You're right - Atari, Mattel, and Coleco all developed and/or distributed PC-like hardware in their last ditch efforts because they wanted to lose even more money.
Oh wait.
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Nintendo once accounted for 10% of Walmarts profits + Other Tidbits
- Thread starter QaaQer
- Start date
Oh wait.
Wait, so your argument that the PC was successful at the time is "look at all these PC-inspired systems that bombed hard"?
A lot of us likely learned about that way back. Though I do wonder how much longer they could've held out anyway once heavyweights like Sony and Microsoft turned their eyes on the industry, Nintendo got ahead because of the appeal of their IP and how ruthless they were initially nevermind their other ventures, but I'm not sure Sega had as much in that regard. Certainly not the ruthless angle despite the marketing.
kitchenmotors
Banned
PC gaming might have been gaining traction, but the idea that it would have had any sort of impact that Nintendo did on the market is laughable.
The American market is very important though. It's one region but it's the one that spends the most on consoles, iirc.
My argument is that the narrative of Nintendo being the Jesus Christ of video games is inaccurate for several reasons, chief among them being that there was still a PC game market that existed before, during, and after 1983.
I am citing the PC inspired hardware as a means of proof that these other companies recognized the existence of that market.
Kageshinzo
Member
Anyone who's interested in the history of Nintendo (as well as the video gaming scene in the era before and after the crash) should pick up David Sheff's Game Over book. It's an interesting read. And yes, Yamauchi was fucking scary.
Manmademan
Member
you're talking about a temporary attitude by retailers towards videogames in north america alone. Videogames were still being made and there was definitely an audience for them.
As was pointed out, Arcades were unaffected- consumers were still running out to throw quarters in things like gauntlet and spy hunter. And in this era arcade machines weren't restricted to "arcades" those things were everywhere you had an outlet to plug them into. Grocery stores, laundromats, college rec rooms, the corner deli, 7-11, your local comic shop- EVERYWHERE.
SEGA had already been well into manufacturing the master system, and had a very strong arcade presence. Had there been no nintendo, SEGA eventually would have marketed the master system here- it didn't do much in the states largely thanks to nintendo's anticompetitive practices but was relatively popular in Brazil and EU.
Had nintendo not come along the industry would have looked different for 2 to 3 years, but the end result would have been the same. SEGA, NEC, and other japanese companies would have eventually found a receptive retailer in the states to partner with, OR Atari/Commodore/Tandy/Amiga/Apple would have made greater inroads with computer gaming systems.
kitchenmotors
Banned
I've read it a few times. It's a great read and an interesting insight into how Nintendo worked back in those days. They were cut-throat but the video game industry wouldn't be where it is today if they didn't act as such. In no way would Sega of all companies been able to pull off what Nintendo did.
KillerMan91
Member
NES really didn't sell that well in Europe. PS1 was first mainstream console here. We were rocking our home computers from early 80s to mid 90s when it came to gaming so the crash had pretty much zero effects on European market.
LegendofLex
Member
The existence of a much, much less relevant niche market is not really a very good counterpoint against Nintendo's policies and products having a dramatically bigger impact (in fact, the impact was precisely in line with Nintendo's philosophies behind their policies and products).
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
There is no way to see how successful Sega would have been if Nintendo wasnt in the picture.
The fact remains, that the idea that we would not be playing Video games today without Nintendo is patently false, especially worldwide. It is arguably it may not of grown to the industry it is today without them, but it would of still existed, even on the home console front.
Lets not forget Atari still returned to the home console market after the 2600
I suspect a lot of Japanese companies would've formed better European branches sooner than later. Granted some seem to have effectively made their European branch their core Western branch (Tecmo Koei most notably) but I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of Atlus would've been firmly rooted in Europe along with NA had Nintendo focused on them more earlier on.
In what quantifiable way was the 80's PC gaming market niche?
Manmademan
Member
Exactly.
I forgot all about the atari 7800. If wiki is correct it managed to launch (or re-launch) itself in january of 1986, a mere 3 months after nintendo hit store shelves without marketing itself as a toy as nintendo did. Combine that with Sega launching the master system in 1986 a few months later, and it seems that consoles returning to shelves is a bit of an inevitability.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
But it isnt the only market, a fact often forgotten on forums such as this one. Video games would of continued to exist without Nintendo. There was no way to put the genie back in the bottle even after a industry crash that effected the biggest market.
LegendofLex
Member
By virtue of it being the smaller/more enthusiast-driven market versus the Nintendo mass market?
doctordoak
Member
Good article amd the book looks cool. I didn't quite understand this part though:
Out of everything he uncovered, however, Harris still has one thing that he still shocks him.
I still cant believe that Sega passed up the opportunity to release the consoles that became the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64, Harris said. And even more surprising than the fact that they missed out on these two consoles, which ultimately led Sega to their untimely demise, were the strange reasons why this was the case.
Out of everything he uncovered, however, Harris still has one thing that he still shocks him.
I still cant believe that Sega passed up the opportunity to release the consoles that became the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64, Harris said. And even more surprising than the fact that they missed out on these two consoles, which ultimately led Sega to their untimely demise, were the strange reasons why this was the case.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
It's sort of surreal to see the lengths some of you will go to to begrudge nintendo any success they may have had even historically.
Manmademan
Member
in the US this is correct, but the opposite was true in the EU. how true this is depends on what side of the pond you were on.
Keep in mind as well that nintendo's presence in the US and anticompetitive practices kept PC gaming systems like the Atari XE from gaining a foothold. If you wanted to make games for nintendo, you didn't make them for anyone else. Likewise on the retailer end, Nintendo was notorious for threatening to cut off shipments to retailers who didn't fall in line.
