The future of video games according to 1982

by Blake Snow { Jan 30th 2007 at 4:15PM }

According to The Omni Future Almanac written in 1982, console video games would "commercially flop" by the mid-80s. 25 years later, the entertainment medium is bigger than ever and perhaps larger than some ever expected it to be. I remember thinking at the age of five after playing my first video game on the Atari 2600, "I like this." I didn't know in what way or on what level, but I knew I wanted to be around video games.

So just what did this 1982 almanac think would be the demise of consoles? Sub-$1000 "IBM-PCs" just like others predicted early on. Remember: consoles were originally designed to be a low cost home alternative to playing video games when compared to arcade machines and PCs. Here are some choice excerpts from the book:

One of the great boom and bust stories of technological history will be the rise and fall of the home video game, as these hot-selling technological marvels of the early 1980s plunge to obscurity during the middle years of the decade. Ironically, the fall of video games will be the result of increased consumer interest in games play, rather than indifference.

The TV game systems will disappear because the prices of home computers will keep falling quickly. Personal computer software will become so ubiquitous and varied that families that once would have bought games will now buy computers that not only play games but can do many other things as well. By 1985, computers offering the power of today's IBM-PC will cost considerably less than $1000. They will allow users to play games far more intricate than virtually any video game system available today. These new computers will be modified to the user's skill and interests.

The final blow for video games will be the emergence of interactive game "networks" over cable TV systems in the mid-1980s, providing an endless library of the latest in games without the need for cassettes.

[Thanks to Brendon for the heads up and transcription]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

AnonymousTipster @ Feb 1st 2007 11:55AM

Funny thing is that this did happe (sort of). If it weren't for the NES/Famicom, the video game landscape could look a lot different.

Matt @ Jan 30th 2007 4:24PM

Nice find. That last paragraph seems eerily reminiscent of the ill-fated Sega Channel, which coincidentally played on one of those "doomed" TV game systems.

I also find it interesting how they distinguish "video games" from "computer games" from "interactive game networks". Today we all consider them pretty much the same thing (well except for the fanboys that is).

Bennyishere @ Jan 30th 2007 4:40PM

"The final blow for video games will be the emergence of interactive game "networks" over cable TV systems in the mid-1980s, providing an endless library of the latest in games without the need for cassettes."

This might actually happen in the future.

However, that's a blow to consoles and computers, not videogames in general.

JodyAnthony @ Jan 30th 2007 4:42PM

what a bunch of IBM-PC fanboys!

eight @ Jan 30th 2007 4:43PM

Interactive game networks over the cable lines... in the mid 80's... Think of what Live would be like today if that had started 15 years earlier...

Ken @ Jan 30th 2007 4:45PM

LOL @ Jody

frankie23 @ Jan 30th 2007 5:48PM

Of course, the irony being that OMNI itself dried up in the mid-90's. Sucks to be them!

Myke @ Jan 30th 2007 4:48PM

Ha, wow, kinda wierd, gaming did suffer a bit in the 80's due to various reasons, but I'm sure glad it bounced back. All Playstation owners owe Nintendo alot, they wouldn't have anything to be a fanboy of if it wasnt for the NES/Famicom

Revolution @ Jan 30th 2007 4:52PM

Man. I can almost hear Xevious now. I miss playing games like that in dark, dank arcades with names like "Gold Mine" or "The Castle". Word

Jake @ Jan 30th 2007 4:55PM

Yeah, it seems to be about the demise of consoles, not video games. A game is a game whether you play it on cell phone, computer, tv, ds, etc. The day that video games die is the day the terrorists win.

fawazr @ Jan 30th 2007 5:02PM

but the market did flop in the 80's

bigd7387 @ Jan 30th 2007 5:07PM

#2 Sega Channel was a descendant of the Mattel Intellivision Channel that was offered by several Cable outlets. And Nintendo didn't change the landscape but Atari did. Nintendo wanted Atari to manufacture and sell in USA the NES but Atari changed managers at the time and the deal feel through but was 2 months away from happening. Just imagine what things would be like now if those small things wouldn't have happened.

INCH75 @ Jan 30th 2007 5:43PM

Re: #8

Gold Mine! Hell yeah. I loved the Gold Mine in our local mall. Back when the only way to know when a new game was coming was to see the empty shell with the stickers on it. I remember the old arcade days. Back when all I needed on a Saturday was a ride to the mall, and $5 in quarters would kep me there all day. I don't think at the time this was written they, or anyone, could have seen just how far the arcade industry would fall. It WAS a staple of our lives up until the first Playstation and the boon of 3DFX Voodoo cards, which was (at least to me) th first time the home experience could be as good or better than the arcade.

