"Great Atari Crash?"

[pacman000]

So apparently the Video Game Crash is known in China as the Great Atari Crash. Here'a the link: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&ei=VkuFTZzODc6PceW4oJwD&hl=en&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbaidu%26hl%3Den%26prmd%3Divns&rurl=translate.google.com.au&sl=zh-CN&sp=nmt4&u=https://baike.baidu.com/item/%25E9%259B%2585%25E8%25BE%25BE%25E5%2588%25A9%25E5%25A4%25A7%25E5%25B4%25A9%25E6%25BA%2583/19754656&xid=17259,1500003,15700002,15700022,15700124,15700186,15700191,15700201,15700237,15700248&usg=ALkJrhiVszU_48Aswg3pmWbnBXdoKO-QrQ

 

 

[Flojomojo]

Much of that is stolen from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983

[MrMaddog]

And known in Japan as "Atari Shock"....

[Greendude]

Funny, saw somewhere that the crash was attributed to e.t. and pac man. I know atari dumped a load of cash on e.t. I now play e.t. just to find out why it sucked. The finalv result is it sucked.

[+HatNJ]

The Pits were what made people say it sucked aside from them and if you read the manual and extra info sheet packed with it it isn't as bad as most on the Hate ET bandwagon say

 

after I read the docs I actually enjoy it

[JBerel]

ET the game itself wasn't much/if any worse than lots of other shovelware crap that was being put out at the time. It was just that all the companies keep producing volumes of stuff in excess of what the market wanted. Boneheads at Atari (actual Atari mind you, not the french douche-bags who stumbled upon their name tag on the floor of a glory hole stall) produced as many or more cartridges of Pacman and ET as there were 2600 consoles produced. They banked on the game licenses moving more consoles, and they lost. Add to that more competitors in the space and the rise of home computing, and video came consoles were completely out of demand. It's been debated that the Colecovision might have been able stay marketable if Coleco hadn't totally botched the Adam Computer and overproduced Cabbage Patch dolls after the hysteria ran out. If they hadn't put themselves outta business, I bet the Colecovision would have survived a while.

[spacecadet]

ET the game itself wasn't much/if any worse than lots of other shovelware crap that was being put out at the time.

That's definitely true, but it was the *biggest*. It would be like if Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 6 and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuucked and everyone hated it. Oh, and Sony had bet the future of the PS5 on it as one of its major tentpole exclusives.

 

E.T. wasn't much worse than a lot of games at the time, but it was a lot more culturally significant than any of those other games.

[MrMaddog]

There was a trick for getting out of the pits in ET, only move left or right when outside.

 

But the thing that ruined ET and Atari was Warner overpaid for the rights and could only break even by selling millions of copies. Obviously that didn't happened...

[+TwentySixHundred]

Always believed the crash was more to the lifespan of the system. Just like most consoles of a 5 year lifecycle, the 2600 was fading in interest. With other systems coming to the market to resume the brilliant idea of playing video games - at home - in your living room - on your own TV. The novelty was wearing off and most these new systems really didn't offer a whole lot more for a hefty price.

 

The PC age was starting to boom and that was considered a useful tool aswell as a system to play games on. I remember my family and many others having to save for over 12 months before even considering to buy entertainment goods. Most had to wait for birthdays to see if we were lucky to get a radio or a cassette player. The 5200 and the Coleco Vision were not offering enough to justify the price when people already had a similar system.

 

I lean more towards the crash is what threw Atari "down the drain" due to poor judgement in predicted sales. They were running like a steam train with the burner on full tilt. Failing to notice the drop in sales and arrogant enough to think one movie based game will fly off the selves like hot cakes. While most were back outside riding push bikes and the console collecting dust. As for the games being dumped im fairly convinced it was a by product of the crash.

 

By all means in not saying no one at all was buying games and systems but rather the novelty had died off. Neither am i saying there wasn't shovelware pushed onto shelves left right and center either. That's why it's not hard to find many games released in 82-83 that are far worse then E.T by a long shot. Anyway wasn't till Nintendo raised the bar enough offering a system that was capable of justifying the hard earned cash. They brought back the excitement, desire and want.

 

That's my take on the whole crash

Edited January 17, 2019 by Tony The 2600

[high voltage]

Most of the silver box range was actually of great quality, Atari really shined in 1983.

 

Their mistake was releasing the Atari 5200 with VCS titles, and basically, they just looked a bit better.

Edited January 17, 2019 by high voltage

[Flojomojo]

A new cartridge was twenty or thirty dollars in 1983, which is like $50 or $75 today. It's easy to imagine the market slowing down, especially when picking a quality title was a gamble. While I agree that silver label games were "peak Atari," I'm not sure of the value of Vanguard, Moon Patrol, Phoenix, Dig Dug and other arcade ports at those prices. The crash made them accessible to kids like me.

[+Atari_Warlord]

The crash was also a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy. As soon as video games emerged in the 70's the media didn't understand it and kept calling it a fad. As soon as sales slowed down everyone said "I told you so" and the stores stopped buying. This cycle had been repeated many times for new products since the 50's with the post WWII boom and the proliferation of television and advertising.

[Flojomojo]

They weren't exactly wrong to call it a fad -- there's a reason we all come to this board to pay homage to what we call the "classic" era of video games.

[JBerel]

Fad or not, the stores clearly didn't stop buying soon enough. All those game carts I bought for $2-$5 proves that. I ended up with virtually the entire library of Colecovision games before it was all over. It was all just supply and demand. Those companies got complacent and thought people would buy anything they slapped a label on and pushed out the door. Unfortunately, they're still doing it today.

