Did you know that Nintendo saved console gaming?
Did you?
By 1983 so many home consoles flooded the market of gaming with poor choices for games that people were getting really turned off by home video game systems. Coupled with the growth of the home computer and general arcades, people decided that home consoles wouldn’t last.
In fact, they called it a fad.
One that they believed would fade into oblivion.
This went on for two years.
Until 1985, when Nintendo decided to revolutionize the home console gaming world forever. Ultimately saving it, and creating everything we know, and love today.
So, next time you power on any home console, thank Nintendo!
In 1983, in Japan, Nintendo released the NES. And it arrived in the US market two years later as the world believed home consoles were dying. But Nintendo changed all of that with it’s clever marketing strategy.
Instead of calling it a game system or video game system or anything of that nature, they simply called it something else.
A Nintendo Entertainment System.
Entertainment.
Something fun for the whole family.
Something to put in the living room for the entire family to enjoy. A must have toy.
Not calling it a gaming system allowed Nintendo to create their own idea of what their console should be and sell that idea to the public. They gave you two controllers with the purchase of the system itself. Making it an instant family and friends orientated system.
I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, they also launched Mario with the system giving you a game to play as well.
A game and character that will probably outlive us all.
While this essentially helped put all other consoles out of business at the time, it ushered in a new era of gaming.
Nintendo and Sega would go on, challenging each other for nearly a decade after this, until PlayStation makes it’s debut in 1994. Atari and all the others would fade out into oblivion unable to keep up.
I think this mostly comes down to games themselves in a way.
A lot of the consoles prior to NES had subpar game titles to play and each was unique to the system, meaning you may need multiple systems to play different titles. And in that day and age, that wasn’t really going to happen. Not like today.
So you’d pick one.
But ultimately the games were crap. Poorly made. And uninteresting.
Unlike Nintendo, who showed up to play.
They had third party developers build games, made and created one of the most iconic game characters in the world, Mario. Building their own library of games with an iconic character to lead the way, Nintendo paved a path for both Sony and Microsoft to build what they have now.
And even to this day, I think Nintendo continues to be the weird kid on the block, making gaming whatever they wish it to be.
Their controllers never cease to be weird as hell.
Their systems can compete with PlayStation or Xbox if they wanted to, but they don’t. They’ve cornered the market on being the weird little family friendly console that does strange motion stuff, and they love to be portable.
Nintendo is anything but typical and it’s probably the reason they’ve lasted so long and outlived many who came before and after them.
Nintendo saved consoles as we know them.
Everyone believed they wouldn’t last. Wouldn’t ever grow into anything more than a passing fancy, before it fell off into obscurity.
Imagine going back to those times and telling the people who wrote those articles, who believed that gaming consoles would never become the norm and tell them what it’s like today. With PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo dominating the market and consoles being so beloved.
So beloved we even have people collecting retros to play and display.
Do you think they’d believe that?
Think they’d be shocked by the scope?
By how many Switchs were sold during the pandemic? Or all the hype surrounding the PS5 when it came out?
I still can’t believe those figures and I lived through them!
What do you guys think? Did you know this fun fact?
Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading! Spread the love and read on!
Leave a Reply