4 ms·
The Japanese called it "Atari shock" and I suspect this is a much better name for the phenomenon. It wasn't a problem with people getting sick of video games.
by phire 8y ago
The Japanese called it "Atari shock" and I suspect this is a much better name for the phenomenon.
It wasn't a problem with people getting sick of video games. It was a problem with Americans getting sick of the Atari 2600, other similar video game consoles and the distribution model of cartridges sold in toy stores
The sales of home computers in the US massively increased during the "video game crash", especially sales of the Commodore 64. I suspect those C64s spent the majority of their time playing video games, off floppy disks.
Nintendo must have done their market research, because they clearly identified the source of the problem and cleverly marketed the NES as "Not a video game console" and "Completely different from the Atari 2600".
- frostburg 8y agoOff tapes, not floppy disks, probably. Those drives were expensive.
- phire 8y agoIt's my understanding that the majority of C64 users in the States used disks, while the majority of European C64 users used tapes.
- dahauns 8y agoIt was different per country. In the UK, tape was quite dominant, but at least here in Austria, the 1541 was far more common. AFAIK it was the same in Germany.
- royjacobs 8y agoIndeed. I think in the US basically everyone had a disk drive whereas in the UK almost nobody had one. In The Netherlands and Germany they were quite common, as well.
- digi_owl 8y agoNot sure if the nordics were a mixed bag or not, as i don't recall anyone using tape for their C64 (but a few had UK computers, the Amstrad CPC in particular).
- ekphrasis 8y agoMy impression is that the clear majority of the Nordic C64 users had a datasette and tapes.
- phjesusthatguy3 8y agoMy cousins were part of a cracking crew on C64. Almost all of the (hundreds of) games I had were ISEPIC'd and 5-10 to a floppy disk. It took me years to realize that was pronounced "ice pick" and not "i-sep-ick". I didn't know any better.
- CyberDildonics 8y agoI wonder what would have happened if the C64 shipped with controllers and a game.