The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale
recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...
in the
video game industry
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...
that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including
market saturation
In economics, market saturation is a situation in which a product has become diffused (distributed) within a market; the actual level of saturation can depend on consumer purchasing power; as well as competition, prices, and technology.
Theory ...
in the number of
video game consoles and available games, many of which
were of poor quality, as well as waning interest in
console games
A console game is a type of video game consisting of images and often sounds generated by a video game console, which are displayed on a television or similar audio-video system, and that can be manipulated by a player. This manipulation usually ...
in favor of
personal computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
s. Home video game revenues peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent). The crash abruptly ended what is retrospectively considered the
second generation of console video gaming in North America. To a lesser extent, the
arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
market also weakened as the
golden age of arcade video games
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development and cultural influence of arcade video games, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The period began with the release of ''Space Invaders'' in 1978, ...
came to an end.
Lasting about two years, the crash shook a then-booming video game industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing
home computers and video game consoles. Analysts of the time expressed doubts about the long-term viability of video game consoles and software.
The North American video game console industry recovered a few years later, mostly due to the widespread success of Nintendo's Western branding for its
Famicom
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...
console, the
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
(NES), released in 1985. The NES was designed to avoid the missteps that caused the 1983 crash and the stigma associated with video games at that time.
Causes and factors
Flooded console market
The
Atari Video Computer System
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocesso ...
(renamed the Atari 2600 in late 1982) was not the first home system with swappable
game cartridge
A ROM cartridge, usually referred to in context simply as a cartridge, cart, or card, is a replaceable part designed to be connected to a consumer electronics device such as a home computer, video game console or, to a lesser extent, electron ...
s, but by the early 1980s it was the most popular
second-generation console by a wide margin. Launched in 1977 just ahead of
the collapse of the market for home ''
Pong
''Pong'' is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcor ...
'' console clones, the Atari VCS experienced modest sales for its first few years. In 1980, Atari's licensed version of ''
Space Invaders
is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. ''Space Invaders'' was the first fixed shooter and set ...
'' from
Taito
is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. It b ...
became the console's
killer application
In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video game ...
; sales of the VCS quadrupled, and the game was the first title to sell more than a million copies.
Spurred by the success of the Atari VCS, other consoles were introduced, both from Atari and other companies:
Odyssey²,
Intellivision
The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel, Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. I ...
,
ColecoVision
ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision.
The console offered a closer expe ...
,
Atari 5200
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600 at the time of the 520 ...
, and
Vectrex
The Vectrex is a vector display-based home video game console–the only one ever designed and released for the home market, developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe an ...
. Notably, Coleco sold an add-on allowing Atari VCS games to be played on its ColecoVision, as well as bundling the console with a licensed home version of Nintendo's arcade hit ''
Donkey Kong
is a video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of a gorilla named Donkey Kong (character), Donkey Kong and his clan of other Ape, apes and monkeys. The franchise primarily consists of plat ...
''. In 1982, the ColecoVision held roughly 17% of the hardware market, compared to Atari VCS's 58%. This was the first real threat to Atari's dominance of the home console market.
Each new console had its own library of games produced exclusively by the console maker, while the Atari VCS also had a large selection of titles produced by third-party developers. In 1982, analysts marked trends of saturation, mentioning that the amount of new software coming in would only allow a few big hits, that retailers had devoted too much floor space to systems, and that price drops for home computers could result in an industry shakeup.
In addition, the rapid growth of the videogame industry led to an increased demand, which the manufacturers over-projected. In 1983, an analyst for
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
stated the demand for video games was up 100% from the previous, but the manufacturing output had increased by 175%, creating a significant surplus. Atari CEO
Raymond Kassar recognized in 1982 that the industry's saturation point was imminent. However, Kassar expected this to occur when about half of American households had a video game console. Unfortunately, the crash occurred when about 15 million machines had been sold, which soundly under-shot Kassar's estimate.
Loss of publishing control
Prior to 1979, there were no
third-party developer
A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...
s, with console manufacturers like Atari publishing all the games for their respective platforms. This changed with the formation of
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...
in 1979. Activision was founded by four Atari
programmers
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
who left the company because they felt that Atari's developers should receive the same recognition and accolades (specifically in the form of sales-based royalties and public-facing credits) as the actors, directors, and musicians working for other subsidiaries of
Warner Communications
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
(Atari's parent company at the time). Already being quite familiar with the Atari VCS, the four programmers developed their own games and cartridge manufacturing processes. Atari quickly sued to block sales of Activision's products, but failed to secure a
restraining order
A restraining order or protective order, is an order used by a court to protect a person in a situation involving alleged domestic violence, child abuse, assault, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault.
