is to do. Warner buying Atari for example. Giving other people free reign sounds good but these are people, and people can't help think they know better at least some of time. I think Atari would probably still be around and be huge if Bushnell had actually been given free reign. Probably would have bought Apple at some point. I think it was Warner's intention to give Bushnell free reign, but they couldn't. It's not in the nature of business people.

 

20 years too late on those games. Mac gaming has always been a joke compared to other platforms. And it badly hurt the Mac. iPhone has games simply because they've got the numbers (for other reasons). Steve Jobs has never been interested in games and has frankly always despised gamers. His biases hurt the Mac platform.

 

All they had to do was create the tools and platform for game development and take it seriously. Bonus if they created a separate game development division.

 

Microsoft took gaming very seriously and it was one reason (among many others), that they came to dominate.

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20 years too late on those games. Mac gaming has always been a joke compared to other platforms. And it badly hurt the Mac. iPhone has games simply because they've got the numbers (for other reasons). Steve Jobs has never been interested in games and has frankly always despised gamers. His biases hurt the Mac platform.

 

All they had to do was create the tools and platform for game development and take it seriously. Bonus if they created a separate game development division.

 

Microsoft took gaming very seriously and it was one reason (among many others), that they came to dominate.

Oh, you mean back in the day that Jobs should have made the Apple II and Mac more of a game platform? IMO if he had we wouldn't be talking about Apple today. What you're talking about takes cash, cash Apple didn't have. Cash Apple had to get from investors. Create yet another game platform in the early 80's...investors would have loved that pitch. Games were a pretty big deal at that time but nothing like they are today. Back then selling computers in businesses was thought to be the next big thing and I think they were right. It had the profit margin.

 

I started at Apple 1/86 and they were doing pretty good but even then had nowhere near enough resources to start a game division. We barely could get out basic development systems and documentation. Getting even basic apps like a word processor onto the Mac was a huge effort. Getting the Apple IIGS out the door was a major problem as the Mac group wanted it killed so they could have the resources just to do the basic stuff they needed to keep the Mac alive. Apple was doing everything it could to prove their computers were not toys. If they had shifted and turned it into a game platform they could kiss selling to businesses good bye and desktop publishing wouldn't have happened when it did which means laser printers would have been greatly delayed. And the odds of Apple having enough cash to get out even one game is close to zero without the little cash being generated from computer sales. At that time there was no way Apple could sell a computer as both a serious business machine and a game platform. Consumers barely knew what a computer was.

 

XBox came out well after the crash and after other companies had proven the game market was serious. There were a few people inside Microsoft pushing games for a long time and to Microsoft's credit they did push into games but only after other companies had proven the market. I don't think Microsoft management took games seriously until the market was proven.

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The reality was that the Crash meant there was very little new console product in stores for a few years and the feeling/impression was that computers were the logical replacement (despite going through a massive shakeup of their own). Once the NES started gaining steam throughout 1986, that idea/impression was quickly forgotten. If you were into magazines like Electronic Games back then or followed the industry all that closely, you wouldn't necessarily know how devastating it was for so many companies (and yes, that included the computer side; the Crash was not limited to console stuff).

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