I'm trying to get a feel for the scale and dynamics of the early home computer game industry. Statistics for arcade games and console cartridges are relatively easy to come by, e.g. that Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 sold over seven million units (short of forecast but still a very large number, which management took as at least partial validation of their strategy, not realizing that part of the goodwill of the Atari brand had been sold with those cartridges), but I have thus far been able to find nothing whatsoever on the corresponding statistics for home computer game cartridges.
So to take a highly representative example:
The TI-99/4A was perhaps the most cartridge-dependent of all home computers; not only was it sold in the peak years of computer game cartridges, but once they got into a price war with the Vic-20 (which was cheaper to manufacture), TI positively depended on cartridge revenue to make the whole thing commercially viable.
TI Invaders has been called the best of all home computer versions of the most iconic of the classic arcade games; according to https://www.ranker.com/review/ti-invaders/34083632?ref=wiki_312762
It was the top-selling computer game for the TI-99/4A through at least 1982.
Is there any way to find out or even estimate to within an order of magnitude, how many units TI Invaders sold?
