Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Golden age of arcade video games" in English language version.
{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)going into virtually every location in the country [..] even a few funeral homes had video games in the basements
To cash in on the Pac-Man video mania, game developers also introduced Asteroids, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Tron, and hundreds more. By 1982, arcade games had become a multi-billion dollar industry. In that year alone, almost 500,000 machines were sold at prices ranging as high as $3000 each.
In 1980 alone, according to Time, $2.8 billion in quarters, triple the amount of the previous years, were fed into video games. That represents 11.2 billion games, an average of almost 50 games for every person in the US.
In 1981, $10.5 billion was spent on all features of video games, 3 times the amount spent on movie tickets that year (Surrey, 1982, p. 74).
The figure of more than $7 billion for last year's video arcade game revenues is a conservative one. Some industry analysts estimate that the real amount spent on video games was as much as five times higher.
Video game machines have an average weekly take of $109 per machine. The video arcade industry took in $8 billion in quarters in 1982, surpassing pop music (at $4 billion in sales per year) and Hollywood films ($3 billion). Those 32 billion arcade games played translate to 143 games for every man, woman, and child in America. A recent Atari survey showed that 86 percent of the US population from 13 to 20 has played some kind of video game and an estimated 8 million US homes have video games hooked up to the television set. Sales of home video games were $3.8 billion in 1982, approximately half that of video game arcades.
At that time, a game for use in entertainment arcades was considered a hit if it sold 1000 units; sales of Space Invaders topped 300,000 units in Japan and 60,000 units overseas.
Estimates counted 7 billion coins that by 1982 had been inserted into some 400,000 Pac Man machines worldwide, equal to one game of Pac Man for every person on earth. US domestic revenues from games and licensing of the Pac Man image for T-shirts, pop songs, to wastepaper baskets, etc. exceeded $1 billion.
The machines were well worth the investment; in total they raked in over a billion dollars worth of quarters in the first year alone.
It became arguably the most famous video game of all time, with the arcade game alone taking in more than a billion dollars, and one study estimated that it had been played more than 10 billion times during the twentieth century.
They compare this to the box office movie top blockbuster Star Wars, which has taken in only $486 million, for a net of $175 million.
Rumors emerged that the unknown creator of Pac-Man had left the industry when he received only a $3500 bonus for creating the highest-grossing video game of all time.
With more than 60,000 units sold in the United States, Donkey Kong was Nintendo's biggest arcade hit. ... Nintendo released Donkey Kong Junior in 1982 and sold only 30,000 machines, 20,000 Popeye machines (also 1982), and a mere 5000 copies of Donkey J (1983).
Defender was Williams Electronics' biggest seller. More than 55,000 units were placed worldwide.
Since February 1980, Midway has sold in excess of 40,000 Galaxian games
Sit-Down-Rennspiel Get A Way (1978) mit 16-bit-CPU.[Sit-down racing game Get A Way (1978) with 16-bit-CPU.]
I, Robot was the first game that featured state-of-the-art 3D polygon graphics, a technique that was nearly ten years ahead of its time. This bizarre game which borrowed features from earlier arcade games like Galaga and Pac-Man even had an option where players could doodle their own abstract polygon generated art.
Although the Disney Studios expected to make over $400 million from this siliconic extravaganza, our source at Variety tells us that its North American rentals were $15 million and estimated total gross, $30 million. The arcade game Tron, made by Bally, grossed more.
What are the best-selling video games? There are a number of factors to consider when attempting to answer this question. First, there are several different types of video games, which makes comparisons difficult, or perhaps unfair. Arcade games are played for a quarter a play (although some are 50 cents, or even more), while home games are bought outright, and their systems must be purchased as well.
Jumpman hopped over barrels, climbed ladders, and jumped from suspended platform to suspended platform as he tried to rescue a damsel from his pissed-off pet gorilla. The game was a smash, and sixty-five thousand cabinets were sold in Japan, propping up the then-struggling Nintendo and laying the groundwork for Nintendo and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto to dominate gaming throughout the 1980s and beyond.
While certainly not the size of Asteroids, the game was still a huge hit with almost 20,000 units sold.
In the late 1990s, Twin Galaxies, which tracks video game world record scores, visited used game auctions and counted how many times the average Pac Man machine had been played. Based on those findings and the total number of machines that were manufactured, the organization said it believed the game had been played more than 10 billion times in the 20th century.
A native of Chicago, where house was first popularized, Saunders is credited for producing and releasing the first house single, "On and On", on his own Jes Say Records label.
Last year, arcade game revenues were approximately $5 billion, compared to $8 billion in 1981 and $7 billion in 1982.
In 1988, players dropped enough change at video arcades to generate revenues of $6.4 billion, up from $4 billion in 1986. Many of those quarters were powering machine guns and fists of fury. According to the April issue of RePlay magazine, 29 of the 45 most popular video games are action games. Three of the top five games listed by PlayMeter were ones with war or fighting themes.
Pac-Man Fever went gold almost instantly with 1 million records sold.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)Pac-Man Fever went gold almost instantly with 1 million records sold.
The figure of more than $7 billion for last year's video arcade game revenues is a conservative one. Some industry analysts estimate that the real amount spent on video games was as much as five times higher.