Atari underestimated the impact of this rotten game. In fact www.biquge.info, it was not a protest against ET Aliens as a game, but a general outburst of player dissatisfaction on the Atari platform.

The Atari 2600 platform was designed from the outset to win the market with the number of games over the quality.

Let's say that the cost of $3 million can develop a boutique game that sells 200,000 copies, and at the same time, 300,000 yuan to develop a shoddy game can sell 30,000 copies.

So...... Naturally, investors invest $3 million in 10 shoddy games, because they will sell 300,000 copies and the risk is lower than investing in one game.

Especially at the beginning of '79, because some old game developers found that the games they developed easily generated more than a million dollars in profits, but these profits went into the pockets of Atari and had nothing to do with the technicians. Instead of this, it is better to go out and work alone, develop your own games, and sell them yourself, so that all the profits are owned by yourself.

So, from '79, Atari's programmers began to leave in large numbers, forming third-party game companies, a large number of third-party game development companies, bypassing Atari's restrictions, and developing their own games that could run on the Atari 2600 platform, and at the same time, not selling through Atari channels.

And Atari has nothing to do about it, after all, although Atari sued the largest third-party company, Activision, it ended in the Atari platform losing the lawsuit.

In this way, more third-party game companies have been established, and many companies that have nothing to do with games, such as food companies, transportation companies, and department stores, have also joined this Atari 2600 platform third-party game gold rush feast. Every year, tens of thousands of garbage games are launched one after another, including Atari itself, which is also making a large number of garbage games, not cherishing the reputation of players at all, and gradually turning from good reviews to bad reviews.

Of course, Atari is more wealthy than third-party game developers. Therefore, you can buy more big IPs for adaptation. But these valuable IPs, adapted games are still mostly bad works.

Among them, Pac-Man was originally a good arcade game, but when it was ported to the Atari platform, it was outrageously bad (later, "Pac-Man" on other game platforms was a more classic), although it sold nearly 10 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing games of Atari ever.

Rotten to the extreme, "ET the Extra-Terrestrial", which has not been surpassed in the history of gaming, brought a lot of popularity to the game, making the game attract millions of players to buy it just after its release. But...... Then these players felt angry and fooled.

After Christmas, some players even drove to Atari's headquarters, where thousands of players held signs of protest against Atari with great fanfare.

"Atari Boycott the Spam Game!"

"Atari bastard, do you know how bad the E.T. Aliens game adaptation is?"

"Damn Atari!"

"Return the money, give me back the money for the console and those junk games!"

During the protests, although there were police officers to maintain order, there was no chaos, but you must know that the Atari headquarters is surrounded by large media companies in the United States, and many media are competitors of Warner.

Therefore, in addition to the media under Warner, other mainstream media in the United States have invariably protested against Atari's behavior.

"Because, ET Aliens, an unprecedentedly bad game, thousands of players angrily surrounded the headquarters of Atari Inc., this is not the first time that Atari Inc. has launched a bad game, in fact, since a few years ago, Atari has adopted a strategy of winning by quantity, blindly pursuing the production of games. In addition, the poor quality of the 8-bit game console brought by the backward game console, these drawbacks were superimposed, and in the end, it caused this player protest ......"

"This protest is not just taking place in Los Angeles, there are a number of players all over the United States who have held protests of varying scales. ”

"Christmas, which was supposed to be the peak season for promotions, became the Waterloo of the Atari empire. It was supposed to be a foolproof promotion, but Atari completely lost the trust of players. ”

"The dealer table of the Atari 2600 host said that the Atari 2600 host has been selling very well for three consecutive years from 79 ~ 81 years. But in 82, because of the poor performance, it was gradually abandoned by new players, who would rather buy more expensive C64 computers. But Atari still relies on the 20 million or 30 million console players it has accumulated over time to continue selling a variety of games...... Of course, the game was not as popular as it used to be, and ET Alien further angered players and made them feel unbearable, so they launched an unprecedented act of resistance, which caused the sales of the Atari 2600 console and game to freeze almost completely after Christmas, and it was completely unsellable. Some counter games, even for days on end, can't sell a single copy!"

"Atari should reflect on its mistakes, and the aesthetic taste of players, just like movies, will continue to improve. Trying to make money by playing garbage games all the time, the end result is that the players are completely tired of ......"

A large number of media reports made the "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" crisis really begin to affect the survival of Atari company.

Almost all of the large sales companies began to complain to Atari about the return of the goods or the termination of the cooperation. In this regard, Atari can only tell the large dealers that all the "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" cartridges that cannot be sold can be repurchased at the purchase price.

Next...... Atari was going to quietly transport the cartridges to the Alamogordo Desert in New Mexico, where they would dig a pit and bury them......

"The failure of a game is only temporary, and players are very forgetful, and sooner or later they will continue to buy games on the Atari 2600 platform. Atari's president, Ray Kaiser, said confidently.

Then, Ray Caesar will not know that this is by no means the end, but only the beginning.

In '83 alone, Atari would lose $537 million, which was much higher than the $400 million profit in '82, and at the same time, Atari would lay off more than 5,000 employees in '83 alone...... Including Ray Caesar, they also resigned!

……

Historically, the end result of the Atari collapse was that the U.S. home game market fell from a peak of more than $3 billion in '82 to a freezing point in '85, and even plummeted to $100 million in '85.

The crisis led to the collapse of the entire home game console industry in the United States, and even the surviving American Activision and other companies did not survive on the home game console platform, but transformed into PC game manufacturers.

Japanese game consoles, on the other hand, have entered the U.S. market in a big way since 84, and after the U.S. game market gradually recovered, it gradually became a nugget paradise for Nintendo, Sega, and Sony......

Of course, Xinchuang Electronics has taken root in the North American market, and in this game market battle, the other opponents are almost all 8-bit game consoles, which are not necessarily better than Atari's consoles.

However, the Pangu console of Xinchuang Electronics is a 16-bit host! A console platform that is more than five years ahead of its opponents in the current market, and although the price is expensive in the game console market, it is not only the price that determines the outcome of this war, but also the quality!

For consumers who have been hurt by bad games, the best placebo is not cheap games, but boutique games!

In fact, later European and American game manufacturers had a strong sense of quality, mainly because they had experienced a baptism of Atari collapse. The surviving predecessors of the game industry have gradually carved into their bone marrow the idea of making high-quality games in order to live for a long time!