The Video game crash: 1983–1986
As video game popularity reached an all-time peak, things began to slip. Video game quality began to plummet, creating mountains of shovelware, or poor-quality games. Without internet or game magazines, people had no way of predicting a game's quality short of spending $50 dollars on the game and finding out. As word got around that games weren't all that they were cracked up to be, people simply stopped buying video games, leaving the respective companies to crash and burn.
Not only were things looking bad on the outside, but in the industry itself, things were falling apart. It began when Atari refused to properly credit some of their software developers, which cheated those developers out of royalties. Out of frustration, those developers quit Atari, and most joined together and formed the new gaming company, Activision. With several freelance developers out and about, creating their own games with a much smaller budget than before, several poor-quality games were shoved out into the public, and very little money was returned as a result.
Profit in the game industry plummeted dramatically. Soon, no one was buying video games, consoles, or anything even related to video games. Simply advertising as a video game was like a death sentence as far as returns went. But, just as things were looking grim for the industry, one company rose up and essentially saved it with a small, grey and white box.
Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1986. By advertising it as a toy rather than a game console, it bypassed the disadvantage that other game companies faced. The entire package came with several peripherals, including a light gun, a robot meant to act as a second player, and a game staring a particular Italian plumber. Thanks to Nintendo, the game industry picked up steam yet again, and showed no sign of stopping ever since
Not only were things looking bad on the outside, but in the industry itself, things were falling apart. It began when Atari refused to properly credit some of their software developers, which cheated those developers out of royalties. Out of frustration, those developers quit Atari, and most joined together and formed the new gaming company, Activision. With several freelance developers out and about, creating their own games with a much smaller budget than before, several poor-quality games were shoved out into the public, and very little money was returned as a result.
Profit in the game industry plummeted dramatically. Soon, no one was buying video games, consoles, or anything even related to video games. Simply advertising as a video game was like a death sentence as far as returns went. But, just as things were looking grim for the industry, one company rose up and essentially saved it with a small, grey and white box.
Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1986. By advertising it as a toy rather than a game console, it bypassed the disadvantage that other game companies faced. The entire package came with several peripherals, including a light gun, a robot meant to act as a second player, and a game staring a particular Italian plumber. Thanks to Nintendo, the game industry picked up steam yet again, and showed no sign of stopping ever since