Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
I know all about it, even referenced it in my post.. Yes, the official Pac-Man port was really bad (mainly due to how the ghosts went all over the place, if some effort was put into making ghosts like they should have been it could have been a lot better).. but it's totally naive to think that a better version of one game would have prevented the game crash.
There were plenty of good games on Atari 2600, and one more wouldn't have prevented all of the terrible games that were being released. Back then game reviews or any unbiased information about the game at all weren't easy to come by, so consumers were gambling with the purchases they made. If the percentage of shovelware is high the odds of getting a good game at random are a lot worse so of course people are going to base their confidence on this ratio.
The other big problem was with new platforms.. 2600 was really dated but competitors were failing to gain a foothold away from Atari and Atari's own internal problems were preventing them from coming out with an appropriate successor in a reasonable timeframe. The market was too saturated to really compete in without something to distinguish themselves, and what they needed for that was games, not just better hardware. It's telling that all say, Colecovision really brought to the table was a good Donkey Kong port.. the others largely did even worse. By this point potential buyers wanted more than just a good arcade port, they wanted something new in home gaming. This is why for the next couple generations after the crash home consoles were dominated by companies who entered as strong first party software developers, who were capable of moving beyond solid arcade titles.
It's true that Pac-Man and ET are cited as contributors to the crash, but it's not just because they were bad games.. it's more because far too many copies were made, which had too much of a financial burden on Atari. Atari was the pillar of the gaming industry in North America so that had a negative chain reaction. But the thing is, Pac-Man still sold well, and even if it were a great game instead I doubt it would have sold substantially better, to fulfill Atari's expectations anyway. And Atari didn't learn their lesson and vastly over-marketed and over-produced ET in spite of their losses on Pac-Man. I can't imagine that Pac-Man being more successful would have caused them to act MORE prudently with ET..
There were plenty of good games on Atari 2600, and one more wouldn't have prevented all of the terrible games that were being released. Back then game reviews or any unbiased information about the game at all weren't easy to come by, so consumers were gambling with the purchases they made. If the percentage of shovelware is high the odds of getting a good game at random are a lot worse so of course people are going to base their confidence on this ratio.
The other big problem was with new platforms.. 2600 was really dated but competitors were failing to gain a foothold away from Atari and Atari's own internal problems were preventing them from coming out with an appropriate successor in a reasonable timeframe. The market was too saturated to really compete in without something to distinguish themselves, and what they needed for that was games, not just better hardware. It's telling that all say, Colecovision really brought to the table was a good Donkey Kong port.. the others largely did even worse. By this point potential buyers wanted more than just a good arcade port, they wanted something new in home gaming. This is why for the next couple generations after the crash home consoles were dominated by companies who entered as strong first party software developers, who were capable of moving beyond solid arcade titles.
It's true that Pac-Man and ET are cited as contributors to the crash, but it's not just because they were bad games.. it's more because far too many copies were made, which had too much of a financial burden on Atari. Atari was the pillar of the gaming industry in North America so that had a negative chain reaction. But the thing is, Pac-Man still sold well, and even if it were a great game instead I doubt it would have sold substantially better, to fulfill Atari's expectations anyway. And Atari didn't learn their lesson and vastly over-marketed and over-produced ET in spite of their losses on Pac-Man. I can't imagine that Pac-Man being more successful would have caused them to act MORE prudently with ET..