Mr Khan @ Jan 30th 2007 5:16PM

@ bigd

One of the greatest "what ifs" of gaming history

The other 2 both involve Nintendo

What if Nintendo and Sony had actually devved the PlayStation as a rival to the Sega CD?

And, what if Nintendo had actually released the Wii Remote control scheme as a GameCube add on in, say, 2004?

pertaining to the article, i find it interesting that in some cases, the people of the past seemed to think the future will either come much quicker than it should (they said that what basically amounted to the World Wide Web would be prominent by about 1985, when that really occurred a decade later) but they spoke of cheap computers as if they were a novelty decades away, when again, it was only about 10 years before that became a reality, thanks mostly to the MicroProcessor, which hit the mass Market right around when this was published

Another thing is that the "ubiquitous" nature of PCs is what really stops them from being the game system of the masses, because all that technology that's needed specifically for gameplay jacks the price of Computers up too much...

johny boy @ Jan 30th 2007 5:18PM

I wouldn't say they were all that wrong for the current generation. Both the ps3 as well as the xbox360 are multi use machines. This is basically the reason they gave for console video games demise. The only system that is really a video game system is the wii. The others I would say are entertainment computers.

Lollerskate @ Jan 30th 2007 5:24PM

I wonder how much a PC with the power of 1982 would cost now? Think of the power!

pascaloux @ Jan 30th 2007 5:24PM

I remember seeing that "interactive network over cable TV system" around 1985 if I can remember...

Only one person could play on one channel at a time using his phone. Everibody with that station at home would see that's guy's game. It was indeed pretty lame. One of the games looked like Space Invaders.

And by the way the crash predicted did in fact happen. But Mario came along...

White Rose Duelist @ Jan 30th 2007 5:36PM

"And, what if Nintendo had actually released the Wii Remote control scheme as a GameCube add on in, say, 2004?"

People would flame them for not producing a next-gen console, the peripheral would likely fail, and Nintendo wouldn't be raking in nearly as much money as they are now. In other words, the decision they made with the Wii was correct.

Jim @ Jan 30th 2007 5:41PM

Better than Nostradamus!

burn @ Jan 30th 2007 5:49PM

14. I wonder how much a PC with the power of 1982 would cost now? Think of the power!

dude, ive got a calculator that I use at work that has more power in it then a PC from 1984..

that being said, all of my old macs still work :)

Revolution @ Jan 30th 2007 5:50PM

INCH75,

Yeah. My too favorite things used to be in the Colonade Mall: This joint called Spuds n' Stuff and The Gold Mine. I'd get my potato skins and then blow what was left of my $10 on Rush n Attack (and several others).

Revolution @ Jan 30th 2007 5:51PM

Too = two. I'm retarded.

burn @ Jan 30th 2007 5:51PM

also, this kind of thing is always fun to revisit 20 years after the fact.

I can't wait to dig up my old Wired magazines in 20 years and see if any of their articles ever came to fruition

NeverSage @ Jan 30th 2007 6:16PM

I think the reason console video games did so well compared to computers is that consoles are so easy to use. No drivers to set up. No worrying about ram or processor speed. I'm an avid pc gamer, but that's sadly too much to think about for the mass market.

Grant @ Jan 31st 2007 5:53PM

as Mr Khan said "all that technology that's needed specifically for gameplay jacks the price of Computers up too much..." which is completly true, but to elaborate on that even more...

PCs would very possibly and completly have taken over as the main gaming medium if it was not for money grubbing Graphics card manufacturers and the lack of a unified PC gaming standard. Microsoft recently recognized this with "Games for Windows" type branding.

When you label the gaming systems of current as Sub-1000 PCs, you probably wouldn't be all too far off considering they are all sold at losses(esp the PS3, which if sold at a normal consumer electronic profit margin, would be well over $1000), and all have the ability to run PC OSs when hacked a bit.
So the article assumed that PCs would become more console like, but since PC game hardware never really joined up with the PC games industry, it never happened, and the console industry started to sell the crucial expensive hardware at a loss, keeping them afloat by earning game royalties.

Mike @ Jan 30th 2007 7:00PM

To be fair, the situation in South Korea is very simaler to the first part of the prediction involving PCs. Their PC gaming is much larger than their console business.

