[ATARI] The Story Behind the Worst Computer Game In History

[Jesus Cea]

<http://games.slashdot.org/story/16/02/23/060238/the-story-behind-the-worst-computer-game-in-history>.

El artículo original: <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35560458>.

El documental, que yo no he visto: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/>.

Algunos comentarios impagables:

"""
Sigh...poor child, you don't understand the bad games DID kill the
industry...but not in the way you think. It was caused by bad business
practices which ended up with retailers having huge piles of unsold bad
games which they then dumped on the market cheap, which quit people
buying new games at full price because "why would I buy a new game for
$35 when I can get 5 for $1?"

You see THIS is how it worked in retail back then, and I should know as
I was buds with the owner of one of the larger retailers in my area and
he and everyone around him all took a bath. The distributors had this
"You can't lose!" scheme set up where it went like this..1.- You buy X
number of games at wholesale and 2.- Any you don't sell in Y number of
days you get to trade for new games so how could you lose? Starting to
see the flaw in the system yet? Because retailers thought they couldn't
lose they bought much more inventory than they could move without regard
to quality because "Hey if it doesn't sell they'll just give me new
product until it does sell" and the profit margins were pretty good for
retailers then.

What then happened was a snowball effect, as these fly by night game
companies sold distributors piles of stock and then went as quickly as
they came, the distributors couldn't unload these turkeys for new carts
because they found padlocks on the publishers doors so they stopped
accepting carts back, and the retailers saw they were stuck with all
these carts and went "Holy shit I'm on the hook for thousands of carts I
can't sell!" which caused them to just dump in the hopes of recovering
some of their money back. As I pointed out earlier this caused gamers
not to buy new carts at retail prices because there were bins just
filled with carts (my local retailer, in a city of less than 15K, had no
less than 5 systems, over 500 titles, and countless handheld games and
they dumped them all) which they could get for pennies on the dollar
which caused more publishers and game companies to fold, helping the
ball build up more steam.

The end result was gamers like me ended up getting Atari carts 10 for a
buck, 4 Colecovision carts for a buck, and handhelds for a couple buck a
pop. I went into my local store with $50 worth of Bday money and ended
up with a shopping cart completely full of games and systems, but the
retailers wouldn't touch games or consoles for years after and it would
be nearly a decade before you saw stores fully stocked with games after
that fiasco.
"""


-- 
Jesús Cea Avión                         _/_/      _/_/_/        _/_/_/
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"El amor es poner tu felicidad en la felicidad de otro" - Leibniz

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