Restraining and personal protection or ...
, and ultimately settled the case in 1982. While the settlement stipulated that Activision must pay royalties to Atari, this case ultimately legitimized the viability of third-party game developers. Activision's games were as popular as Atari's, with ''
Pitfall!
''Pitfall!'' is a platform video game designed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released by Activision in 1982. The player controls Pitfall Harry and is tasked with collecting all the treasures in a jungle within 20 minutes. The world con ...
'' (released in 1982) selling over 4 million units.
Prior to 1982, Activision was one of only a handful of third parties publishing games for the Atari VCS. By 1982, Activision's success emboldened numerous other competitors to penetrate the market. However, Activision's founder
David Crane observed that several of these companies were supported by venture capitalists attempting to emulate the success of Activision. Without the experience and skill of Activision's team, these inexperienced competitors mostly created
games of poor quality.
Crane notably described these as "the worst games you can imagine".
While Activision's success could be attributed to the team's existing familiarity with the Atari VCS, other publishers had no such advantage. They largely relied on
industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.
While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...
(poaching each other's employees, reverse-engineering each other's products, etc.) in their attempts to gain market share. In fact, even Atari themselves engaged in such practices, hiring several programmers from Mattel's Intellivision development studio, prompting a lawsuit that included charges of industrial espionage.
The rapid growth of the third-party game industry was easily illustrated by the number of vendors present at the semi-annual
Consumer Electronics Show
CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
(CES). According to Crane, the number of third-party developers jumped from 3 to 30 between two consecutive events.
At the Summer 1982 CES,
there were 17 companies, including
MCA Inc.
MCA Inc. (originally an initialism for Music Corporation of America) was an American media conglomerate founded in 1924. Originally a talent agency with artists in the music business as clients, the company became a major force in the film ind ...
, and
Fox Video Games announcing a combined 90 new Atari games.
By 1983, an estimated 100 companies were attempting to leverage the CES into a foothold in the market. ''
AtariAge
AtariAge is a website focusing on classic Atari video games. The site features gaming news, historical archives, discussion forums, and an online store. It was founded in 1998.
Taking its name from the 1982–84 '' Atari Age'' magazine, the site ...
'' documented 158 different vendors that had developed for the Atari VCS.
In June 1982, the Atari games on the market numbered just 100. By December, that number grew to over 400. Experts predicted a glut in 1983, with only 10% of games producing 75% of sales.
''
BYTE
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
'' stated in December that "in 1982 few games broke new ground in either design or format ... If the public really likes an idea, it is milked for all its worth, and numerous clones of a different color soon crowd the shelves. That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the
hula hoop
A hula hoop is a toy hoop that is twirled around the waist, limbs or neck. It can also be wheeled along the ground like a wheel, with careful execution. They have been used by children and adults since at least 500 BC. The modern hula hoop ...
of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit."
Bill Kunkel said in January 1983 that companies had "licensed everything that moves, walks, crawls, or tunnels beneath the earth. You have to wonder how tenuous the connection will be between the game and the movie ''
Marathon Man''. What are you going to do, present a video game root canal?"
By September 1983 the ''Phoenix'' stated that 2600 cartridges were "no longer a growth industry". Activision, Atari, and Mattel all had experienced programmers, but many of the new companies rushing to join the market did not have the expertise or talent to create quality games. Titles such as the ''
Kaboom!''-like ''
Lost Luggage
Lost luggage is luggage conveyed by a public carrier such as an airline, seafaring cruise ship, shipping company, or railway which fails to arrive at the correct destination with the passenger. In the United States, an average of 1 in 150 peo ...
'', rock band tie-in ''
Journey Escape
''Journey Escape'' is a video game developed and manufactured by Data Age in San Jose, California for the Atari 2600 console, and released in 1982. It stars the rock band Journey, one of the world's most popular acts at the time, and is based on ...
'', and plate-spinning game ''
Dishaster
''Dishaster'' is an action game released for the Atari 2600 in 1983 by Zimag. Another version of the game was released by Bit Corporation under the name ''Dancing Plates'' which features oriental-themed graphics and adds eight game variations.
...
'', were examples of games made in the hopes of taking advantage of the video-game boom, but later proved unsuccessful with retailers and potential customers.
