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Thread: USA sales for Atari 7800 Systems and game sales from 1986 to 1990 are found

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    Bell (Level 8) 7th lutz's Avatar
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    Default USA sales for Atari 7800 Systems and game sales from 1986 to 1990 are found

    I will be showing the USA Sales figures on Atari 7800 games from 1986 to 1990 on my 2nd post on this thread.

    The Atari 7800 System sale in America can be downloaded from http://www.atariage.com/forums/index...post&p=1756601 .

    The Atari 7800 USA sales figures from 1986 to 1990 is over 3.7 million systems sold.

    The sales figures don't count the systems on the test market in 1984 and the new 7800 systems sold after 1990.

    The Documents also shows companies or people outside of stores mentioned. I am not typing the whole list, since it is huge.

    It includes companies that never made games for the system. If you are curious about the companies, I recommand downloading it. Those companies are found in 5 folders. You need to use a word processing program to read the files.
    Last edited by 7th lutz; 05-25-2009 at 10:22 AM.

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    Bell (Level 8) 7th lutz's Avatar
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    The Atari 7800 USA games from 1986 to 1990 are found at http://www.atariage.com/forums/index...post&p=1756718 .

    Atari didn't mention the sales figures of all the Atari 7800 games available for sale. Remember the sales figures for USA Atari 7800 game sales are incomplete due to Atari not mentioning any sales after 1990.

    I Used the excel spreadsheet to add up the game sales to all the games mentioned.

    Here are the game sales for each game from 1986 to 1990 combined based on the documents:

    Ace of Aces - 11,918
    Asteriods - 153,083
    Ball Blazer -45,307 (I subtracted the returns)
    BasketBrawl -432
    Centipede - 210,143
    Choptlifter -176,573
    Commando - 5,592
    Cracked - 13,012
    Crossbow - 9,798
    Dark Chambers - 15,691
    Dessert Falcon - 41,047
    Donkey Kong - 41,556
    Donkey Kong Jr. 37,500
    Fight Fight - 18,777
    Food Fight - 182, 459
    Galaga - 175,118
    Hat Trick - 50, 117 (Subtracted the games returned)
    Ikari Warriors - 732
    Impossible Mission - 13,264
    Jinks - 84
    Joust - 143,344
    Karateka - 159,055
    Mario Bros. - 89,412
    Mat Mania Challenge - 294
    Mean 18 Ultimate Golf - 468
    Ms. Pac-man - 298,926
    Ninja Golf - 384
    One-on-One Basesketball - 156, 933
    Planet Smashers -480
    Pole Position 2 - 12 (dodn't know why Atari didn't add the totals from pack in games)
    Real Sports Baseball -
    Robotron: 2084 - 99,775
    Summer Gamers - 10,020
    Super Huey UH-1x - 10,677
    Touchdown Football - 30,689
    Tower Toppler - 16,397
    Winter Games - 23,702
    Xenophobe - 10,878
    Xevious - 165,578

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    Very cool. It's a shame that Ninja Golf didn't catch on. That game is so wickedly bizarre. So is this list saying it only sold 384 copies? Interesting.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ShinobiMan View Post
    Very cool. It's a shame that Ninja Golf didn't catch on. That game is so wickedly bizarre. So is this list saying it only sold 384 copies? Interesting.
    Yep, through 1990. I didn't find any sales from the 1989 sales folder or earlier. Based on sales figures on systems and games, 1990 was the worst year in sales.

    There are more than 384 copies, but they were sold new after 1990. There has to over 1,000 copies sold as a whole, but Atari stopped recording USA sales in a year after 1990.

    Remember that stores and catalogs has Atari 7800 games on clearance back in the early 1990's. It is possible later 7800 titles didn't make is in some stores, or they sold on clearance after 1990.

    I saw Big lots selling Ninja Golf new back in the mid 1990's. There was a good amount of Atari 7800 games at Big Lots brand new during that time. It seems like A good of big lots had Atari 7800 games at the time since it is a sales chain and that is what I heard in the past.

    O'Shea, Ltd. had Ninja Golf in stock. O'Shea, Ltd. was known to have a lot of unsold games. They have over a 1 million unsold Atari games.

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    that is cool. from this rarity can be established right?

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    Quote Originally Posted by otaku View Post
    that is cool. from this rarity can be established right?
    Not really. The list of games and totals is missing information. The list is missing 7800 games like Midnight mutants for an example. That means the game sales for games I typed might be off. I don't know by how much.

