The Great Video Game Crash of 1983: Difference between revisions
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In 1983, however, something [[Gone Horribly Wrong|went terribly wrong]]. Dozens of game manufacturers and console producers went out of business, production of new games crawled to a standstill, and the American console game market as a whole was dead for the next two years. What happened? Although the Crash was an industry-wide phenomenon, the best place to start is with the downfall of [[Atari]], a tale forever linked to the Crash:
* Atari's principal hardware platform, the model 2600 game console, was showing its age technologically. Designed in 1977 to be manufactured cheaply, its graphics were primitive and its memory severely limited (128 bytes - not kilobytes or megabytes - of RAM). The limitations were initially tolerated as the common mass-market computers in 1977 were the then-new Apple ][ (powerful but expensive), Commodore PET (no colour graphics) and Radio Shack "TRaSh-80" (no colour or sound). By 1983? Desktop computers were coming down in price, their sound and graphics were improving and consumers were looking for a system which could do more than just play a few primitive video games.
* Atari refused to give game designers authorial credit or royalties. Many of Atari's programmers left to form their own companies to make games for the 2600, the most famous and successful of which is [[Activision]]. Atari lost its legal attempts to prevent this, which allowed the most creative people in the industry to directly compete with Atari's own efforts.
* Atari's business strategy — sell its consoles as cheaply as possible while relying on game sales for profit — made the situation worse. It worked when Atari was the only game in town, but with the rise of the competition, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Atari's profits suffered]].
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