Besides just flooding the market with far too many ideas, there was also a limited competitive space. According to Activision's Jim Levy, they had projected that the total cartridge market in 1982 would be around 60 million, anticipating Activision would be able to secure between 12% and 15% of that market for their production numbers. However, with at least 50 different companies in the new marketspace, and each having produced between one and two million cartridges, along with Atari's own estimated 60 million cartridges in 1982, there was over 200% production of the actual demand for cartridges in 1982, which contributed to the stockpiling of unsold inventory during the crash.
Lack of consumer confidence
Prior to 1982, Atari was considered the dominant company in the home video game industry, but as described above, new players in the hardware market and the loss of publishing control caused the company to slip from its dominant position.
During 1982, Atari took several missteps in trying to regain its dominance that caused the market and consumers to lose confidence in the company and in turn the video game industry as a whole.
One factor was around certain games Atari chose to publish, as by this point, with the company owned by Warner Communication, it was more focused on business opportunities rather than innovation. Many of its executives were
MBAs, and looked for any business opportunity that would give them an edge over other third-party game publishers.
Coleco's deal with Nintendo for ''
Donkey Kong
is a video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of a gorilla named Donkey Kong (character), Donkey Kong and his clan of other Ape, apes and monkeys. The franchise primarily consists of plat ...
'' was a major threat to Atari.
Atari had had past success with its own licenses of arcade hits ported to the Atari VCS, but also had begun to look for other lucrative licensing opportunities that they could differentiate themselves from other companies.
Two games released in 1982, often cited retrospectively as major contributors to the crash, contributed to weakening Atari's consumer confidence: ''
Pac-Man
originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...
'', and ''
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial''. The Atari VCS port of the arcade hit ''Pac-Man'' was released in March 1982 and was critically panned, with its graphics cited as particularly poor. While some vendors canceled orders, most of the large retailers continued to sell the game, and Atari sold seven million units in 1982. Still, the quality issues hurt the Atari brand and led some consumers to ask for refunds.
''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' was developed by
Howard Scott Warshaw
Howard Scott Warshaw (born July 30, 1957), also known as HSW, is an American psychotherapist and former game designer. He worked at Atari in the early 1980s, where he designed and programmed the Atari 2600 games '' Yars' Revenge'', ''Raiders of t ...
in only six weeks under rush orders at Atari's direction to meet the sales for the 1982 Christmas season after Atari had secured the rights to the film for about .
''E.T.'' was a top-selling video game in late 1982 and early 1983 according to ''
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...
'', selling 2.6 million copies by 1983, but also was met with lackluster reviews across the industry, with "primitive" graphics and "dull" gameplay.
In 1983 returns outstripped sales by 660,000 units.
The combined impact of the underperforming sales and poor quality of ''Pac-Man'' and ''E.T.'' reflected on Atari as it caused consumers to become wary of the company's future products, leading to a slowdown in sales entering 1983.
Atari attempted to improve future arcade and licensed game ports to draw back consumers, such as the ''
Ms. Pac-Man
is a 1982 maze arcade game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is the first sequel to '' Pac-Man'' (1980) and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the title character, Pac-Man's ...
'' port which was more positively received by critics.
However, they were unable to capture similar sales numbers as prior to 1982.
Competition from home computers
![Commodore-64-Computer-FL](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Commodore-64-Computer-FL.jpg)
Inexpensive home computers had been first introduced in 1977 and, by 1979, Atari unveiled the
Atari 400 and 800 computers, built around a chipset originally meant for use in a game console, and which retailed for the same price as their respective names. In 1981,
IBM introduced the first
IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
with a $1,565 base price
(), while
Sinclair Research
Sinclair Research Ltd is a British consumer electronics company founded by Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. It was originally incorporated in 1973 as Westminster Mail Order Ltd, renamed Sinclair Instrument Ltd, then Science of Cambridge Ltd, the ...
introduced its low-end
ZX81
The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cos ...
microcomputer for
£70 (). By 1982, new desktop computer designs were commonly providing better color graphics and sound than game consoles and personal computer sales were booming. The
TI-99/4A
The TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A are home computers released by Texas Instruments in 1979 and 1981, respectively. Based on the Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor originally used in minicomputers, the TI-99/4 was the first 16-bit home computer. ...
and the Atari 400 were both at $349 (), the
Tandy Color Computer
The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Co ...
sold at $379 (), and
Commodore International
Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mach ...
had just reduced the price of the
VIC-20
The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PE ...
to $199 () and the
C64 to $499 ().
