5 ms·

I think a large part of the problem was the cost of discoverability. On modern PC and mobile, with the availability of free games, it costs nothing but time to

I think a large part of the problem was the cost of discoverability. On modern PC and mobile, with the availability of free games, it costs nothing but time to wade through piles of bad games. Even on the C64, piracy was prevalent enough that it was easy to obtain and try a large number of games. Atari 2600 games required purchasing cartridges and therefore an outlay of money. Without the internet, it was difficult to get reviews or feedback on the quality of a game without knowing someone that actually purchased it. Added to this, most of the games sold at full price, regardless of the quality. It doesn't take the purchase of too many full price games that were really bad before one gets very hesitant to lay out cash for a new game.

Aardwolf 3y ago
But review magazines, and word of mouth, would have helped identify the good games?
- dylan604 3y ago
  review magazines were not universally available. a proper bookstore with a large enough selection of magazines was at least 45 minutes away from me during this time when i was too young to drive. word of mouth has a broadcast radius that is pretty limited as well. hell, i remember the first time i went to a mall with a computer store that actually had magazines dedicated to games. it's also something different from now where you might be into the games/computers, but your parents very well might have held the idea that you were rotting your brain with that stuff. it's probably pretty hard to imagine compared to what is available today. the 80s and early 90s were pretty much the dark ages if not stone age compared to today.
  - Aardwolf 3y ago
    Atari is before my time, but regarding SNES and gameboy, here the popular games went very much through word of mouth (and seeing) on the school playground. I'd imagine this also be the case for Atari if multiple kids had Atari 2600's. Of course if it was rare, then that wouldn't work.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  Review magazines barely existed. Nintendo coming along later and creating it's Nintendo Power official magazine (based heavily on Famitsu) to help direct consumers to the good games was yet another piece of the puzzle that Nintendo laid in creating a vibrant games industry.
philistine 3y ago
I’ll say it simply: consumers had nothing to do with the demise of the Atari. It’s retailers, who bought cartridges without ever thinking the gravy train would stop. Atari and everyone else told them consumers had an insatiable appetite for full price cartridges. But when the sales cratered, due to an oversupply, retailers were stuck with the cartridges without the ability to return them. So they turned to the measure that killed the Atari: clearance bins. When all the games you could hope to ever play are in a bin for a buck each, no one is buying anything at 30$ anymore. Nintendo’s never going to say it, but their practices with the NES were not quality control; they were doing price control.
- belugacat 3y ago
  Exactly this. Even to this day, Nintendo is very smart about almost never discounting their flagship games - and when they do, it’s by a small percent, sometimes with strings attached, not the crazy “90% off” tactics many other developers/publishers follow.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    Playstation games being in the $15 bin while desirable N64 games never seemed to go on sale was a big reason kid me had a ton of games compared to my friends with N64s. I still see this with my kids and their Switch. PS2 and GameCube seemed to follow the same pattern.
  - babuskov 3y ago
    Yes. And it teaches the consumers that there's no point in waiting. When you want their game, you just buy it at full price on launch date, because you know that waiting for discount would take years and even then it would be 20-30% off at best.
    - born2meme 3y ago
      Or in my case it taught me to not want to play the fucking thing at all. Simple as.
chefandy 3y ago
> I don't see all the millions of very, very bad games killing the PC or mobile platforms Firstly, unlike a PC or phone, an Atari 2600 isn't useful without games. Secondly, without ubiquitous reviews freely available on the net, players essentially had to choose new games based on the name, box design, and copy. Beyond that, the games weren't necessarily low-quality in the QA sense, i.e. sloppily manufactured or buggy-- most of them just sucked, were ugly, and weren't fun for your average player. Keep in mind, these weren't targeted at video game enthusiasts: they were competing with home video as an entertainment device. You have to compare their appeal with movies, rather than then-current computer games or maybe even board games. I worked in back-end web dev roles for over a decade, but more recently got an art school education in design (concentrating in a few disciplines,) and work in games in both design and technical capacities. Many old Atari games suck because they're either fundamentally bad ideas as games or disastrously implemented. Video game design wasn't really a thing back then, so all of the design work ended up being done by the developer that made the game. Though many developers get annoyed by my saying that design is a learned skill that you don't automatically gain by being a developer, I assure you that not having any designers involved ensures that these games will be more miss than hit. To make matters worse, Atari's success essentially created a gold rush condition. Everyone who was technically capable of making a game was trying to-- probably not even realizing that's exactly what everyone else was doing. It was like 2000 people on a beach saw 3 talented people surfing a wave, so they all grabbed the nearest flat object and jumped in to disastrous effect. Poor retail strategy was obviously a problem, as others have pointed out, but if people buying games could be reasonably assured they were good, I doubt it would have had any more effect than any other big retail miscalculation.

