The Decline of Video Games in the 1980's

During the time period between 1978 and 1983 the video game industry was riding high with such hits as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the Atari 2600, but as the industry entered 1984 it experienced consumers that seemed to loose interest. This decrease in consumer interest posed some serious problems for companies like Atari.

The Atari 2600 was becoming a stale product and some of their best engineers had defected to create their own company. Atari’s Ray Kassar who noticed this downward trend had to announce some dismal numbers after previously forecasting stupendous numbers. This announcement caused stock for Warner Communication to tumble, and brought to light Ray Kassar’s suspicious selling of 5,000 shares of Warner Communication stock. The Ray Kassar debacle coupled with Atari’s saturation of the market ultimately lead to the decline of the video game industry.

Though Atari had a lot to due with the decline of the market, the company was not all to blame. Other companies like Commodore, Coleco, IBM, and Apple gave consumers the opportunity to own a personal home computer. Suddenly consumers focused their attention on home computing other than playing their home consoles.

The sudden shift from video game consoles to home computers was not overnight, but from the years 1981 to 1984 the home computer helped bring kids home from arcades and just like with a snap of magical fingers kids wanted a Commodore 64 or Coleco’s Adam. Game publisher’s stated making games for the home computer and steered away from the Atari. This proved to be another dagger in the video game industry as well, because consumers could not only complete word processing projects, but play some popular video game titles as well.

Of course we all know that by the time 1986 came along Nintendo resurrected the video game industry, but reflecting upon publications from the early 1980’ stating, “Video Game’s Are Dead!”, one has to set back and chuckle a bit. I was a young kid during this time and yes I must admit we owned a Commodore 64, but I never thought, “Hey, I’m not going to play video games again.” Or “Who needs an Atari when you have a home computer.” I was just waiting for the next big thing. Luckily, Nintendo came knocking at my door.