[Ahl, David H. (1984 November)]
The first decade of personal computing
. ''Creative Computing'', vol. 10, no. 11: p. 30.
Because computers generally had more
memory
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
and faster
processors
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, ...
than a console, they permitted more sophisticated games. A 1984 compendium of reviews of Atari 8-bit software used 198 pages for games compared to 167 for all other software types.
Home computers could also be used for tasks such as
word processing
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...
and home accounting. Games were easier to distribute, since they could be sold on
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
s or
cassette tape
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...
s instead of
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
cartridges. This opened the field to a
cottage industry
The putting-out system is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the project via remote ...
of third-party software developers. Writeable storage media allowed players to save games in progress, a useful feature for increasingly complex games which was not available on the consoles of the era.
In 1982, a price war that began between Commodore and Texas Instruments led to home computers becoming as inexpensive as video-game consoles;
after Commodore cut the retail price of the C64 to $300 in June 1983, some stores began selling it for as little as $199.
Dan Gutman
Dan Gutman (born October 19, 1955) is an American writer, primarily of children's fiction.
His works include the '' Baseball Card Adventures'' children's book series that began with '' Honus & Me'', and the '' My Weird School'' series.
Early li ...
, founder in 1982 of ''Video Games Player'' magazine in an article in 1987, recalled in 1983 that "People asked themselves, 'Why should I buy a video game system when I can buy a computer that will play games and do so much more?'" ''
The Boston Phoenix
''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States of America by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the ''Portland Phoenix'' a ...
'' stated in September 1983 about the cancellation of the
Intellivision III, "Who was going to pay $200-plus for a machine that could only play games?"
Commodore explicitly targeted video game players. Spokesman
William Shatner
William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship USS Enterpri ...
asked in VIC-20 commercials "Why buy just a video game from Atari or Intellivision?", stating that "unlike games, it has a real computer keyboard" yet "plays great games too".
Commodore's ownership of chip fabricator
MOS Technology
MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is mo ...
allowed manufacture of
integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
s
in-house
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
, so the VIC-20 and C64 sold for much lower prices than competing home computers. In addition, both Commodore computers were designed to utilize the
ubiquitous Atari controllers so they could tap into the existing controller market.
"I've been in retailing 30 years and I have never seen any category of goods get on a self-destruct pattern like this", a
Service Merchandise
Service Merchandise was a retail chain of catalog showrooms carrying jewelry, toys, sporting goods, and electronics. The company, which first began in 1934 as a five-and-dime store, was in existence for 68 years before ceasing operations in 2002.
...
executive told ''The New York Times'' in June 1983. The price war was so severe that in September Coleco CEO
Arnold Greenberg welcomed rumors of an
IBM 'Peanut' home computer because although IBM was a competitor, it "is a company that knows how to make money". "I look back a year or two in the videogame field, or the home-computer field", Greenberg added, "how much better everyone was, when most people were making money, rather than very few".
Companies reduced production in the middle of the year because of weak demand even as prices remained low, causing shortages as sales suddenly rose during the Christmas season;
only the Commodore 64 was widely available, with an estimated more than 500,000 computers sold during Christmas.
The 99/4A was such a disaster for TI, that the company's stock immediately rose by 25% after the company discontinued it and exited the home-computer market in late 1983.
JCPenney
Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...
announced in December 1983 that it would soon no longer sell home computers, because of the combination of low supply and low prices.
By that year, Gutman wrote, "Video games were officially dead and computers were hot". He renamed his magazine ''Computer Games'' in October 1983, but "I noticed that the word ''games'' became a dirty word in the press. We started replacing it with ''simulations'' as often as possible". Soon "The computer slump began ... Suddenly, everyone was saying that the home computer was a fad, just another hula hoop". ''Computer Games'' published its last issue in late 1984.
In 1988, ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
'' founder Russell Sipe noted that "the arcade game crash of 1984 took down the majority of the computer game magazines with it." He stated that, by "the winter of 1984, only a few computer game magazines remained," and by the summer of 1985, ''Computer Gaming World'' "was the only 4-color computer game magazine left."
