03-20-2022, 03:43 PM
There's no question that Nintendo have had a tremendous impact on gaming (and indeed, pop culture more broadly). But what if this company never existed, or just stuck with manufacturing playing cards rather than entering the video game industry? The following video, by ChaZ, explores this possibility:
This video is about 6 minutes long, so it's not as long as some of the alternate-history videos I've posted, but even so, here's a summary of his thoughts:
So, in short, he thinks the gaming industry would look completely unrecognisable . And he's probably right: a massive chunk of the non-PC-gaming world was either created by them or created in response to them. I expect a lot of the things they did would have been done by someone else eventually (for example, someone else probably introduces a Game Boy-like handheld system) - but, it might not happen as quickly, and it probably wouldn't happen in the exact same way.
So, do you have any ideas as to what the world of gaming would look like without Nintendo's influence?
This video is about 6 minutes long, so it's not as long as some of the alternate-history videos I've posted, but even so, here's a summary of his thoughts:
- The console market would be a lot smaller, because Nintendo never makes the NES - which resurrected the console market after the Video Game Crash of 1983. (And it's unlikely that one of their competitors would step in: Atari were a mess, and Mattel and Coleco had already left the video games industry)
- Furthermore, it's unlikely that Sega would have had as much of an impact. They only developed the Master System to compete with the NES - and without that, it's unlikely that they develop the Mega Drive/Genesis, or invent Sonic the Hedgehog (who was originally created to compete with Mario).
- As for Sony... the PlayStation probably never comes into existence either. Sony were originally going to collaborate with Nintendo - but when that fell apart, they instead introduced the PlayStation in order to compete with them. Perhaps this means PlayStation exclusives (like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro) never exist either.
- PC gaming is the default mode of gaming for most people. As already mentioned, the console market never recovers - and there's no Game Boy to kick-start the handheld market.
So, in short, he thinks the gaming industry would look completely unrecognisable . And he's probably right: a massive chunk of the non-PC-gaming world was either created by them or created in response to them. I expect a lot of the things they did would have been done by someone else eventually (for example, someone else probably introduces a Game Boy-like handheld system) - but, it might not happen as quickly, and it probably wouldn't happen in the exact same way.
So, do you have any ideas as to what the world of gaming would look like without Nintendo's influence?
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