HuguesJohnson.com - Console Timeline - Worst year for gaming, the fallout of 1983

Whenever you hear bad economic news today it always contains the phrase "worst [insert economic indicator] since 1983". The game market crash of 1983 is often attributed to an over-saturation of crappy games and that was certainly a major factor. The economy of the time must be included as a catalyst too. I think the industry would have survived the flood of awful games had it not coincided with the bottom of a recession.

Although 1983 was a horrible year, the real fallout of the crash wasn't felt until the next two years. It was the 12-month span from mid-1984 to mid-1985 when the land of video game consoles was a barren desert.

Fallout of the 1983 crash

Over this time period only three systems were still being supported with new games. Saying that is something of a stretch though. The Intellivision didn't have a single game released in 1984 but resumed production in 1985 [source]. Realistically, only the two Atari systems had new games being created. How pathetic was that? Something great was right around the corner, but it was a very dark year for video game fans until it arrived.

Is this cause for alarm today? Will 2010-2011 see another major glut for gaming? I tend to think not because there are some major differences between now and 1983. I'm sure someone with a minimal background in economics can rattle off a few hard statistics that explain the differences but with my limited knowledge I'm forced to take a simplistic approach. The way I see it, when the economy was bad in the past people eliminated spending on non-essential items like video games and tickets to Central Hockey League games. Since then federal assistance programs have been expanded to cover the basics like housing and food, leaving some with discretionary cash they wouldn't have had decades ago.

For example, I have two chronically unemployable brothers-in-law who live off the government yet have no problem buying the latest games. Seriously, neither have worked for the past two years but they manage to spend hundreds a month on video games. That's our tax dollars at work folks, that's also why I know the game industry will survive this downturn. No, it's not going great but it's far from the state of panic it was 16 years ago.

Another factor to consider is that more young adults live at home now than in 1983. I have zero references to back this up other than reading it on news sites a dozen times. So those that are unemployed/under-employed can still pass the time with a copy of Madden '10. If anything, video games have become a way to escape a rocky time period, a way to help wait it all out for a few months.

One implication of the current economy is many companies have cut back on R&D expenses. I haven't seen anything about this in a gaming site but it would be worth investigating further, maybe someone already has. If that's the case for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo then it means this generation of consoles could last longer than any before it.

Although 1983 was a low-point for gaming, it wasn't the year that witnessed the most console deaths. 1983 saw four consoles vanishing and a fifth that was on its last legs. Thirteen years later though, a total of seven systems were wiped-out including one that launched that very same year. Toss in one that was canned in December of 1995 and you have an outright console massacre.

1983 vs 1996

Of course comparing 1983 and 1996 is something of a tongue-in-cheek exercise. The reasons for the disappearance of game consoles couldn't have been more different. While 1983 was the end of an economic downfall, 1996 was the start of a major upswing. Technology was hot and consumers just had to get the latest gizmos. This was a boon for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 that left all the previous-gen systems in the dust. All the systems that called it quits in 1996 started really declining in 1995 when the Saturn and PlayStation first launched. A year later even their most delusional die-hard fans finally gave up on them.