Result
Immediate effects
The release of so many new games in 1982 flooded the market. Most stores had insufficient space to carry new games and consoles. As stores tried to return the surplus games to the new publishers, the publishers had neither new products nor cash to issue refunds to the retailers. Many publishers, including
Games by Apollo
Games by Apollo Inc. (also known as Apollo) was a third-party developer of games for the Atari 2600 video game system, based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded in October 1981 by Pat Roper as a subsidiary of his National Career Consultants (N ...
and
U.S. Games,
quickly folded. Unable to return the unsold games to defunct publishers, stores marked down the titles and placed them in discount bins and sale tables. Recently released games which initially sold for US$35 (equivalent to $99 in 2021) were in bins for $5 ($14 in 2021).
The presence of third-party sales drew the market share that the console manufacturers had. Atari's share of the cartridge-game market fell from 75% in 1981 to less than 40% in 1982, which negatively affected their finances. The bargain sales of poor-quality titles further drew sales away from the more successful third-party companies like Activision due to poorly informed consumers being drawn by price to purchase the bargain titles rather than quality. By June 1983, the market for the more expensive games had shrunk dramatically and was replaced by a new market of rushed-to-market, low-budget games. Crane said that "those awful games flooded the market at huge discounts, and ruined the video game business".
A massive industry shakeout resulted. Magnavox
Magnavox (Latin for "great voice", stylized as MAGNAVOX) is an American electronics company that since 1974 has been a subsidiary of the Dutch electronics corporation Philips.
The predecessor to Magnavox was founded in 1911 by Edwin Pridham and ...
abandoned the video game business entirely. Imagic
Imagic ( ) was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were ''Atlantis'', ''Cosmic Ark'', and ''Demo ...
withdrew its IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
the day before its stock was to go public; the company later collapsed. Activision had to downsize across 1984 and 1985 due to loss of revenue, and to stay competitive and maintain financial security, began development of games for the personal computer. Within a few years, Activision no longer produced cartridge-based games and focused solely on personal computer games.
Atari was one of those companies most affected by the crash. As a company, its revenues dropped significantly due to dramatically lower sales and cost of returned stock. By mid-1983, the company had lost and was forced to lay off 3,000 of its 10,000 worker staff. Unsold ''Pac-Man'', ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'', and other 1982 and 1983 games and consoles started to fill their warehouses. In September 1983, Atari discreetly buried much of this excess stock in a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico
Alamogordo () is the seat of Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base. The population was ...
, though Atari did not comment about their activity at the time. Misinformation related to sales of ''Pac-Man'' and ''E.T.'' led to an urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
of the Atari video game burial
The Atari video game burial was a mass burial of unsold video game cartridges, consoles, and computers in a New Mexico landfill site, undertaken by the American video game and home computer company Atari, Inc. in 1983. Before 2014, the goods ...
that millions of unsold cartridges were buried there. Gaming historians received permission to dig up the landfill as part of a documentary in 2014, during which former Atari executive James Heller, who had overseen the original burial clarified that only about 728,000 cartridges had been buried in 1982, backed by estimates made during the excavation, and disproving the scale of the urban legend. Atari's burial remains an iconic representation of the 1983 video game crash. By the end of 1983, Atari had over in losses, leading to Warner Communication to sell Atari's consumer products division in July 1984 to Jack Tramiel
Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home compute ...
, who had recently departed Commodore International. Tramiel's new company took the name Atari Corporation
Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when WarnerMedia, Warn ...
, and the directed their efforts into developing their new personal computer line, the Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
, over the console business.
Lack of confidence in the video game sector caused many retailers to stop selling video game consoles or reduced their stock significantly, reserving floor or shelf space for other products. Retailers established to exclusively sell video games folded, which impacted sales of personal computer games.
The crash also affected video game arcades, which had had several years of a golden age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...
since the introduction of ''Space Invaders
is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. ''Space Invaders'' was the first fixed shooter and set ...
'' in 1978 but was waning by 1983 due to the expansion of home consoles, the lack of novel games, and undue attention to teenage delinquency around video game arcades. While the number of arcades in the United States had doubled to 10,000 from 1980 to 1982, the crash led to a closure of around 1,500 arcades, and revenues of those that remained open had fallen by 40%.
The full effects of the industry crash were not felt until 1985. Despite Atari's claim of 1 million in worldwide sales of its 2600 game system that year, recovery was slow. The sales of home video games had dropped from $3.2 billion in 1982 to $100 million in 1985. Analysts doubted the long-term viability of the video game industry, and, according to Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
' Trip Hawkins
William Murray "Trip" Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate.
Career
A fan of the Strat-O-Matic Football pen and paper games, Hawkins started his f ...
, it had been very difficult to convince retailers to carry video games due to the stigma carried by the fall of Atari until 1985.
