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Video Game crash of 1983
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Trip:

--- Quote from: Haze on August 30, 2012, 11:28:48 am ---I'm sure there was a crash, but IMHO the reasons given are bogus, and were simply used to force stuff like the NES lockout chips upon us which weren't about 'protecting the consumer from crap games to avoid another crash' but more about locking out cheap competition and keeping prices high so that money could be squandered on big budget projects with no consequence.
--- End quote ---

There was definitely a crash in the USA and it had nothing to do with NES.  You could say NES resurrected the video game industry because they werent even around in the US when this happened and they got the market profitable again, which is why they protected themselves with stuff like lockout chips and only allowing 3rd party companies to a few games a year.

The industry went from 3 billion dollars a year to 100 million a year.  Stores started refusing to sell video games because they were losing money badly on stock they couldn't move.  Nintendo had a hell of a time getting them to start carrying them again.

A lot of knockoffs, overproduction, too fast turnover of next gen consoles, very low sales, combined with terrible games made the US consumer stop buying them.
Necro:
I was 5 and loving the Atari 2600 we had just gotten maybe a year before...so...zero effect on me.  They still sold games in Toys R Us and Kiddie City, and I remember getting one game that came with an extra keypad (a space shooter thing) that was just WAY too complicated for me at that age that we returned.  I think I got Taz or something else that I ended up loving. 

Given, I didn't get a NES until near the end of it's life-cycle though.
SavannahLion:
Trip, Nintendo has been making (card) games since 1889, Sony wasn't even established until 1946. Nintendo most certainly had an existence in the U.S. at that time, I have Nintendo carts for the 2600 as the proof.
mgb:
Yeah maybe Trip is wrong about nintendo having no presence in the us in 83. We know because we were all playing DK. But he's still correct about how it went down with a market flooded with crap games that wouldn't sell. And Nintendo bassically did save the day with the nes.
But the crash wasn't some kind of corperate conspiricy in order to lockout programmers and all that. And even though Nintendo has been around for over a hundred years. They wernt in the us market all that time until the videogame craze.
Trip:

--- Quote from: SavannahLion on August 30, 2012, 01:24:22 pm ---Trip, Nintendo has been making (card) games since 1889, Sony wasn't even established until 1946. Nintendo most certainly had an existence in the U.S. at that time, I have Nintendo carts for the 2600 as the proof.

--- End quote ---

Didn't spell it out clear enough, sorry.  Nintendo as a company had stuff here, but the NES didn't appear til 85 in the US.  Like October 85 for the holiday season if I remember right.  Famicom came out in Japan in like 83 though.  I meant to say NES wasn't around in 83.  Nintendo was definitely in the states before that.
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