The history of gaming, and the 1983-1985 video gaming crash.

[007ELmO]

This article is an interesting read for those that are not familiar with the video gaming crash of 1983.

A 3 billion dollar industry crippled itself to 100 million dollars and was on life support, until Nintendo game around. A lot of interesting tidbits here, and why Nintendo may have never had 3rd party support, even from day one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

Atari buried unsold copies of E.T. (one of the worst games ever) in a New Mexico landfill, during the crash, in order to clear inventory.

Nintendo used to hoard profits by limiting 3rd party companies to produce only 5 games per year. This was also to prevent market saturation (of poor quality games), which caused the video gaming crash in the 1st place. Ironic, considering how badly Nintendo needs 3rd party support nowadays - and still tries to survive on Mario, Zelda, and Metroid.

NES revived the gaming industry, but they had to call it the "Nintendo Entertainment System" in order to get away from the phrase "game console" that was directly related to the crash.

The Sony PSX came along after Nintendo refused to go the CD route, and allow red-book audio, among other things. Nintendo contracted Sony (who was also the maker of the audio chip in the SNES), to develop an SNES-CD add-on. Nintendo ditched the idea and made a cartridge based Nintendo 64 system. Shortly thereafter, Sony created the PlayStation eXperimental. Oops!

ELmO

 

[mmntech]

The SNES CD story is an interesting one. Nintendo's CEO at the time, Hiroshi Yamauchi, didn't like the deal Sony was getting. In particular, Sony would retain control over the disc format, and thus a great deal of the software licensing. Nintendo instead went to Phillips, and tried to negotiate a more favourable deal. Phillips, naturally, took the money and ran. The result of the deal was the failed CD-I and four terrible games featuring two of Nintendo's biggest franchises. Sony came back with the technology and unveiled the PlayStation.

Nintendo does have quite a legacy of pissing off their third party partners. Something that continues to this day.

 

[007ELmO]

This coming hot on the heels of Nintendo admitting the Wii-U has failed and is looking at new business ideas (like games on smart phones). I guess it's time for Nintendo 1st party games to show up on XBOX.

 

[mmntech]

Back when Nintendo implemented the Seal of Approval and limits on third parties, it did make a lot of sense. During the 2nd generation, it was a wild west. A lot of shovelware got churned out. Not to mention games of questionable content, like Mystique's infamous Atari Porn. I think those did a lot more damage than anybody gives them credit for. We're still very uncomfortable with sex in games. This was long before the ESRB and the studio system.

The problem with Nintendo today is they're still trying to run their business as if it were 1994 instead of 2014. They also like to operate in their own little bubble where Apple, Sony and Microsoft aren't competitors. A good example of this from the Eurogamer article that was posted the other day was about online gaming. When pressed about it by third parties, Nintendo execs admitted they didn't know much about what Xbox and PS were doing.

I don't think Nintendo is going to make the jump to smartphones, PS, or Xbox. At least not any of their core franchises. Nintendo likes to maintain absolute control of their IP.

They do have the cash reserves to weather a failure of the Wii U. The real question now is what to do next.

 

[Doppel]

Part 1 of 3 at time,l recent series on history of video games. I recall they cover the bust also.

http://techland.time.com/2013/12/19/the-history-of-video-game-consoles/

I think those did a lot more damage than anybody gives them credit for. We're still very uncomfortable with sex in games.

Remember leisure suit larry? It was a multi-hour blue ball fest. What a tease! Felt ripped.

I don't think Nintendo is going to make the jump to smartphones, PS, or Xbox. At least not any of their core franchises. Nintendo likes to maintain absolute control of their IP.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/20/nintendo-has-no-plans-for-mario-on-smartphones "no plans for mario on smartphones".

I still think phones are a ghastly form for gaming without a physical controller.

 

[Fallen Kell]

They do have the cash reserves to weather a failure of the Wii U. The real question now is what to do next.

They always have the cash reserves to weather multiple failures in their consoles. That has been a driving part of their business model since the beginning of their electronic entertainment division (video consoles). It is why they were able to survive the VirtualBoy in the past, and why they can survive the Wii U today. They have always said that they know they try and push strange/new ground and not follow others, which means they will find themselves in dead-ends from time to time.

It is one of the reasons why they don't subsidize their hardware costs relying on future game sales to turn a profit. They don't want to be in the position that they sell at a loss millions in hardware and never recoup it if the platform itself turns out to be a failure and they abandon it after only a year or two (which isn't long enough to sell an average of 12-14 games to everyone who purchased the consoles like Sony and Microsoft need to turn a profit).

 

[Exophase]

First time I've ever heard someone say the "X" in PSX stood for experimental. I kind of doubt it stood for anything, people just like using letters randomly to augment names. Especially in Japanese branding.

