Awesomely fake comic book ad from 2009
Fast forward to 2009. Sally’s aunt goes to the store to buy her “the new Taylor Swift game”. Poor auntie has to wade through a half dozen or so different games before she realizes Sally wants Band Hero. Now she has another decision to make. Does Sally already have the instruments? Maybe she just has a guitar, so she might need the drums. One more thing: does Sally have an Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii? It’s extremely confusing to the average non-gamer, just as finding a copy of Q*Bert was back in the 80s.
Bad games don’t sell well, and can cause customers to lose trust and also interest in any brand. With no quality control system in place, Atari couldn’t keep the legion of competitors from churning out dozens of abysmal games each month. Conversions of arcade hits were usually good bets, but not always, since the VCS hardware couldn’t handle the graphics needs of the latest games. Donkey Kong was one example of a barely recognizable port. Finding a good game to spend your money on was often difficult, especially when you had to rely on word of mouth reviews.