Yes, I think this is the main reason. I wouldn't call the keyboards bad per se, though. Of course there were some terrible ones, like the one on the ZX Spectru

Yes, I think this is the main reason. I wouldn't call the keyboards bad per se, though. Of course there were some terrible ones, like the one on the ZX Spectrum, but most of them (like Commodore and Atari) were quite good even by todays standards. Especially build quality and materials were better than in the majority of keyboards today. Many of these old keyboards don't cause problems even after more than 40 years. They were not suitable for gaming because they were not made for it. I'd even say they were not particularly suited for typing either. In the 80s many people still learned typing on real typewriters which had crazy long key travel, considerable force required to press and bottoming out was part of the whole idea. Instead of doing what is ergonomically right, early keyboards chose to mimic typewriters to avoid alienating early users. That is in my opinion the main reason why they were not used for action games.