Formats With Consequences
Remember that Atari was founded as a coin-op company. And coin-op has this requirement that a newbie has to get into the game almost instantly without reading instructions. So the simplicity of onboarding is lost by a lot of people right now.
Anita Elberse, writing in Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment:
Marvel operated as a mini-conglomerate with divisions focused on comic books, toys, media licensing, and consumer-products licensing. The company developed its characters and story lines in its comic-book division, which effectively served as its research-and-development center, or as its incubator for ideas. And a highly efficient incubator at that, since comic-book publishing is relatively cheap and flexible: a typical print run costs the company only \$10,000 to \$20,000.
Atari and Marvel were at their peak when they operated within extreme commercial and creative constraints.
Coin-op punished confusion immediately. If a stranger could not understand the game, the machine stopped earning.
Comics let Marvel test the value of characters, stories and worlds quickly and cheaply before pushing them into toys, licensing and film.
Cheap formats are not just cheaper ways to publish. They are faster ways to learn and earn.
The trouble starts when companies keep the scale but lose this discipline.