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[Alan Wake]

Let's say you have the magic ability to go back in time and you get to change one thing in the gaming industry. The fate of a game or a console, a specific decision that had broader consequences, or whatever you choose. What would it be?

I would do everything to help the Dreamcast succeed. Maybe mission impossible, but I sure would like to try, and maybe that would start much earlier, to be honest. Scrap the 32X before it launched and make the Saturn a perfect 3D console with a Sonic game at or close to launch. That would make it easier for the Saturn to succeed which would help the Dreamcast.

 

[Beer Baelly]

Erase Don Mattrick.

 

[Tommi84]

I would close the forum

 

[BrutalTruth_]

destroy MTX

 

[Alan Wake]

Erase Don Mattrick.

Ouch.

 

[March Climber]

Basically something similar to your idea OP. I'd have Microsoft heavily invest in Sega and bolster them instead of directly entering the market themselves. Microsoft would help Sega with their next console's design and OS, help attain much needed western developer support and exclusives(so Halo and Gears would still happen), help them with marketing, etc. however Sega would still be able to keep their eastern ideals and trust with the Japanese market, including a ton of their exclusives on their own console, rivaling Sony and potentially Nintendo with their insane amount of western and eastern IP/studios. It would be a nearly perfect combination of west and east sensibilities and business sense to make for a serious competitor in the console space.

Here's a console concept.

This would have been their controller for this new console(not the one above)

A special version of the controller with the Saturn D-pad would also exist.

 

[SpiceRacz]

Mother 3 would have released on N64.

 

[March Climber]

destroy MTX

It would still creep into consoles eventually. You would have to destroy the entire windows, apple, and linux industries. You would have to destroy Steam, GoG, and EGS. You would have to destroy the entire mobile phone industry as well and tell a young Steve jobs to choose another career path. Even then, there's still no guarantee it won't happen. Finding ways to squeeze more money from people has always existed and always will. It's a future you can't avoid.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Kill the 32X

 

[TheBreezyBB]

Mobile gaming.

 

[TikiLagoonSam]

I would save Iwata

 

[Perrott]

The PS3 would have come out equipped with the planned Cell GPU from Sony's patents, that way the system would not have been bottlenecked by the suboptimal GPU solution provided by Nvidia.

Ken Kutaragi would have been right and the PS3 would have succeeded right from the start while living up to the hype. Perfect timeline.

 

[Knightime_X]

Either:
Nintendo agrees with Sony
Or..
Nintendo and ms actually merge.
Nintendo makes the games happen, ms does hardware power and online.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

If I could change history you'd be getting that fancy new graphics card.. for your Amiga

 

[mansoor1980]

replace PC with amiga

 

[Drizzlehell]

 

[FoxMcChief]

Probably holding off from getting a PS5 and setting the money aside for a Quest 3.

 

[TexMex]

We’d have gotten GameCube 2 instead of Wii.

Also, Vita would have been a huge commercial success.

 

[Handel]

All the missteps by the big three have eventually made them produce better games/services for the consumer, so I would say it's misguided to want to change the PS3 failure or Xbox One failure or Wii U failure. Predatory monetization is always the end point of things, and has existed since games have existed in different forms so a waste to focus on removing MTX or DLC.

My change in history would be wanting to save Bioware from their current fate, and the kneejerk answer is make it so they're not bought by EA...but that doesn't solve the problem unless we have someone else buy them(they weren't financially stable), and any of the choices may not provide that much better a future. The better solution though is making it so that Bioware never made Star Wars The Old Republic MMO, which more than anything else has caused their decline. TOR's release being delayed is what caused EA to demand that Bioware rush out Dragon Age 2, the first big hit to their reputation. TOR also drew away resources and staff from Dragon Age and Mass Effect, most notably Drew Karpyshyn who was a lead writer for ME1&2 but left the ME team to work on TOR before ME3. Beyond that, TOR has made it so that we will likely never see another single player KOTOR game, as they consider it to be KOTOR's 3-10, all the while the characters from the original games like Revan are completely misused.

Bioware is one of my favorite developers, and the hardest to see fall as low as they are now. Kill the MMO to save the single player RPGs.

 

[SeraphJan]

Use X86 for 7th gen

 

[RaZoR No1]

Prevent Kinect

IMO after the release of Kinect, MS lost its way.
They are still trying to make up the damage done from that time...

 

[Three]

It would still creep into consoles eventually. You would have to destroy the entire windows, apple, and linux industries. You would have to destroy Steam, GoG, and EGS. You would have to destroy the entire mobile phone industry as well and tell a young Steve jobs to choose another career path. Even then, there's still no guarantee it won't happen. Finding ways to squeeze more money from people has always existed and always will. It's a future you can't avoid.

You could just destroy digital stores. Then mtx can't exist.

Mtx happened on consoles when MS and Bethesda tried something with horse armour because there was a digital store that could sell trinkets.

 

[keraj37]

replace PC with amiga

It was close to this, but Amiga refused Bill Gates offer to make an OS for it, and that burried it.