[Greendude]

I also owned a coleco vision 82 or 83 that I can remember. The carts became real cheap. I had a driving game with steering wheel and gas pedal for dirt cheap. Still had that soccer stored in a closet until 88 when I sold it to a neighborhood kid for candy money. That was the days before ebay.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Greendude

[Flojomojo]

Unfortunately, they're still doing it today.

 

I guess, but one must assume they know what they're doing, even when some things end up on clearance. The risk/cost of overstocking physical media is much smaller today. Featherweight DVD cases barely contain any plastic nowadays, let alone printed documentation.

[JBerel]

I'm sure the costs of materials and disposal of same is all figured into their accounting nowadays. I'm speaking mostly to constant retreads and remakes of games that were on prior systems. There's very little new content, even less original new content, and pitifully little good original content. Of course, I'm clearly not the audience anymore.

[John Stamos Mullet]

They weren't exactly wrong to call it a fad -- there's a reason we all come to this board to pay homage to what we call the "classic" era of video games.

thats not really a fad though, because the video game industry still exists and has only gotten bigger. That's like calling classic cars a "fad". Fads are more associated with things that are briefly popular, then disappear altogether.

[Flojomojo]

Like bell bottom pants?

 

Coin-op, single-screen, high score chasers in cabinets (and the home games that simulated them) are no longer in fashion.

[bradhig1]

Why do people always talk about Atari's failure when talking about the crash? Atari's failure didn't bring down Coleco ,Mattel, or Magnavox? Atari didn't kill the arcades in 1983 either. You would think there would be a documentary about the video game crash of 1983 besides Game Over which talks about Atari''s downfall and E.T.

[atarilovesyou]

The thing to keep in mind regardless of the 'how' the crash happened, the demand for video games as an entertainment form never went away. Comparing those days in 83 to 85 to today is truly apples and oranges, so reasons today like console lifetimes doesn't really apply...and slack needs to be given to some degree as this was a new industry, so to speak.

 

It's never as simple as some soundbite youtube clickbait or millenial noob who wasn't there will have you believe.

 

I personally think that if Atari had released the Jr in 84, and reduced the price of carts instead of blowing them out, could have kept them in the game long enough to have a more seamless transition to the 7800. Too right about the 5200, though..as expensive as it was, you weren't going to get much more than better graphics for games that had already been released...thinking along the lines that all the vinyl guys would upgrade to CD tech, rebuying the same albums...obviously didn't happen.

Edited January 24, 2019 by atarilovesyou

[atarilovesyou]

thats not really a fad though, because the video game industry still exists and has only gotten bigger. That's like calling classic cars a "fad". Fads are more associated with things that are briefly popular, then disappear altogether.

Agreed. I remember readjng at the tine in Consumer Reports that video games were a fad. Hard nope: yes, Pac Man and Donkey Kong and Asteroids were fads...but 'video games' were and are not, any more than movies are fads.

 

Perhaps I haven't looked up the def of a fad lately but hoola hoops and Tickle Me Elmos, Cabbage Patch Kids...thise are fads. But toys are not. I think the older generation of business people completely misunderstood what video games were and what they meant...and what they would eventually become. Not the first time, nor the last.

[Flojomojo]

Why do people always talk about Atari's failure when talking about the crash? Atari's failure didn't bring down Coleco ,Mattel, or Magnavox? Atari didn't kill the arcades in 1983 either. You would think there would be a documentary about the video game crash of 1983 besides Game Over which talks about Atari''s downfall and E.T.

 

Because Atari was the first, biggest, most visible. It was a household name and they specialized in video games. Mattel had Barbie and Coleco (originally a leather company) had Cabbage Patch for a while. Magnavox and Mattel shut down their game divisions. Coleco folded under its own weight, but was never as large as Atari. The E.T. deal is big and memorable and an easy-to-tell story. They lost $583 million in 1983, by far the biggest negative in the still-developing industry at the time.

 

I feel like arcades lived on after Atari?

[Flojomojo]

Agreed. I remember readjng at the tine in Consumer Reports that video games were a fad. Hard nope: yes, Pac Man and Donkey Kong and Asteroids were fads...

We should dig those up, I'm sure they're out there. A few months back, I was flipping through old mags on Archive.org. I was surprised at how frankly Katz & Kunkel spoke about the market slowdown in their magazines while the slide was happening. Even as kids, we knew something was changing.

[pacman000]

Why do people always talk about Atari's failure when talking about the crash? Atari's failure didn't bring down Coleco ,Mattel, or Magnavox? Atari didn't kill the arcades in 1983 either. You would think there would be a documentary about the video game crash of 1983 besides Game Over which talks about Atari''s downfall and E.T.

Didn't Atari have about 80% of the market?

 

 

I lean more towards the crash is what threw Atari "down the drain" due to poor judgement in predicted sales. They were running like a steam train with the burner on full tilt. Failing to notice the drop in sales and arrogant enough to think one movie based game will fly off the selves like hot cakes. While most were back outside riding push bikes and the console collecting dust. As for the games being dumped im fairly convinced it was a by product of the crash.

I've read Atari started hurting in 81. I assume Atari was forcing distributors to buy more to keep their own numbers up. By 1983-84 they couldn't even do that. Atari realized they had too many competing distributors. They revoked a number of distributorships, who sent back overstock. Atari had to dispose of the overstock, which, combined with their debt, resulted in a huge loss.

 

Most new markets attract a lot of investors who want to get in on the ground floor. Go back a hundred years & you'll see hundreds of local auto manufacturers. Where are they today? The Video Game crash was nothing special; it was a normal correction for a new, expanding market.