Without nintendo doing things like this, there would have been a lot more competition in the industry from 1985-1989 or so.
GreenTornadoX
Member
Check out this site for the rise and fall of Sega and why, including the American and Japan sides fighting.
Damn good site, informative stuff and has info on all their consoles and how they went about taking on Nintendo, what happened when Sony showed up and lack of money helping to end it all.
Damn good site, informative stuff and has info on all their consoles and how they went about taking on Nintendo, what happened when Sony showed up and lack of money helping to end it all.
"The Ford Model T was a successfully selling car."
"None of us would be driving cars if it wasn't for the Ford Model T."
There's a pretty wide gap between these two statements, and only one of them is objectively true.
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
No one is begrudging Nintendos success. We just don't see them as the savior of gaming and can envision a history where they stayed a playing card/toy company,
NekoFever
Member
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.
The first thing I did after reading the article was preorder the book.
I've never actually seen a retail copy of that book. Every single person I know who's read it got their copy from Arcade magazine, which gave it away as a free gift in the 90s.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
The Model T Ford represents the creation and establishment of the automotive industry, with the automobile becoming a mass market consumer purchase instead of an expensive toy for the rich.
"It was just the best selling" is massively dismissive of the success it deserved, and ignprant of the reality of market conditions at the time.
If that's the simile you want to use for the NES, go for it.
MrSaturn99
Member
What lawsuit was that?
Manmademan
Member
^^ This right here.
No one is saying nintendo wasn't phenomenally successful with the NES (for legal and not so legal reasons) but it takes a hell of a leap to assume that US retailers simply hated money and would ignore the profitability of arcade games as well as platforms overseas just because of what happened in 1983.
And as for nintendo's model of "locking out" unauthorized software saving the industry, apparently Atari had already realized this was a problem and designed a solution to it with the 7800, released in 1984.
Get the first edition, which is only a couple of bucks. The later editions are also out of print, and it just includes a chapter on the N64 era by a different author (Andy Eddy).
This is the copy I have. Get it used, and pay for shipping. You'll get the book for $4.20 total.
Walmart: If we pulled some of your games off the shelf to make room for Sega's, would you die?
Nintendo: It would be extremely painful...
Walmart: You're a big company!
Nintendo: ...for you.
GreenTornadoX
Member
Well shit. Thanks, you just saved me tons of money! :O
kamikazekoala
Member
That stupid struggle between Sega of America and Sega of Japan costed us the final chapter of the Eternal Champions. That game had potential. Imagine a reboot with current gen graphics...
Oh, well. We still have Virtua Fighter, right?
Oh, well. We still have Virtua Fighter, right?
right?
ThoughtsOfSpeaking
Banned
which still has no bearing on the statement "We would not be driving today if the Model T had not existed" Which is still false, just like the idea the NES is the reason we are playing video games 30 years later, especially globally.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Wow. I got it at EB for free because they were going to throw it away, lol.
I always thought it was funny that the author seems to admire Nintendo, yet the book is like a monument to their evil.
Manmademan
Member
A Serious Man
Member
Wal-Mart didn't really enter the grocery business until the late 90's, so I guess it's possible.
Manmademan
Member
and the first supercenter didn't open until 1988. Walmart of the 80s to early 90s was an entirely different company than it is now.
From what I have read the new Atari Corp was going to re-release the 7800 in late 1984.They ran into legal problems because the company that designed the 7800 for them,GCE, owned the rights to the system and not them. They only had it worked out to release it in 1986. I love Nintendo, but Atari's plans had nothing to do with the NES.
LiquidSolid
Member
And even before the PS1, the Mega Drive was far more popular than the NES or SNES in Europe (as well as Aus/NZ).
Well, Nintendo co-operated with Silicon Graphics on the N64. Maybe SGI reached out to Sega USA before Nintendo, and Sega Japan told them to go away. As for PlayStation, maybe Sony reached out to Sega Japan after Nintendo rejected them, and Sega said "Nah, we're good." and kept working on Saturn.
Manmademan
Member
That's sort of the point? Atari had a system (the 7800) ready to go, that was delayed for random legal reasons.
There was an assertion that nintendo's "this is a toy, not a game console" approach was the ONLY way to get on store shelves in october of 1985, yet Atari managed to get retailers to carry the 7800, a system designed in 1984 that made no attempt at marketing itself as a toy a mere 3 months after the NES hit shelves- despite the fact that Atari should have been toxic to retailers, since it was sort of them that caused the crash of 83 in the first place.
Had there been no nintendo, Atari still would have released the 7800 3 months later- only this time they would have had no viable competition until Sega launched the master system later that year.
There is a Kindle edition btw
GreenTornadoX
Member
TC McQueen
Member
You could download Calibre and a set of plugins to strip the DRM before converting it to another eBook format like ePUB.
GreenTornadoX
Member
Thanks for the tip. I'll do that next time I buy an e-book. (I haven't bought one before in my life)
There's a book about the Wii that was translated from Japanese into English that I ordered a week or two ago. I paid for the crappiest shipping, so its taking a while to get into me, but it was recommended to me by Chris Johnson of Player One Podcast fame, so I can't go wrong.
What is this nonsense?
Please try to comprehend what was happening in Europe and other parts of the world during that time. C64, Spectrum ZX, Amstrad, Amiga, Atari ST to name a handful... It was huge business, not some smaller market like you seem to belive it was. That it was smaller only applied in North America which was far, far from the be all and end all of global gaming commerce.