the market brought many companies with little experience to try to capitalize on video games, and contributors towards the industry's crash in 1983, decimating the North American market. In the wake of the crash, Japanese companies became the leaders in the industry, and as the industry began to recover, the first major publishing houses appeared, maturing the industry to prevent a similar crash in the future. Video game crash of 1983 Activision's success as a third-party developer for the Atari VCS and other home consoles inspired other third-party development firms to emerge in the early 1980s; by 1983, at least 100 different companies claimed to be developing software for the Atari VCS. This had been projected to led to a glut in sales, with only 10% of games producing 75% of sales for 1983 based on 1982 estimates. Further, there were questions on the quality of these games. While some of these firms hired experts in game design and programming to build quality games, most were staffed by novice programmers backed by venture capitalists without experience in the area. As a result, the Atari VCS market became watered down with large quantities of poor quality games. These games did not sell well, and retailers discounted their prices to try to get rid of their inventory. This further impacted sales of high-quality games, since consumers would be drawn to purchase bargain-bin priced games over quality games marked at a regular price. At the end of 1983, several factors, including a market flooded with poor-quality games and loss of publishing control, the lack of consumer confidence in market leader Atari due to the poor performance of several high-profile games, and home computers emerging as a new and more advanced platform for games at nearly the same cost as video game consoles, caused the North American video game industry to experience a severe downturn. The 1983 crash bankrupted several North American companies that produced consoles and games from late 1983 to early 1984. The U.S. market in 1983 dropped to by 1985, while the global video game market estimated at in 1982 fell to by 1985. Warner Communications sold off Atari to Jack Tramiel in 1984, while Magnavox and Coleco exited the industry. The crash had some minor effects on Japan companies with American partners impacted by the crash, but as most of the Japanese companies involved in video games at this point