Kevin Bunch (ubersaurus) @atariarchive.org · Apr 3 This snippet from Videogaming & Computergaming Illustrated describes the real issue with the 83 crash. Nothing about game quality so much as retail stockrooms being so full that they couldn't really get new stuff, and what they did have had to be discounted or sold back to publishers eventually
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It was also interesting in the Atari 50 interviews where someone said they were asked to go back and make more Atari 2600 games after the crash, apparently because people were going to Radio Shack and asking why there were no new 2600 games, since the general public didn't actually notice the crash.
You can read the whole thing here: archive.gamehistory.org/item/617a4e6... but I'd also like to note that this dovetails with research by Alex Smith; after talking with Atari's distributors and executives, he concluded the problem was production!