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Nintendo once accounted for 10% of Walmart’s profits + Other Tidbits

Q

QaaQer

Member
  • Nintendo didn’t care about making friends, and this helped Sega. Making friends was nice for Sega, but it was much easier to rely on the hatred others had for Nintendo.
  • The U.S. government brought a lawsuit against Nintendo on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor
  • The real reason Sega failed was because of the war between Sega of Japan and Sega of America.
  • Walmart barely even wanted to speak to Sega of America, let alone stock its Genesis system back in the early days of the 16-bit console’s life in the U.S. This was...Because Nintendo was scary as hell.
  • Sega of America boss Tom Kalinske was integral to Barbie, Flintstone vitamins, and He-Man

What I Learned from Reading Console Wars

Looking forward to picking this book up.
 
M

Mellahan

Concerned about dinosaur erection.
Untalkative_Bunny said:
  • Nintendo didn’t care about making friends, and this helped Sega. Making friends was nice for Sega, but it was much easier to rely on the hatred others had for Nintendo.
    [*]The U.S. government brought a lawsuit against Nintendo on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor
  • The real reason Sega failed was because of the war between Sega of Japan and Sega of America.
  • Walmart barely even wanted to speak to Sega of America, let alone stock its Genesis system back in the early days of the 16-bit console’s life in the U.S. This was...Because Nintendo was scary as hell.
  • Sega of America boss Tom Kalinske was integral to Barbie, Flintstone vitamins, and He-Man

What I Learned from Reading Console Wars

Looking forward to picking this book up.
Click to expand...

Whoa. I learned something today.
 
P

PaulExcellent

Member
That's a pretty cool read.
Nintendo's 3rd party relations tell an interesting story. I wonder how much they're actually trying now with the WiiU.
The 3DS seems to be doing well with them.
 
SmokedMeat

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Yep, there was a time when cuddly Nintendo were a bunch of bastards bent on having a monopoly.

Thankfully the Genesis took off and and was so successful Nintendo lost the upper hand on threatening companies. A part of me is happy to see Nintendo trailing behind and humbled. We don't need a company like the old Nintendo in this industry.
 
G

gigantor21

Member
RE_Player said:
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Click to expand...

Hyperbole aside, it doesn't surprise me. AFAIK Nintendo WAS console gaming in the States before the Genesis came out and proved there is room for successful alternatives. I don't even think Sony had that much sway in the market during the PS2 days.

Edit: Nintendo ninja'd.
 
IrishNinja

IrishNinja

Member
a lotta this is known (well, not the 10% figure) but the death of Sega thing is kinda oversimplifying. still, should be an interesting book to read soon enough!
 
FrostuTheNinja

FrostuTheNinja

Member
Ehhhh, the death of Sega is slightly more complicated. Never knew about the 10% at Wal Mart, though. That's, big.


Edit:

IrishNinja said:
a lotta this is known (well, not the 10% figure) but the death of Sega thing is kinda oversimplifying. still, should be an interesting book to read soon enough!
Click to expand...

Yeah, what he said.
 
C

Cipherr

Member
Gamerloid said:
Back when console wars were fought by the companies and not by their fanatics
Click to expand...

Lies. We were fighting, it was just via snail mail to your favorite gaming magazines 'letters from the readers' section. Then from there to BBS/IRC and whatnot.
 
T

Tigress

Member
This sounds like an interesting read. I think I'll wait though until it's not 15 bux (I have a hard time paying over 10 for a book). Never realized Nintendo was so draconic back then. Sounds like it is a good thing they were taken down a peg (So did Sega's Genesis manage to do it or were they still being bastards when PSX came around?).

Now, if some one would write a book about behind the scenes of the xbox one up to when MS did the 180...
 
P

Pancakes R Us

Member
RE_Player said:
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Click to expand...
First response wins. This is the first thing that came into my head when I read the thread title.

*Never count Nintendo out though, even though it's painfully obvious it has no idea what it's doing in the home console business right now.
 
SmokedMeat

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
gigantor21 said:
Hyperbole aside, it doesn't surprise me. AFAIK Nintendo WAS console gaming in the States before the Genesis came out and proved there is room for successful alternatives. I don't even think Sony had that much sway in the market during the PS2 days.

Edit: Nintendo ninja'd.
Click to expand...

Before the Genesis there was the Master System. Nintendo made sure no publisher supported it.
They lost their grip when Sonic showed up and along with brilliant advertising, made it so publishers could thumb their nose at Nintendo and support another system without fear.

Sony only buried Nintendo further, but it was Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog that got the ball rolling.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
ShinUltramanJ said:
Yep, there was a time when cuddly Nintendo were a bunch of bastards bent on having a monopoly.

Thankfully the Genesis took off and and was so successful Nintendo lost the upper hand on threatening companies. A part of me is happy to see Nintendo trailing behind and humbled. We don't need a company like the old Nintendo in this industry.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, we have one.
 
kyoya

kyoya

Member
I think one of the reasons Yamauchi was so hell-bent on domination was how Atari once courted Nintendo. In short, Atari betrayed Nintendo.

