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How Severe was The Video Game Crash of 1977?


Magmavision2000

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Yeah around 77 you had masses of pong clones in Europe, and in 83-84 you had loads of microprocessors being released with loads of games coming out.

 

The crashes simply didn't happen anywhere near the same scale in Europe, but they were still affected in terms of US and probably Japanese companies holding back.

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Was it 1983/1984 severe or was it just a burnout?

 

It was burnout, you can only buy so many dedicated consoles that had variations of the same Pong-type games. And at least there were cartridge-based systems of the 2nd Generation to replace them that revived the market. Same thing happened in 1994 when there were too many 32-bit systems and people were tired of the same 16-bit games but there was the Playstation & N64 to keep the industry going.

 

The Great Crash didn't had a true replacement for the Atari until the NES came out for a couple years (unless you count home computers).

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Was there a "crash" in 1977? I feel like most of the companies around at that time were still making video games into the 1980's. Coleco, Taito, Atari, Nintendo, etc.

 

Maybe there was an industry downturn, but it doesn't seem like it was bad enough to force most of the big guys (for the time) out of the industry like the '83 crash did. And those same companies made most of their money after '77.

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The big players DID survive, but there must have been a dozen knockoff artists that got flushed loose. They were the equivalent of shovelwsre game companies in 83 and 84, but in 77 everyone was using the exact same Pong-on-a-chip IC to build their generic consoles. The arrival of the VCS was like a smart bomb to all those now-forgotten manufacturers.

 

This site has quite a few of these:

http://computermuseum.50megs.com/collectionpong.htm

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Was there a "crash" in 1977? I feel like most of the companies around at that time were still making video games into the 1980's. Coleco, Taito, Atari, Nintendo, etc.

 

Maybe there was an industry downturn, but it doesn't seem like it was bad enough to force most of the big guys (for the time) out of the industry like the '83 crash did. And those same companies made most of their money after '77.

 

The industry was also tiny in 1977. It also wasn't like 83 where you would notice that it became harder and harder to find cartridges in stores for your console. In 1977 the cartridge systems were just coming to market. So a lot of people may just not have noticed a crash.

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Prior to the VCS I had a couple 2 or 3 dedicated pong/hockey/racing/tank "consoles" along with the Atari Video Pinball. So despite the market "crashing" for those I never noticed. I was absorbed into what I actually had and not what was announced or coming out or endless duplicates in the store. Then cartridges!

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Yeah I was really gonna say.. Not talking about arcades, but wtf consumer home video game market was there really in 1976 to even "crash" in 1977, aside from the pong clones?

 

Just look at any Sears or JCPenny christmas catalog at that time as those are generally good indicators of the flagship toys & products.

 

In the 1976 catalog it's a sad friggin single front page item next to a pleather jacket. :lol:

post-31-0-12992400-1552500386_thumb.jpg

 

However in Winter 1977 the amount of product skyrockets showing the VCS and others. And I only remember things going gangbusters from that point on through the years with the arcades really taking off (e.g. SPACE INVADERS) and the home market coming into its own for gaming.

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Edited by NE146
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  • 4 weeks later...

It was not as severe as 83 but if you think about it, it was similar to what happened. Multiple companies putting out inferior products. Plus I think having everything as a dedicated system hurt too. Want to play pong hook it up want to play racing unhook pong hook up racing. It needed a revamp and Atari was able to provide that with the 2600. In a way it is very similar to what Nintendo did in the 80s.

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