Video game crash

Tom Owad said: I don't really know. I sure you can find a better explaination in any of a half dozen books that are out about the video game business but here is my condensed version for what it's worth: Prior to 1983 Atari was making ALOT OF MONEY selling 2600 units and cartridges (remember PAC-MAN fever). It was the Microsoft of the 70s and early 80s. Many other companies, not wanting to miss the boat, saw this happening and jumped in with their their own systems. Some of these companies were betting the farm on this craze. And it seem like everyone and their kid sister was coming out with cartridges for these systems. (At one point you could send in to the makers of Gravy Train (or was it Chuck Wagon) dog food to get a cartridge called "Chase the Chuck Wagon") I have heard that black market copies of the programming manual for the 2600 cost $10,000, which is a small price to pay if you could possibly make millions making and selling cartridges. Some programmers made 1 million dollar bonuses on a single game and that was back when one programmer by himself would write a game in 6 months. It was a time of madness. BUT, 1982 was one of those years when computers just exploded. Machines like the C64. Easy to set up, cheap, better graphics and sound. People started putting their Atari 2600s in the closet and going out and buying computers. Parents were complaining that kids were playing video games too much. The fad was over. Almost overnight 2600 cartridges when from $20-$30 to $3-$5 each. Atari was the head domino and when they fell, they all started to fall. Some very large companies almost went lights out when the prices fell. Atari was split up into Atari Games(coin-op) and Atari Corp.(home computers) Other companies just faded away. Home video game systems did not come back into fashion until 1986 with Nintendo. For more details see http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/atari/Atari-Timeline.html ========================================= Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com Senior Software Engineer Press Start Inc. Sunnyvale,CA Curator Museum of Personal Computing Machinery http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum =========================================