Aardwolf 3y ago

But review magazines, and word of mouth, would have helped identify the good games?

dylan604 3y ago
review magazines were not universally available. a proper bookstore with a large enough selection of magazines was at least 45 minutes away from me during this time when i was too young to drive. word of mouth has a broadcast radius that is pretty limited as well. hell, i remember the first time i went to a mall with a computer store that actually had magazines dedicated to games. it's also something different from now where you might be into the games/computers, but your parents very well might have held the idea that you were rotting your brain with that stuff. it's probably pretty hard to imagine compared to what is available today. the 80s and early 90s were pretty much the dark ages if not stone age compared to today.
- Aardwolf 3y ago
  Atari is before my time, but regarding SNES and gameboy, here the popular games went very much through word of mouth (and seeing) on the school playground. I'd imagine this also be the case for Atari if multiple kids had Atari 2600's. Of course if it was rare, then that wouldn't work.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
Review magazines barely existed. Nintendo coming along later and creating it's Nintendo Power official magazine (based heavily on Famitsu) to help direct consumers to the good games was yet another piece of the puzzle that Nintendo laid in creating a vibrant games industry.

philistine 3y ago

I’ll say it simply: consumers had nothing to do with the demise of the Atari. It’s retailers, who bought cartridges without ever thinking the gravy train would stop. Atari and everyone else told them consumers had an insatiable appetite for full price cartridges. But when the sales cratered, due to an oversupply, retailers were stuck with the cartridges without the ability to return them. So they turned to the measure that killed the Atari: clearance bins. When all the games you could hope to ever play are in a bin for a buck each, no one is buying anything at 30$ anymore. Nintendo’s never going to say it, but their practices with the NES were not quality control; they were doing price control.

belugacat 3y ago
Exactly this. Even to this day, Nintendo is very smart about almost never discounting their flagship games - and when they do, it’s by a small percent, sometimes with strings attached, not the crazy “90% off” tactics many other developers/publishers follow.
- doubled112 3y ago
  Playstation games being in the $15 bin while desirable N64 games never seemed to go on sale was a big reason kid me had a ton of games compared to my friends with N64s. I still see this with my kids and their Switch. PS2 and GameCube seemed to follow the same pattern.
- babuskov 3y ago
  Yes. And it teaches the consumers that there's no point in waiting. When you want their game, you just buy it at full price on launch date, because you know that waiting for discount would take years and even then it would be 20-30% off at best.
  - born2meme 3y ago
    Or in my case it taught me to not want to play the fucking thing at all. Simple as.

chefandy 3y ago

> I don't see all the millions of very, very bad games killing the PC or mobile platforms Firstly, unlike a PC or phone, an Atari 2600 isn't useful without games. Secondly, without ubiquitous reviews freely available on the net, players essentially had to choose new games based on the name, box design, and copy. Beyond that, the games weren't necessarily low-quality in the QA sense, i.e. sloppily manufactured or buggy-- most of them just sucked, were ugly, and weren't fun for your average player. Keep in mind, these weren't targeted at video game enthusiasts: they were competing with home video as an entertainment device. You have to compare their appeal with movies, rather than then-current computer games or maybe even board games. I worked in back-end web dev roles for over a decade, but more recently got an art school education in design (concentrating in a few disciplines,) and work in games in both design and technical capacities. Many old Atari games suck because they're either fundamentally bad ideas as games or disastrously implemented. Video game design wasn't really a thing back then, so all of the design work ended up being done by the developer that made the game. Though many developers get annoyed by my saying that design is a learned skill that you don't automatically gain by being a developer, I assure you that not having any designers involved ensures that these games will be more miss than hit. To make matters worse, Atari's success essentially created a gold rush condition. Everyone who was technically capable of making a game was trying to-- probably not even realizing that's exactly what everyone else was doing. It was like 2000 people on a beach saw 3 talented people surfing a wave, so they all grabbed the nearest flat object and jumped in to disastrous effect. Poor retail strategy was obviously a problem, as others have pointed out, but if people buying games could be reasonably assured they were good, I doubt it would have had any more effect than any other big retail miscalculation.