Mach
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While walking down nostaliga-lane, researching old classic video games, their programmers, and so forth, I came accross the NA Video Game Crash Wiki.
North American video game crash of 1983 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Free market forces in this case resulted in the console industry imploding, leaving Japan to swoop in with its heaviliy restrictive market-preserving regulations, and take over the market, which it dominates to this day. Is this yet another example of how pure free market is an absurd exercise that always ends in market collapse, and how regulation is always evidenced to be not just the answer, but the long term solution?
North American video game crash of 1983 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Free market forces in this case resulted in the console industry imploding, leaving Japan to swoop in with its heaviliy restrictive market-preserving regulations, and take over the market, which it dominates to this day. Is this yet another example of how pure free market is an absurd exercise that always ends in market collapse, and how regulation is always evidenced to be not just the answer, but the long term solution?
The North American video game crash of 1983 (sometimes known as the video game crash of 1984 because it was in that year that the full effects of the crash became apparent to consumers) was the crash of the US video game market in the early 1980s. It almost destroyed the then-fledgling industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing home computers and video game consoles in North America. The crash brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in the English-speaking world. It lasted for about two years and during that interval, many business analysts of the time expressed doubts about the long-term viability of video game consoles. The video game industry was revitalized a few years later, mostly due to the widespread success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which was released in North America in 1985 and became extremely popular by 1987.
There were several reasons for the crash, but the main cause was oversaturation of the market with dozens of consoles and hundreds of mostly low-quality games. Hundreds of games were in development for the 1983 release alone, and this overproduction resulted in a saturated market without the consumer interest it needed.
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