Two major events of 1985 helped to revitalize the video game industry. One factor came from increased sales of personal computers from Commodore and Tandy, which helped to maintain revenue for game developers like Activision and Electronic Arts, keeping the video game market alive. The other was the initial limited release of the Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
in North America in autumn 1985, followed by the full national release the following spring. Following 1986, the industry began recovering, and by 1988, annual sales in the industry exceeding $2.3 billion with 70% of the market dominated by Nintendo. In 1986, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi
was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company in 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being subsequently succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafu ...
noted that "Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games". In response, Nintendo limited the number of titles that third-party developers could release for their system each year, and promoted its " Seal of Quality", which it allowed to be used on games and peripherals by publishers that met Nintendo's quality standards.
The end of the crash allowed Commodore to raise the price of the C64 for the first time upon the June 1986 introduction of the Commodore 64c—a Commodore 64 redesigned for lower cost of manufacture—which ''Compute!'' cited as the end of the home-computer price war, one of the causes of the crash.
Long-term effects
The crash in 1983 had the largest impact in the United States, and rippled through all sectors of the global video game market worldwide, though sales of video games still remained strong in Japan, Europe, and Canada from the beleaguered American companies. It took several years for the U.S. industry to recover. The estimated worldwide market in 1982, including arcade, console, and computer games, dropped to by 1985. There was also a significant shift in the home video game market, away from consoles to personal computer software, between 1983 and 1985.
1984 is when some of the longer-term effects started to take a toll on the video game console. Companies like Magnavox
Magnavox (Latin for "great voice", stylized as MAGNAVOX) is an American electronics company that since 1974 has been a subsidiary of the Dutch electronics corporation Philips.
The predecessor to Magnavox was founded in 1911 by Edwin Pridham and ...
had decided to pull out of the video game console industry. The general consensus was that video games were just a fad that came as quickly as they left. But outside of North America the video game industry was doing very well. Home consoles were growing in popularity in Japan while home computers were surging across Europe.
United States sales fell from $3 billion to around $100 million in 1985. Despite the decline, new gaming companies started to make their way onto the scene such as Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westw ...
, Code Masters, and SquareSoft, which all started in 1985. All of these companies would go on to create numerous genre-defining titles in the future. During the holiday season of 1985 Hiroshi Yamauchi
was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company in 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being subsequently succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafu ...
decided to go to New York small markets about putting their products in their stores. Minoru Arakawa
is a Japanese businessman best known as the founder and former president of Nintendo of America, and the co-founder of Tetris Online, Inc.
Biography
Minoru Arakawa was born on 3 September 1946 in Kyoto, Japan, the second son of Waichiro Arakawa ...
offered a money back guarantee from Nintendo that they would pay back for any stock that was left unsold. In total Nintendo sold 50,000 units, about half of the units they shipped to the US.
Japanese domination
The U.S. video game crash had two long-lasting results. The first result was that dominance in the home console market shifted from the United States to Japan. The crash did not directly affect the financial viability of the video game market in Japan, but it still came as a surprise there and created repercussions that changed that industry, and thus became known as the "Atari shock".
Prior to the crash, Jonathan Greenberg of ''Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' had predicted in early 1981 that Japanese companies would eventually dominate the North American video game industry, as American video game companies were increasingly licensing products from Japanese companies, who in turn were opening up North American branches. By 1982–1983, Japanese manufacturers had captured a large share of the North American arcade market, which Gene Lipkin of Data East USA partly attributed to Japanese companies having more finances to invest in new ideas.
As the crash was happening in the United States, Japan's game industry started to shift its attention from arcade games to home consoles. Within one month in 1983, two new home consoles were released in Japan: the Nintendo Family Computer
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit Third generation of video game consoles, third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redes ...
(Famicom) and Sega
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
's SG-1000
The is a home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was Sega's first entry into the home video game hardware business. Developed in response to a downturn in arcades starting in 1982, the SG-1000 was created on the advice of Hayao Nakay ...
(which was later supplanted by the Master System
The is an 8-bit
third-generation home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was originally a remodeled export version of the Sega Mark III, the third iteration of the SG-1000 series of consoles, which was released in Japan in 1985 and ...
) heralding the third generation of home consoles retrospectively. These two consoles were very popular, buoyed by an economic bubble in Japan. The units readily outsold Atari and Mattel's existing systems, and with both Atari and Mattel focusing on recovering domestic sales, the Japanese consoles effectively went uncontested over the next few years. By 1986, three years after its introduction, 6.5 million Japanese homes – 19% of the population – owned a Famicom, and Nintendo began exporting it to the U.S., where the home console industry was only just recovering from the crash.
