When an arcade game was released, how long did it take to get into arcades?

[+Random Terrain]

When a list like the following shows the date an arcade game was released, did it take another month to get into arcades across the USA or did they make it into arcades that month?

 

Scott Evans already publicly released the Atari Games internal document that keeps count of manufacture date and numbers produced - though numbers produced starts in '76.

 

http://www.atarigame...inumbers90s.pdf

[Rybags]

It was up to arcades to want to buy a given game so there'd not really be wide debut like movies.

 

But I guess they would have had pre-release commitments - there's flyers around that were used to promote upcoming games.

 

Pretty surprising some of the low numbers on the later games, it's a wonder they kept going as long as they did.

[+Random Terrain]

So maybe the pre-release commitments means that at least some arcades got the games within that month. I'm still not sure if I should add a month or two to make sure the games were in a lot of arcades. My arcade sections are called "At the Arcades" so I'm interested in when the games were available for most people to play.

[Rybags]

For historical purposes the release date should be enough I reckon.

 

Getting real data would be hard, unless there's someone who was involved with distribution and the record keeping or if there's hard data available for takings. Although with outright ownership there's not really any obligation for them to provide that info.

 

You also have the Namco factor - outside the US many of the Namco games were released by them and the dates would be different. I can't be sure, I think I might have seen one Atari Pole Position but the bulk here were Namco. Same with Dig Dug, there were Namco and the pirated ones, nothing else.

[+Random Terrain]

For historical purposes the release date should be enough I reckon.

 

OK, thanks. I'll stick with the USA release dates. I can always move them later if people complain that the games are listed a month too early.