I always wonder how well SNES CD would have actually done. The hardware looked nice - it almost certainly was supposed to be using the NEC V810 CPU that ended up in Virtual Boy (and NEC's own PC-FX). But I question how much people wanted to buy a CD add-on given that the ones for Megadrive/Genesis and PC-Engine/TurboGrafx16 didn't exactly take the world by storm. Something about being an add-on is going to make people feel like they're getting less than a new system, and usually they'll be right in some key way. Making an independent system was probably in Sony's best interests after all.

 

[007ELmO]

PSX was actually the name released in Japan, but in USA "PSX" was an internal model name that leaked out (from the wiki article) and people started to use. I have read a few times the X stood for eXperimental.

The add-ons kill Nintendo. Who is going to produce a game right now that requires the motion plus and nunchuk? IIRC the nunchuck was not a required controller when it was first released, so developers can only expect to have a non-motion plus wiimote as their lowest common denominator.

 

[Arkaign]

I think WiiU will do a little better than many think. The production cost is low, and getting lower. I think with a sub $200 bundle price and 2nd gen tablet we'll see a good number of people picking them up as 2nd systems. Hell, with the PS4 and XB1 libraries being what they are, I'll probably buy a U before either of those.

Nintendo having a weak console is nothing new.

N64 was a 2nd place console.
Gamecube was a 2nd place console.
Wii sold a bunch of consoles, but mostly to casuals who only used the fit/sports games for a while before closeting it.
WiiU is slow to start, but looks like the library will actually be less filled with shovelware than the Wii was.

contrast to their handhelds :

Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, DS, 3DS have all been killer, though 3DS was slow off the line (reminds me of WiiU honestly).

The gimmicks put me off a bit. The 3d on the 3ds was pointless, the balance board on the Wii was stupid, the tablet on the WiiU is silly, and don't get me started on Move or Kinect. The only two killer non-gaming features on any console imho was native DVD playback on PS2 and native BD playback on PS3. And both of those features were arguably not that valuable in the big picture to Sony really. People were going to buy PS2s regardless, and selling extra PS3s to people to use as BluRay players was .. not as profitable as someone using it to play $60 games, since many of those that bought them for movie players never even bought a single game for them. Microsoft runs the same risk if they load the XB1 with too much TV crap, you end up with a good chunk of buyers just skipping the games and watching their cable through it instead.

 

[Sulaco]

N64 was a 2nd place console.
Gamecube was a 2nd place console.

This is a minor point, but the GameCube was actually the third (last place) of its generation, trailing the original xbox by around 3 million units.
Of course, that's not a huge difference, but it illuminates just how far Nintendo fell in only two generations.

 

[dagamer34]

They always have the cash reserves to weather multiple failures in their consoles. That has been a driving part of their business model since the beginning of their electronic entertainment division (video consoles). It is why they were able to survive the VirtualBoy in the past, and why they can survive the Wii U today. They have always said that they know they try and push strange/new ground and not follow others, which means they will find themselves in dead-ends from time to time.

It is one of the reasons why they don't subsidize their hardware costs relying on future game sales to turn a profit. They don't want to be in the position that they sell at a loss millions in hardware and never recoup it if the platform itself turns out to be a failure and they abandon it after only a year or two (which isn't long enough to sell an average of 12-14 games to everyone who purchased the consoles like Sony and Microsoft need to turn a profit).

I disagree. The concern isn't that they might go bankrupt some day, but that their home console will be so disinteresting to developers that no 3rd party touches it. EA has already washed all hands of ALL Nintendo consoles, instead pursuing PS4/Xbox One and mobile (the latter having a TON of money with games like The Simpsons Tapped Out and Candy Crush Saga). I mean, who would honestly want to dip their toe into Nintendo's next console when the Wii U did so poorly? That's a huge chunk of what ultimately killed the Sega Dreamcast, the utterly poor performance of the Sega Saturn (to which EA also declined to make games for).

 

[Sulaco]

That's a huge chunk of what ultimately killed the Sega Dreamcast, the utterly poor performance of the Sega Saturn (to which EA also declined to make games for).

 

[cbrunny]

Metroid Prime on PC? Yes please!

 

[Hopeless]

<SNIP>
The only two killer non-gaming features on any console imho was native DVD playback on PS2 and native BD playback on PS3. And both of those features were arguably not that valuable in the big picture to Sony really. People were going to buy PS2s regardless, and selling extra PS3s to people to use as BluRay players was .. not as profitable as someone using it to play $60 games, since many of those that bought them for movie players never even bought a single game for them. Microsoft runs the same risk if they load the XB1 with too much TV crap, you end up with a good chunk of buyers just skipping the games and watching their cable through it instead.

IMO Among other things, one thing that helped kill some earlier consoles was a self full-filling circle. They weren't selling well due to a lack of games and the game companies didn't make games because of a lack of sold units.

Now add in features that cause even non-gamers to purchase, even though you lose money on that hardware sale it still adds to the number of sold units that game companys are looking at when deciding weather to make games for it or not. They then make the games which leads to more units sold to people that actually want to play games.