The impact on the retail sector of the crash was the most formidable barrier that confronted Nintendo as it tried to market the Famicom in the United States. Retailer opposition to video games was directly responsible for causing Nintendo to brand its product the Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
(NES) rather than a "video game system", and using terms such as "control deck" and "Game Pak", as well as producing a toy robot called R.O.B.
R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) is a toy robot accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was launched in July 1985 as the in Japan, and October 1985 as R.O.B. in North America. Its short lifespan yielded only two games in the ...
to convince toy retailers to allow it in their stores. Furthermore, the design for the NES used a front-loading cartridge slot to mimic how video cassette recorder
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other source on a removable, magnetic tape videocassette, and can play back the recordin ...
s, popular at that time, were loaded, further pulling the NES away from previous console designs.
By the time the U.S. video game market recovered in the late 1980s, the NES was by far the dominant console in the United States, leaving only a fraction of the market to Atari. By 1989, home video game sales in the United States had reached $5 billion, surpassing the 1982 peak of $3 billion during the previous generation. A large majority of the market was controlled by Nintendo; it sold more than 35 million units in the United States, exceeding the sales of other consoles and personal computers by a considerable margin. New Japanese companies entered the market to challenge Nintendo's success in the United States, NEC's TurboGrafx-16
The TurboGrafx-16, known as the outside North America, is a home video game console designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC, NEC Home Electronics. It was the first console marketed in the fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth genera ...
and the Sega Genesis
The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Syst ...
, both released in the U.S. in 1989. While the TurboGrafx underwhelmed in the market, the Genesis's release set the stage for a major rivalry between Sega and Nintendo in the early 1990s in the United States video game market.
Impact on third-party software development
A second, highly visible result of the crash was the advancement of measures to control third-party development
A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...
of software. Using secrecy to combat industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.
While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...
had failed to stop rival companies from reverse engineering the Mattel and Atari systems and hiring away their trained game programmers. While Mattel and Coleco implemented lockout measures to control third-party development (the ColecoVision
ColecoVision is a second-generation home video-game console developed by Coleco and launched in North America in August 1982. It was released a year later in Europe by CBS Electronics as the CBS ColecoVision.
The console offered a closer expe ...
BIOS checked for a copyright string on power-up), the Atari 2600 was completely unprotected and once information on its hardware became available, little prevented anyone from making games for the system. Nintendo thus instituted a strict licensing policy for the NES that included equipping the cartridge and console with lockout chips, which were region-specific, and had to match in order for a game to work. In addition to preventing the use of unlicensed games, it also was designed to combat software piracy, rarely a problem in North America or Western Europe, but rampant in East Asia. The concepts of such a control system remain in use on every major video game console produced today, even with fewer "cartridge-based" consoles on the market than in the 8/16-bit era. Replacing the security chips in most modern consoles are specially encoded optical disc
In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...
s that cannot be copied by most users and can only be read by a particular console under normal circumstances.
Accolade
The accolade (also known as dubbing or adoubement) ( la, benedictio militis) was the central act in the rite of passage ceremonies conferring knighthood in the Middle Ages. From about 1852, the term ''accolade'' was used much more generally to ...
achieved a technical victory in one court case against Sega
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
, challenging this control, even though it ultimately yielded and signed the Sega licensing agreement. Several publishers, notably Tengen (Atari Games), Color Dreams
Wisdom Tree, Inc. is an American developer of Christian video games. Originally founded in 1988 as Color Dreams, one of the first companies to work around Nintendo's lockout chip technology for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the company cha ...
, and Camerica, challenged Nintendo's control system during the 8-bit era by producing unlicensed NES games.
Initially, Nintendo was the only developer for the Famicom. Under pressure from Namco
was a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Na ...
and Hudson Soft
was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo ...
, it opened the Famicom to third-party development, but instituted a license fee of 30% per game cartridge for these third-parties to develop games, a system used by console manufactures to this day. Nintendo maintained strict manufacturing control and requiring payment in full before manufacturing. Cartridges could not be returned to Nintendo, so publishers assumed all the financial risk of selling all units ordered. Nintendo limited most third-party publishers to only five games per year on its systems (some companies tried to get around this by creating additional company labels like Konami
, is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company, video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machin ...