I remember reading in Game Over that Atari got very close with Nintendo since each side was exploring the possibility of having Atari purchase the worldwide rights to the Famicom outside of Japan. This may have been around 1983/1984. Meeting were held, Nintendo's Arakawa and Howard Lincoln were flown on the fancy Atari/Warner corporate jet from Seattle to Atari in Sunnyvale. Atari would also fly out to Nintendo's offices in Kyoto to meet with Yamauchi to negotiate a deal. It was a charade to delay Nintendo, lead them on, and even learn a little about Nintendo's technology. It would later be learned that Atari/Warner never had the money to give worldwide distribution to the Famicom. This all pissed Yamauchi, Arakawa and Lincoln off.

In short, Atari courted and then dumped Nintendo....Nintendo then went on to blow Atari to smithereens with handling the distribution of the Famicom on its own, marketing it as the NES.
 
1

18-Volt

Member
I remember back then gaming magazines reported the Sega Saturn war between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. Sega Japan was making 2D games for system while Sega of America was insisting on making 3D games that make full use of the system. That battle killed the console prematurely.

Kalinske also made sure that visually unimpressive games like Grandia, Lunar, Sakura Wars, Shining Force sequels never saw american release. That was bad, I had been waiting for the second part of the Shining Force 3 for years.
 
S

SwiftDeath

Member
I have always gotten the impression that Nintendo was a bit of a bully on the block back in the day when they were on top [3rd party relations, retailer relations]

Although bully is probably too strong a word to be used
 
X

xandaca

Member
SwiftDeath said:
I have always gotten the impression that Nintendo was a bit of a bully on the block back in the day when they were on top [3rd party relations, retailer relations]

Although bully is probably too strong a word to be used
Click to expand...

It's really not. Look up Howard Lincoln.
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
DrFunk said:
Explains why the US Saturn got no love
Click to expand...

Oh but that's only the half of it. Stolar thought the Saturn was a bad system and didn't care to support it. At one point, he outright tried to choke the life out of the Saturn by not bringing over games to force Sega to rush a successor system more geared toward America. Had the Saturn been treated properly from the get-go in America, it probably could have done better.

SoA seemed intent on the 32X being the successor system, figuring that there were already so many Genesises out there that making a new system and hitting the reset button on the install base made no sense. Sega Japan was thinking they needed to make new console hardware to keep up with their arcade hardware's growth so they could have multiple bites at the apple. To them, this business model was lucrative and was not going to end any time soon at the same time as the American arcades were becoming less practical.

There's a lot to be said for giving different branches autonomy to best represent their regions, but Sega is an example of where it can go wrong.
 
T

ThoughtsOfSpeaking

Banned
Its funny but Nintendo in 80's >>>>>>Pre 180 Microsoft.


All all the company's that could not be trusted with a one console monopoly, Nintendo is by far the least trustworthy. Even now.

Reading all that just makes me wish Sega was still in the game *sigh*
 
O

outunderthestars

Banned
Seems kind of shitty for Venture Beat to basically pull out the juicy bits from an unreleased book and get a bunch of hits while basically spoiling a book that an author spent years working on. :(
 
I

illmatic22

Banned
To get into Walmart, Sega took over the retailer’s hometown


Kalinske and Sega had a problem. Retailers weren’t interested in the Sega Genesis, so instead of going from chain to another in an effort to get what he could, the Sega boss decided to focus on Walmart.

That didn’t pan out for all of the reasons noted above, but that’s when Kalinske and one of his partners came up with a plan to cover Bentonville, Ark., the home of Walmart’s headquarters, with advertisements for the Genesis. The hardware company even rented out a storefront where consumers in town could come in and check out the Genesis, but they couldn’t buy one. The idea was that everyone would go to Walmart and ask for the new, amazing system only to find out they didn’t have it — and ask why not.

This didn’t work … at first.

After months of rejection, Kalinske finally received a call from Walmart’s head of electronics. He gave in after explaining that his bosses kept pestering him about why they weren’t carrying the Genesis. The Sega boss agreed to close the store and take down all of the advertising. And other retailers started falling into line behind Walmart.
Click to expand...


Kalinske and Sega of America were great.

Sega of Japan were mostly to blame for their misfortunes IMO.
 
S

SirUltimos

Member
I'm really excited for this book. I consider myself to be a person who knows a whole lot about gaming history, but a lot of that info they presented is new to me. I think it's going to be a great read.
 
M

MercuryLS

Banned
outunderthestars said:
Seems kind of shitty for Venture Beat to basically pull out the juicy bits from an unreleased book and get a bunch of hits while basically spoiling a book that an author spent years working on. :(
Click to expand...

Well the article got me to pre-order the kindle version. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting stuff in the 500pg book.
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
outunderthestars said:
Seems kind of shitty for Venture Beat to basically pull out the juicy bits from an unreleased book and get a bunch of hits while basically spoiling a book that an author spent years working on. :(
Click to expand...

This happens all the time. It's why advance copies go out. It's meant to drum up interest and it's done with the publishers blessing.
 
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