 

[T4keD0wN]

I could erase mtx or drm, but i would much rather shut down Epic Games in 2005 before the damage theyve done to the industry got irrepairable.

 

[mansoor1980]

It was close to this, but Amiga refused Bill Gates offer to make an OS for it, and that burried it.

 

[keraj37]

Yeah, this article touches that subject a bit: https://dfarq.homeip.net/how-the-amiga-could-have-lived-to-age-30-and-beyond/
And it states easily that Windows 95 was a final nail in the coffin of the Commodore.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

I'd just get rid of consoles after the 16-bit era. Everything gaming goes to PC, and overall it remains a smaller more niche hobby with more depth.

 

[theStartupSound]

Everyone working for Rockstar would have signed a contract, that gtaonline is just a nice multiplayer mode in GTA games but will never be more important or gets any more content than the main (sp) game.

 

[RoXQi3x]

I shouldn't have spent all that money on Pokemon Go.

 

[L*][*N*K]

I'd just get rid of consoles after the 16-bit era. Everything gaming goes to PC, and overall it remains a smaller more niche hobby with more depth.

How long do you think that industry will last? I don’t think it will make it to 2000

 

[Caio]

I would change the wife, and play more videogames.

 

[Alan Wake]

We’d have gotten GameCube 2 instead of Wii.

Also, Vita would have been a huge commercial success.

I'm all with you here.

 

[AndrewRyan]

For the industry I'd have EA vanish in 2005.

Personally wish I had switched to PC sooner instead of waiting till after the PS3/360 era.

 

[NeverYouMind]

Erase Don Mattrick.

Don Mattrick is necessary for the current timeline. There cannot be light without darkness.

 

[Lunarorbit]

I wouldn't buy mass effect Andromeda

 

[diffusionx]

Tell Sega not to release the 32X.

 

[SteelCurtain 59]

Teach Valve that there are numbers beyond 2

 

[intbal]

Prevent Warner Communications from selling Atari to Jack Tramiel in 1984. Release the 7800 in mid-84 as intended.
In June 1984, it would have been a reasonably competitive console. By the time of its eventual release in 1986, it was horribly outdated.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

I would save Iwata

I hope Iwata smiles at you from Heaven for this based post

 

[Dynasty8]

Make all the right investments, become the first official trillionaire and start my own gaming company with multiple dedicated teams that drop bangers after bangers every couple to few years similar to Rockstar.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Let's say you have the magic ability to go back in time and you get to change one thing in the gaming industry. The fate of a game or a console, a specific decision that had broader consequences, or whatever you choose. What would it be?

I would do everything to help the Dreamcast succeed. Maybe mission impossible, but I sure would like to try, and maybe that would start much earlier, to be honest. Scrap the 32X before it launched and make the Saturn a perfect 3D console with a Sonic game at or close to launch. That would make it easier for the Saturn to succeed which would help the Dreamcast.

Coming from you, Alan, I would assume you'd have decided on a different career.

 

[radewagon]

Sony's Backwards Compatibility solutions would be as robust as Microsoft's.

 

[Gojiira]

Stop MS entering the console market, make them solely into a publisher.
Have them assist Sega.

 

[StereoVsn]

Get Sega USA and Sega Japan on the same page before 32x and Saturn shenanigans.

Now, now, if I can time travel, surely I can hypnotize these execs to work together.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Made sure that Christmas I begged for the Amiga more so I wouldn’t have ended up with the ST.

Not that I was ungrateful just wanted an Amiga not the ST.

 

[Closer]

I would save Iwata

Same.

I'd show up in a time capsule, turn blond for whatever reason, make some aliens to pieces, deliver him the medicine he needed and warn him about the androids and their Ai and how it's gonna end the world as we know.

 

[Puscifer]

I

Teach Valve that there are numbers beyond 2

You'd have to restructure valve. They have a weird policy like 3D realms where they're sitting on tons of money and their employees just don't give a shit anymore.

There's a video where the head at the time asked what was going on with Duke Nukem forever and I shit you not that he says "World of Warcraft is sucking up too much of our time"

There's even a picture of Gabe playing WoW in the mid 2000s. I think realistically and I hate to say this, Gabe should be replaced with someone else that actually cares about game output on the software front, Steam is a multi billion dollar profitable company, not revenue, PROFIT.

Clearly they have interest in hardware but fuck dude, where are the games??

 

[Codes 208]

Warn sony about how theyre about to fuck up the psv with propietary memory and lack of mindshare and support.

I would also bring a ps4 controller and have them reverse engineer it so that would become the ps3 controller because whoever decided to make the r2/l2 triggers slope downwards, as well as create a small framed controller with analogs so close youd likely bump your thumbs together frequently shouldve been sacked and possibly flogged

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I would make Phil Spencer head of Xbox in 2001 at launch.

That would've devastated PS2.

 

[EverydayBeast]

I would give everything to make psn happen, Xbox live was kinda on the path before and that probably has something to do with Microsoft’s good programming.