    The other thing is we don't know if Atari counted the games sold by their mail order service. There is no data after 1990 on Atari 7800 sales.

    Based on the Documents on games sales I read, the year after they release got higher in a good amount of cases. That could be true with games like Ninja Golf for an example.

    That means somes games might have higher totals than the documents I read show.

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    Quote Originally Posted by 7th lutz View Post
    Not really. The list of games and totals is missing information. The list is missing 7800 games like Midnight mutants for an example. That means the game sales for games I typed might be off. I don't know by how much.

    The other thing is we don't know if Atari counted the games sold by their mail order service. There is no data after 1990 on Atari 7800 sales.

    Based on the Documents on games sales I read, the year after they release got higher in a good amount of cases. That could be true with games like Ninja Golf for an example.

    That means somes games might have higher totals than the documents I read show.
    This isn't the number of games produced, just sold.

    Also many 7800 games were sold after the fact at clearance. Someone here will remember the name of the one website that sold jillions of 7800 games cheap...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Trebuken View Post
    This isn't the number of games produced, just sold.

    Also many 7800 games were sold after the fact at clearance. Someone here will remember the name of the one website that sold jillions of 7800 games cheap...
    Osheas

    and they probably still have a bunch

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    O'Shea and Best Electronics have/sold many games. I posted on AA that I found the number of systems sold vs. cartridges to be an extremely wide girth. If you add up every game sold during that period of time, that's a little over 2 million, meaning maybe half or more of the systems were sold to people who never bought a 7800 game? That seems so strange.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Greg2600 View Post
    O'Shea and Best Electronics have/sold many games. I posted on AA that I found the number of systems sold vs. cartridges to be an extremely wide girth. If you add up every game sold during that period of time, that's a little over 2 million, meaning maybe half or more of the systems were sold to people who never bought a 7800 game? That seems so strange.
    They may not have counted pack-in or store promo pack sales in that data. I know I got Pole Position II and a few other games when I bought my 7800 from Fedco here in Southern California in the late 80s. I know the NEX was also selling the 7800 with a similar promo pack around the same time.

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    Very cool, and higher sales than I'd have thought... 3.7 million (and that not a complete number) isn't too bad, for a system sold with bargain-basement production values and game development costs. Interesting.

    Oh, and yeah, Ninja Golf had just come out in 1990 I think, so that's just the early sales... and no 1991 sales are here, much less those O'Shea's and stuff, so yeah, actual game sales are definitely higher. But it does say that early sales of 7800 games in 1990 were pretty poor, for some games at least...

    Quote Originally Posted by Bojay1997
    They may not have counted pack-in or store promo pack sales in that data. I know I got Pole Position II and a few other games when I bought my 7800 from Fedco here in Southern California in the late 80s. I know the NEX was also selling the 7800 with a similar promo pack around the same time.
    Still that is kind of odd, though... were people mostly playing 2600 games on them, or something?

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    Quote Originally Posted by A Black Falcon View Post
    Very cool, and higher sales than I'd have thought... 3.7 million (and that not a complete number) isn't too bad, for a system sold with bargain-basement production values and game development costs. Interesting.

    Oh, and yeah, Ninja Golf had just come out in 1990 I think, so that's just the early sales... and no 1991 sales are here, much less those O'Shea's and stuff, so yeah, actual game sales are definitely higher. But it does say that early sales of 7800 games in 1990 were pretty poor, for some games at least...



    Still that is kind of odd, though... were people mostly playing 2600 games on them, or something?
    No, but I know I only paid $50 for my system and the six or so games it came packaged with in late 1989/early 1990. I actually searched out more games later and I remember getting a bunch for $5 each at Playco in San Diego and a place in Westwood by UCLA in 1991. Having said that, I also recall finding used lots at swap meets and thrifts which included 7800 games, so it's not like they weren't available on the used market by 1990/91 which is why a good percentage of the sales may not be counted in the stats since Atari couldn't keep track of used sales.

    I know personally I really wasn't too worried about finding more games for it at the time and $50 didn't seem like a bad deal for a new console and six games, especially when games were still selling for $30-$50 each on the NES and other consoles. I'm sure a lot of other people felt the same way and didn't really get too upset or concerned about not being able or willing to buy more games. Heck, the attach rate today for the Wii is only 2 games a year, so I wouldn't be surprised if some people never bought a new 7800 game after their purchase with the pack-in games.

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