Over the course of 5 years between 1978 and 1983, the home console industry grew from a fledgling market to an economic powerhouse worth over $3 billion. Amidst the many home consoles manufacturers and game developers, one company stood above the rest - Atari. With the dominance of its Atari 2600, as well as a plethora of great hits in the 2600's library, including but not limited to Space Invaders and Missile Command, Atari was the undisputed king of home consoles.
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| The Atari 2600 |
However, unbeknownst to many, the pride of the home console market would soon become the cause of its collapse. In March of 1982, Atari released a highly successful port of Pac-man, which sold over 7 million units. Despite its financial success, the game was rushed in development, resulting in a game riddled with bugs. As a result, even though the game was able to sell several million copies, it did not reach expectations, with millions of unsold cartridges that had to be sent back to Atari.
The failure of Pac-man was simply the first major sign of impending disaster for the young industry. Later that same year, Atari had a chance for redemption with its highly anticipated game ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, based on the hit movie of the same name. Even though the development of ET had been rushed over the course of a mere 5 weeks to meet a Christmas deadline, Atari still had high hopes of the game.
Unfortunately for Atari, ET was an even greater disaster than Pac-man was. Not only was it so bad it was widely considered to be the worst video game of all time - a title it still holds to this day - but it sold so poorly Atari had to bury millions of unsold cartridges in the Mohave Desert. The game's financial failure was likely due to the hesitance of consumers after the release of Pac-man earlier that year in addition to the less than positive word of mouth.
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| The Nintendo Entertainment System |
There are a few important things to note about the Video Game Crash of 1983.
Although ET is widely attributed to be the sole cause of the Crash, there were, in reality, other factors. Prior to the release of ET, the market was already flooded with low-quality, buggy games. Despite the poor quality of its competition, nearly all games released by Atari were high quality, well-made products. It is only when Atari games started to fall in quality that most people lost faith in the home console market altogether.
In addition, the Crash was more limited in scope than many would believe. Although home video game consoles all but vanished, arcades and computer games still remained hugely popular. Furthermore, the Crash was largely limited to North America. During the 2 years of the crash, consoles in Japan became hugely popular with the success of Nintendo's Famicom, the Japanese counterpart to the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Sources:
http://www.denofgeek.com/us/64579/the-1983-videogame-crash-what-went-wrong-and-could-it-happen-again
https://www.bugsplat.com/great-video-game-crash-1983
http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/21/ten-facts-about-the-great-video-game-crash-of-83?page=2
Very interesting post! I was reminded of the time when I visited the Computer History Museum (near Shoreline) and they had on display a lot of old technology that boomed during this era, like the Atari 2600 you mentioned. Additionally, one of which, as you mentioned, was the FamiCom, created by Nintendo. After seeing success in the many arcade games they have already created, they decided to create a device that would allow people to take the games back to their homes and enjoy them there. Many of the titles we know now, like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. were born from this invention. The device was available for purchase for 20 years until it disappeared from the shelves. During this era, this device was very popular as it was compact and portable and turned into many's childhood memories.
ReplyDeleteWow, I had never thought about Pac-Man as having a "failure" at one point. With such an iconic video game, I assumed that it was all smooth sailing from the get go. Interestingly enough, Pac-Man was actually inspired by a pizza that 27 year old Namco employee Toru Iwantani claims he was eating when he got the idea for a video game that centered around eating. The pizza was missing two slices that sort of resembled a mouth, and thus Iwantani created a game called Pakkuman - a name derivative of the Japanese phrase "paku-paku taberu," which is an onomatopoeic slang term used to describe the sound that a sound makes when it's opened widely and then closed again in close succession. Basically, Pac-Man does just that when he eats up the dots. Before releasing the game, he changed the name to Puck Man due to the shape of the character. When the game was released into the United States, the difficulty of the game was changed, as was the pace of the game and the artwork on the cabinet. Most importantly, the name was changed to Pac-Man due to fear of vandals turning the "P" into an "F." Overnight, Pac-Man was a hit in the States and made over a billion dollars in quarters within its first year; by the 1990s, the game had generated about two and a half billion dollars (in quarters as well!). Can you imagine if Iwatani had decided to get a burrito instead of ordering pizza that night?
ReplyDeleteCharles, great job on this post! I think an often neglected subject of history is the rise (and fall) of video games. I noticed you talked about how computer games were popular during the 80s, and this contributed to the video game crash of the '83. I found that with the creation and sales of a new generation of computers, including the Apple II and the Commodore 64, allowed for new and better computer games to be created. These new computers had stronger processors, which allowed games with more complexity and quality to be run on the machines. In addition, these computers gave users the technology they needed to create their own games with the BASIC programming language. A famous example would be Bill Gates and his game "Donkey", where one dodges donkeys while driving down a highway. It's interesting to see how the computer gaming industry and the console gaming industry were competitors at this time. With the rise of one came the fall of the other. It's certainly different from how it is today, where the two industries overlap and merge at certain games, allowing for what's known as cross-platform gaming. The change of the gaming industry over time is fascinating to observe, and the future will bring only more advancement to this thriving industry.
ReplyDeletehttps://techcrunch.com/2015/10/31/the-history-of-gaming-an-evolving-community/
Great post Charles. I think it's interesting to somewhat see the progression of video games over time, as well as this low point in the industry's history. I think there are parallels that can be made with some games even today that get rushed through development in anticipation of huge sales, but then disappoint audiences. Star War Battlefront II being a good example. There are many lessons to be learned from history, even when it comes to video games. Maybe if today's developers took the time to learn from this crash then fewer problems would occur. It's also always cool to look back at some of the classic games and see how they've stood the test of time. Tons of people still play games like Pac-man and Snake. Space Invaders is also another great game to this day.
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