The market slump of 1982

General_Norris

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From what I have read, the income from arcades in the US went from 2 Billion to 4 from 1981 to 1982 before reverting to 1981 levels by 1983. And I want to ask, why?

The decline must have also been pretty fast if Sinistar was rushed through development!
 
several reasons

1. over saturation - too many games so they lost the must play when you pass a game factor because 10 feet down the road would be another game...

2. end of originality - everything turned to side or vertical shooters

3. Nintendo - everyone played at home. Nintendo provided games closer to arcade quality then the first home consoles did (atari, coleco, intellivision)

4. Fads come and go. Played with your hula hoop or pet rock lately?
 
In the beginning arcade games were more varied and original. Towards the decline most games were copycats of each other. Fighter clones, shooters, drivers, side-scrolling beat 'em ups.

And like mentioned earlier, home consoles started to take over. Arcades were no longer the "only game in town". Arcades were less profitable for ops.

Now the home consoles are getting saturated. All they can really do to compete with each other is to say who has the better looking graphics and internet connection.

It's time for the pinball companies to step up and start a new era of arcades! I want to see 2-player simultaneous head-to-head pinball games! But who is as innovative as that? If I had the means, I'd do it.
 
the NES wasn't released until 1985 so it was not a factor in the crash of 1983. not only that, but home consoles crashed at the same time... there was a period after the crash and before the NES came out that some people were predicting that video games of all sorts were just a fad and would soon disappear. of course, now video games do enough business that i believe they out-gross the movie industry, though the arcade side is very, very small in relation.
 
It is always been difficult to trust anything you read about arcade revenues. As I don't think there has ever been a business that made it easier to either hide income or launder money than arcades.

So you had the route operators and small arcade owners claiming much smaller revenues than they made, you had the guys with criminal connections claiming much more (there is a reason New Jersey had so many arcades).

Then revenues begin to trend downward, no doubt that many still profitable operators took that opportunity to instead claim a loss, making the slump look worse than it was.

I am sure a lot of operators had been expanding and purchasing new games since the day they opened up their doors. Even a slight decline in business can cause a huge decline in the demand for new machines. Why buy a new machine when you are just going to have to pull out a 2 year old one to make room for it, that 2 year old one is still sucking in quarters.

So some of the slump (on the arcade side) may have been virtual, when all the numbers were lies in the first place it is hard to truly understand a decline based on the numbers.

Now other factors.

You could get pretty good home versions of most of the hot games (although not from Nintendo, as the Nes didn't come out until years after the crash). That certainly had something to do with it.

The tech and graphics of arcade games didn't REALLY advance all that much between 1980 and 1983. However the home games got much better in this same timeframe.

With game orders down companies rushed games out the door and cut their development budgets and thus began the era of the conversion game.
 
During the peak, a lot people were coming to the arcades who were new to videogames. For them, it was just a fad. There was oversaturation, with rows of the same game, and sequel games that were less than compelling, and a lack of new games. People just got bored. Plus the economy was in terrible shape in 1983 with sky high unemployment and discretionary income was probably more scarce, so the average person simply stopped going.

We pretty much stopped playing our Atari around this time, but we remained avid arcade players. It was kind of nice with smaller crowds than those during the peak years, when lines formed behind the games and people fought over who was next. And there were still some decent games released during and after the crash.

In Japan there were no home consoles before 1985 when the NES came out. Atari and Intellivision were never sold there. Arcades even remained popular there when they were losing popularity here. Arcades are still very popular there today.
 
1. over saturation - too many games so they lost the must play when you pass a game factor because 10 feet down the road would be another game...

2. end of originality - everything turned to side or vertical shooters

3. Nintendo - everyone played at home. Nintendo provided games closer to arcade quality then the first home consoles did (atari, coleco, intellivision)

4. Fads come and go. Played with your hula hoop or pet rock lately?

The NES was released in 1986.
 
