From 1978 to 1982 the video game industry had skyrocketed in popularity it is looked back on as the golden age of arcade gaming. The Atari 2600 was the most popular console throughout this time, by 1982 there had been over 10 million consoles sold worldwide. Then in 1983, the industry crashed. The video games industry was estimated be worth 3.2 billion dollars in 1983, then two years later it was only worth 100 million dollars it had crashed by ninety-seven percent in just two years. As a result of this, a lot of companies either filed for bankruptcy or just shut down all together putting a lot of people out of their jobs.

 

There was a lot of contributing factors to the crash one of the main ones was the sudden rise of different consoles competing with each other and all of the horrible rushed games that were released just so that they could try to beat their competition. Most of the consoles were knock off versions of the Atari 2600 trying to capitalize on its success. With these consoles there were also knock versions of the Atari’s most popular games which were rushed and poorly made. Despite all of the knock offs, Atari was still leading in terms of sales but then Atari started to make some bad decision’s which is what was their downfall. It all started when they released a rushed port of Pac man even through it sold incredibly well for a very bad version of the game they sold seven million units (but they still had seven million units unsold)  this was early signs that Atari was starting rush their games and the quality was starting to go downhill.