's Ultra Games
Ultra Software Corporation was a shell corporation and publishing label created in 1988 as a subsidiary of Konami of America, in an effort to get around Nintendo of America's strict licensing rules in place at the time for the North American ma ...
label). Nintendo ultimately dropped this rule by 1993, after the release of the successor Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...
. Nintendo's strong-armed oversight of Famicom cartridge manufacturing led to both legitimate and bootleg unlicensed cartridges to be made in the Asian regions. Nintendo placed its Nintendo Seal of Quality
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
on all licensed games released for the system to try to promote authenticity and detract from bootleg sales, but failed to make significant traction to stalling these sales.
As Nintendo prepared to release the Famicom in the United States, it wanted to avoid both the bootleg problem it had in Asia as well as the mistakes that led up to the 1983 crash. The company created the proprietary 10NES system, a lockout chip
In a general sense, a lockout chip is a chip within an electronic device to prevent other manufacturers from using a company's device to perform certain functions.
A notable example is the lockout chip found in Nintendo's Nintendo Entertainment Sy ...
which was designed to prevent cartridges made without the chip from being played on the NES. The 10NES lockout was not perfect, as later in the NES's lifecycle methods were found to bypass it, but it did sufficiently allow Nintendo to strengthen its publishing control to avoid the mistakes Atari had made and initially prevent bootleg cartridges in the Western markets. These strict licensing measures backfired somewhat after Nintendo was accused of monopolistic
A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a spec ...
behavior. In the long run, this pushed many western third-party publishers such as Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
away from Nintendo consoles and supported competing consoles such as the Sega Genesis or Sony PlayStation
is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divi ...
. Most of the Nintendo platform-control measures were adopted by later console manufacturers such as Sega, Sony, and Microsoft, although not as stringently.
Computer game growth
With waning console interests in the United States, the computer game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
market was able to gain a strong foothold in 1983 and beyond. Developers that had been primarily in the console games space, like Activision, turned their attention to developing computer game titles to stay viable. Newer companies also were founded to capture the growing interest in the computer games space with novel elements that borrowed from console games, as well as taking advantage of low-cost dial-up modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
s that allowed for multiplayer capabilities. The computer game market grew between 1983 and 1984, overtaking the console market, but overall video game revenues had declined significantly due to the considerable decline of the console market as well as the arcade market to an extent. The home computer industry, however, experienced a downturn in mid-1984, with global computer game sales declining in 1985 to a certain extent.
Microcomputers dominated the European market throughout the 1980s and with domestic production for those formats thriving over the same period, there was minimal trans-Atlantic ripple from American game production and trends. Partly as a distant knock-on effect of the crash and partly due to the continuing quality of homegrown computer and microcomputer games, consoles did not achieve a dominant position in some European markets until the early 1990s. In the United Kingdom, there was a short-lived home console market between 1980 and 1982, but the 1983 crash led to the decline of consoles in the UK, which was offset by the rise of LCD games
Handheld electronic games are very small, portable devices for playing interactive electronic games, often miniaturized versions of video games. The controls, display and speakers are all part of a single unit. Rather than a general-purpose s ...
in 1983 and then the rise of computer games in 1984. It was not until the late 1980s with the arrival of the Master System and NES that the home console market recovered in the UK. Computer games remained the dominant sector of the UK home video game market up until they were surpassed by Sega and Nintendo consoles in 1991.
References
Further reading
* DeMaria, Rusel & Wilson, Johnny L. (2003). ''High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games'' (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Osborne. .
* Gallagher, Scott & Park, Seung Ho (2002). "Innovation and Competition in Standard-Based Industries: A Historical Analysis of the U.S. Home Video Game Market". ''IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management'', vol. 49, no. 1, February 2002, pp. 67–82. doi: 10.1109/17.985749
External links
The Dot Eaters.com: "Chronicle of the Great Videogame Crash"
Twin Galaxies Official Video Game & Pinball Book of World Records: "The Golden Age of Video Game Arcades"
— ''story within the 1998 book''.
Intellivisionlives.com: Official Intellivision History
— ''by the original programmers''.
— ''by Chris Crawford, a game designer at Atari during the crash''.
Pctimeline.info: Chronology of the Commodore 64 Computer
''Events & Game release dates (1982–1990)''.
{{Second generation game consoles
1983 in video gaming
1980s in video gaming
History of video games
Business failures
Economic bubbles
1983 in North America
1983 in economics
Second-generation video game consoles