During the peak, a lot people were coming to the arcades who were new to videogames. For them, it was just a fad. There was oversaturation, with rows of the same game, and sequel games that were less than compelling, and a lack of new games. People just got bored. Plus the economy was in terrible shape in 1983 with sky high unemployment and discretionary income was probably more scarce, so the average person simply stopped going.

We pretty much stopped playing our Atari around this time, but we remained avid arcade players. It was kind of nice with smaller crowds than those during the peak years, when lines formed behind the games and people fought over who was next. And there were still some decent games released during and after the crash.

In Japan there were no home consoles before 1985 when the NES came out. Atari and Intellivision were never sold there. Arcades even remained popular there when they were losing popularity here. Arcades are still very popular there today.

There were videogames in Japan before NES, I believe.
The NES was released in Japan in 1983 as the Famicom, and the Atari 2600 was indeed marketed there as the Atari 2800, and was not succesful since the Famicom was already released.
 
In the beginning arcade games were more varied and original. Towards the decline most games were copycats of each other. Fighter clones, shooters, drivers, side-scrolling beat 'em ups.

There was LOTS of copycats prior to 80 but just as many copies during the classic period, but percentage wise the 80-82 had lots of unique though.

However switching from B+W to color with CPU power instead of discrete allowed the explosion until all the good ideas were taken.

71: Computer Space
72: Pong
73-75: Pong, Pong, Pong, Hockey, Pong, Tennis, Pong, Car racing, Pong, Gunfight
76: Car racing, Gunfighters, Breakout,
77: Blockade, Car racing, Blockade, Car Racing
78: Space invaders
79: SI Clones galore, Air sea battles, First Color games
80-82: HUGE variety with tons of copies
 
This is close it actually started a little earlier.. The more important thing was in 1982 we had wide spread unemployment. I think that was a big factor..

Mark..
It must have been a big factor. I have been checking release dates and two things are apparent.

1) Home ports were not a factor. Pac-Man for the 2600 wasn't even released until March 1982. The Colecovision wasn't strong even then, it was released in August and would get half a million units sold in Christmas, meaning it still couldn't have had any sizable impact given the huge size of the arcade industry. The PC boom didn't exist yet and the intellivision didn't have many

2) The genres in 1982 were limited but given the success of many titles, I wonder if it's really a factor. We all know that Q*Bert, Joust, Dig Dug, Pole Position and Robotron sold well. That said, I doubt any of those titles could be compared to the huge success that Pac Man and Defender were. If there was a fad, it ended here.


So unemployment must have played a big part. The market was also oversatured by that point as I heard many places saw arcades as a quick buck. I read Ottumwa had 4 arcades, that looks like overkill for such a small place.
 
It's time for the pinball companies to step up and start a new era of arcades! I want to see 2-player simultaneous head-to-head pinball games! But who is as innovative as that? If I had the means, I'd do it.

They are working on it. Not head-to-head on the same playfield like with Joust pinball, but head-to-head on separate machines over a Wifi/Internet connection. I wish there were more 2-player pinball games like Joust pinball.
 
It must have been a big factor. I have been checking release dates and two things are apparent.

1) Home ports were not a factor. Pac-Man for the 2600 wasn't even released until March 1982. The Colecovision wasn't strong even then, it was released in August and would get half a million units sold in Christmas, meaning it still couldn't have had any sizable impact given the huge size of the arcade industry. The PC boom didn't exist yet and the intellivision didn't have many

2) The genres in 1982 were limited but given the success of many titles, I wonder if it's really a factor. We all know that Q*Bert, Joust, Dig Dug, Pole Position and Robotron sold well. That said, I doubt any of those titles could be compared to the huge success that Pac Man and Defender were. If there was a fad, it ended here.


So unemployment must have played a big part. The market was also oversatured by that point as I heard many places saw arcades as a quick buck. I read Ottumwa had 4 arcades, that looks like overkill for such a small place.

unemployment generally causes people to spend more money on things like movies, video games, and pizza. cheap entertainment, and an incentive to get good at the games and get your moneys worth. our family was hit hard by the recession, but my dad was still happy to take me to the mall and give me a buck or two to play some games...
 
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