Blurr @ Jan 30th 2007 7:21PM

Holy Cow! I actually have that book. It's rare to hear of anyone else knowing about it. Besides the books shortcomings with certain statistics, a good portion of it's statical predictions are pretty spot on. If you ever get the chance to look through it, you should. It's a very good book to just flip to a page and see what it says about the future (from the perspective of 1982). Sometimes it's a bit creepy.

Jeff @ Jan 30th 2007 7:36PM

"According to The Omni Future Almanac written in 1982, console video games would "commercially flop" by the mid-80s. 25 years later, the entertainment medium is bigger than ever and perhaps larger than some ever expected it to be."

Yeah, but video games *did* commercially flop by the mid-80's. The fact that they're popular again *now* doesn't change that. This prediction was 100% correct, at least as far as you've quoted it here.

The crash of 1983-1984 may seem like a footnote in history now, but it isn't. In 1984, there were *no* game consoles in the US market any longer. In 1985, there was the NES, ushering in a reign of exclusively Japanese hardware that didn't end until 2001. (Prior to the crash, the US and Japanese game industries were entirely separate, and each country dominated its own market.) The crash had a major impact on both the US and Japanese industries.

The reasons for the crash were also the same as predicted here - in large part, cheap PC's. The original generation of gamers grew up and moved their gaming to the Commodore 64, Atari XL and Apple II line. The NES generation was largely a new generation of gamers. That's what a lot of people at the time didn't count on - young kids did not want to play games on complicated computers. (A lot of us original gamers did come back later, but the NES was the first console a lot of kids ever owned.)

Jonah Falcon @ Jan 30th 2007 7:50PM

Well, the article is not wrong.

1982 featured the Commodore 64, and we all know what happened to consoles in 1983.

Arbuz Chokaro @ Jan 30th 2007 8:35PM

Remember George Orwell thought we'd be living in a crazed 3 continent totalitarian society two years before that book was written.

Pretty sure that in 100 years computers will be free and robots will be hot competitors for the senate.

Steve @ Jan 30th 2007 8:46PM

This guy put a lot of faith into the power of the year 1985 to advance computer technology. Everything in this article is "mid 80s this", "1985 that", etc.

I can definitely understand his logic because the root of it seems very logical: why waste your time on a low powered console when cheap computers will blow them away in power? Unfortunately he failed to forsee two big things:

1) Homes setup computers for function and not fun. Even to this day millions would rather watch paint dry than sit at their computer to play a game.

2) The rise of Microsoft Windows and its role in the "it-doesn't-need-to-work" mentality that plagues the home computing world. When people play games they just want to relax and have fun. They don't want to deal with endless hassle of software bugs, random performance hits, crashes, and hardware failures and incompatibilities that's become the norm with using a PC.

Consoles used to be extremely robust, but with Microsoft entering the field with its 360 that never seems to work and introducing console software patches, consoles are losing their robust reputation. Hell, you can't even buy a Nintendo Zelda title anymore without dealing with game-ending save-file ruining bugs.

mike @ Jan 30th 2007 10:42PM

actully, The reson this prediction falls short is because their reason of computer prices droping was dead wrong. Sure you can buy a A+ computer for $400, but thats gonna get you mind sweeper and solitare.

They did not forsee game graphics advancing as far as they did. Game graphics advanced so far that stand alone video cards for the latest in graphics now cost additional $ and upwards of $500 too. The onbored video crap they were used to at the time, would not be capable of advancement. So while yes you can get cheap powerful computers to date, a gaming PC is still $1500+.

If today you could pick up a gaming Pc for $400, Ps3, Xbox and Nintendo would not be around, but this is not the case.

People buy home consoles because It allows them to play great games and for a fraction of the cost of the PC. I myself used to be a pc gamer but switched to consoles when the xbox came out. This is because I only really cared about online games, and in the N64 days, online on consoles did not exsist. Then came dreamcast which slowly started it up. Then xbox came which defined online play with the xbl service. Now Im a happy gamer and care nothing for my PC because it simply costs to much for me to buy a new gaming rig, and now I can play online with the consoles (well except nintendo, their stupid). The only thing I miss from the pc environment is the ability to make maps/levels and mods. However, Today more and more console games are coming with map editors (and more advanced ones like in farcry). Also, UT 3 for xbox 360 and ps3 was just announced to allow user created modes. So in 5-10 years from now, I forsee mods and maps being made for all games on consoles (except nintendos lol). Now this may be done through Pcs and uploaded to your console but that is not a problem since a computer to make a mod costs less then a computer to game with. So there is no need to switch off consoles anytime soon.