Greetings to all visitors, gamers and oldfags. We all love to play toys on computers or on our prefixes, but we don’t even think that the game industry could bend at the dawn of its birth and go along a completely different path.

The fault was the crisis, which fell on the game market in 1983, known as "Shock Atari". In the period 1982-83, games sales fell by 97% from 3.2 billion copies, to a miserable 100 million., which questioned the prospects of games as a business. But let’s not rush, but we will figure out what happened 33 years ago.

1. Market oversaturation by game consoles

The United States in the 80s was the most developing market, to recall at least the same Hollywood. And it is not surprising that the game industry as a commercial phenomenon originated there. 80 years-it was the golden age of arcade machines and game consoles, led by the main Igrodel- Atari!

However, by the end of the 83 years of the last century, competition in the market of game consoles has become just frantic. Game consoles were released by everyone who is not lazy, and who had enough money. You can recall the creators of Kulk Barbie here – Mettel and leather products Coleco, who also decided to eat their piece of playing pie. The consoles were a huge number, but the quality of the games, alas, was dull. All games were similar to each other, wretched and monotonous. Buyers began to get confused in this variety of prefixes and games, because there was practically no significant difference between them.

The fact that some manufacturers began to make more universal prefixes also played here. For example, prefixes from Colecovision The cartridges from the more expensive and advanced Atari prefix were perfectly “eaten”, which became one of the reasons for the crushing of the giant. Atari, of course, tried to prohibit the use of their cartridges on other prefixes, but the antitrust law in the United States and we have two huge differences and Atari, the court lost.

2. Activision and loss of games

But even before the problems with competitors, Atari managed to pick itself a lot. The thing is that the baking capitalists did not want to pay copyright deductions to programmers and game developers, as well as indicate them in the titers of games. The latter was very offended by this and ..

This led to the fact that in 1979, part of the programmers leaves the long -suffering Atari and create their own company Activision, who did not release her consoles, but released games for existing. Atarist did not like this very much and the long lawsuit began with Activision, in which they again lost and the court decided that independent developers could release their games without paying the royal to the producer of the prefixes.

Not only were there tens of prefixes on the market, but now the real hunt for programmers has begun, who began to lure from office to office. Dozens of independent game developers began to appear. And the game market itself began to act a huge number of games, which again did not differ in special quality and diversity.

This led to a fall in the prices of games with 34.95 in 1982 to 4.95 already in 83. Many small and inexperienced companies quickly went bankrupt and left the market, and the monsters received a strong blow under the breath, but remained true to themselves – not to indicate the names of the developers and not pay them money. Domokolov sword sank even lower.

h.s. The current company Activision has little to do with the company 79 years of the last century.

3. Home computers competition https://noverificationcasinos.co.uk/review/mr-jones-casino/

The prefixes could not get anywhere from the upcoming heels of home computers: Apple II, Commodore, TDS-80, ZX-Spectum (admit who was. ) and others.

Yes, when such computers cost $ 1000, few could afford them. But in 1982 they started their war for a place under the sun. Their cost fell sharply at times and they became accessible to more people. For example TRS-80 Color Computer cost $ 379, and Commodore Vic-20 Already 199 bucks.

In addition, homemade computers attracted the parents of young gamers much more, because they allowed not only to burst into games, but also to study on them, they were already needed to enter universities and they could conduct home accounting department.

But their most delicious opportunity was of course – The ability to copy information. Here it is the era of the emergence of piracy. Now it was not necessary to buy the game, it could just be copyed from a friend, and even better – to create your own game. After all, computers allowed to program themselves and this became one of the most important mainstreams of the young generation of that time.

All this did not at all add optimism in the gaming industry and the chair near Igrodel was staggered even more.

By the way, home computers also did not have to rejoice for a long time. The IBM-PC personal computer has already been in a hurry, which will sweep its competitors and IBM-compatible computers will join the throne.

The crisis is close.

4. Christmas, Stephen Spielberg and the last two nails in the coffin of the gaming industry

And here it is – the long -awaited Christmas of 1983. New Year’s holidays can really create miracles and save the situation of the distressed companies that have missed too many strokes this year.

Such companies, of course, belonged to Atari, who decided to win back and cover all losses by releasing two games on New Year’s holidays – to port a legendary arcade to their prefix PAC-Man And to release the game based on the publisher and mega-popular film by Stephen Spielberg-"An alien".

At the walls of Atari, they decided that the mothers of stupid little pindos were simply swinging on the New Year holidays the game based on this film and decided to especially not bother the game and released the criminal Call in the shortest possible time. They were not enough for them. Also, the programmers of this office managed to figure out and the most primitive gamlup in the game Pac-Man and ruined the simplest game so that it became impossible to play it. How they still have succeeded in a mystery, which is unable to solve and Malder with Scully. As a result, the two most wretched games were obtained that will finally bury Atari and many more.

And so, Christmas holidays and shops enter two games from Atari with a circulation of 5 million. Each. And release 10 million. cartridge is not 10 million to you. Bolovnok or game in Steam. These are serious costs for their production. And what was the surprise of the stores, and the Atarians themselves, when almost the entire sold volume of games was returned to stores. A huge scandal rose and all the games were returned to the Atari walls, and the latter’s authority was brutally undermined.

It was no longer possible to sell these games even at the sales at a discount, a bad glory was about them among them. Therefore, the entire circulation of these games was secretly taken to the abandoned mines of New Mexico and forever buried in concrete.

Winter has come.

Very dark days began for the gaming industry. The office was poured over the office and bankrupt. People stopped buying new prefixes. For what? After all, there was no one else to create games, which means that there will be no more new games. And the games were like two drops of water.

To all this, the pessimistic forecasts of analysts and game journalists were added, who stated that the gaming industry came to an end. This is a stillborn child who can never become a locomotive of technological progress. There is no more sense in making games, it has become unprofitable.

Atari as the main culprit of this celebration received too strong blows and can never recover from them. Yes, she will release other prefixes and even successful, but soon go bankrupt and close. She will still use her name, but it will no longer be impossible to return the former glory.

And in the Dark Kingdom the ray of the Japanese sun

Of course, the games did not cease to be produced as such, because now there was an era of home computers, but nothing can give such an impetus in development as competition, and no one else threatened them.

No one except the small cunning Japanese company Nintendo, which adds to its prefix interactive robot Robot.O.B. and Zapper light pistol sailed to conquer the free people of America. The prefix is ​​called Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), We are known under the brand Dendy.

Nes arrived in America in 1985 by several test parties and were simply swept away by “starving” Americans. In 1986, the official release of these prefixes in America was launched, and a year later in Europe. These prefixes conquered Russia in 1992 and I think for many of you it was.

It was 1985 and became the year of the revival of the gaming industry. Nes brought many innovations such as the protection and licensing of games, and the game consoles began to be called the "Entertainment System".

During the game crisis, a lot of things have happened and even more happened after it. The gaming industry has experienced cardinal changes that cannot be described in one post in one post.

The crisis passed, but he could return … In 2008, in the year of the general crisis, the game industry almost repeated the "feat" of 83 years. But everything worked out.

The post is prepared specifically for all Stopgame readers. I hope you were interested.
There was mr with you.Depressman.