> retailers were stuck with the cartridges without the ability to return them This was true when it came to dumping 3rd party cartridges, but that wasn't the c

> retailers were stuck with the cartridges without the ability to return them This was true when it came to dumping 3rd party cartridges, but that wasn't the case with Atari. Atari had a deal with retail that any unsold cartridges could be returned and exchanged for newer titles. So it was win/win for retailers -- just give Atari shelf space for carts and what was there would either sell or get returned. Zero risk to retailer. This combined with the 2nd problem -- oversupply. What made matters worse is that for a while Atari was struggling to meet order demand. The 2600 was so hot that they couldn't fulfil 100% of retail orders. So if a store ordered 500 of something, they got 250 units. Atari built more manufacturing capacity, but sales still rose. So now the retailers were ordering 1000 units and only getting 500. The retailers got wise and started ordering a lot more than they needed, figuring Atari would only deliver half. Overordering wasn't an issue anyways due to the return policy. The 3rd problem is that Atari expanded manufacturing enough to finally catch up with order volume. To make it worse the market had just started crashing. So now you have the makings of a perfect storm. Retail orders double what they need, because historically Atari had trouble delivering. Atari actually delivers the goods in full this time due to increased mfg. Combined with the crashing market, this means that way too many carts were made. The carts don't sell, and semi trucks full of unsold cartridges start showing back up at the Atari docks. Atari was blindsided, they didn't even understand what was happening at first. They were managed pretty chaotically anyways - like really badly -- and it hadn't mattered up until then because they were making so much money. Once Atari realized what was going on it was too late. They went from $300m profit in 1982 to $538m losses in 1983. They couldn't recover. This is why there's a landfill full of Atari cartridges -- Atari realized that if they dumped the returns back into the market at a discount, prices would crater even more. So Atari actually lost less money by destroying the unsold cartridges. What was crazy about the 1983 crash was that it took down the biggest company in that space. Usually the small companies go down but the biggest can weather it. This crash was so severe that it killed the largest company in the space. Imagine if a cratering phone market killed Apple, it was just that big of a shock.