The Great Video Game Crash of 1983: Difference between revisions
The libraries were very distinguishable. Q-Bert is an unusual case. Furthermore, that ad includes computers and the 5200, which are not referenced in the paragraph!
(Sears was just the 2600 rebranded + some other corrections (there certainly were plenty of magazines!) And general shortening. And home computers of this time aren't usually called PCs.) |
(The libraries were very distinguishable. Q-Bert is an unusual case. Furthermore, that ad includes computers and the 5200, which are not referenced in the paragraph!) |
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With its customer base eroded by its inferior technology, Atari had racked up nearly half a ''billion'' (and that's '''not''' adjusting for inflation) in losses by the end of 1983. Atari wasn't alone in its troubles, as its competitors were also facing hard times:
* A glut of companies [[Follow the Leader|attempting to follow in Atari's success]] gave consumers too many choices, which meant no one system could succeed in the long term, since very few consumers would buy more than one. These included (but were not limited to) the Bally Astrocade, the [[Colecovision]], the Coleco Gemini (a 2600 clone), the Emerson Arcadia 2001, the [[Magnavox Odyssey]] [[Odyssey 2]], the Mattel [[Intellivision]], the Vectrex, and the Fairchild Channel F-System II
* A similar problem occurred with software. Games for these systems were cheap to produce, and since their makers figured [[Shovelware|they'd sell no matter the quality]], [[Sturgeon's Law|poor titles from dozens of hastily-created start-ups flooded the market]]. Even non-video game companies like Quaker Oats produced games, which were [[Product Placement|little more than thinly-disguised commercials for their products]], such as ''Chase the Chuck Wagon'' (Purina) and ''The Kool-Aid Man''. As the Crash started, these companies were the first to go.
* As game developers went out of business, retailers were left with unsold product that could not be returned to now-defunct manufacturers. Hoping to salvage ''something'', stores offered massive discounts just to clear inventory. The market for higher-priced new games shrunk in the face of large amounts of budget-priced crud, especially since...
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