| Bofferbrauer2 said: Doom was ported to those platforms, sure. I even have a SNES version of the game (pretty horrible port btw). But those sales combined don't even come close to 1M, while those 10M are PC alone. And even if they were included, that would make the PC sales "just" like 9.5M. What non-Mario, Zelda or Tetris game at the time did even come close to those sales? Compatibility issues were getting rare by that time. Most were from earlier with the soundcards, but by 1989 AdLib and Soundblaster started to become the baseline for every soundcard to follow until this day. As for the 3D graphics that came afterwards, they generally had either both Glide and DirectX, OpenGL and DirectX, all 3 of them, and early on additionally software rendering (meaning rendering by the CPU). there were actually more compatibility problems starting 2006 than before that time, with DirectX10 annulling some of earlier version's features (especially Hardware T&L), the slow rise of 64bit OS (making any 16bit code unusable) and the killing of the integrated DOS (for DOS games, obviously). And guess what? Steam didn't solve any of those problems, or even have any influence on them. It wasn't even the first online Shop or Launcher (look up Stardock Central, for once. Or RealArcade). You simply fail to acknowledge that everybody who had a computer at home used it to play games. Maybe not exclusively, but anybody who says he didn't play on that computer is a damn liar. Also, just to come back to those 158M PCs in the 85-94 Timeframe: If consoles killed PC gaming, how come more than half of them are just from 92-94, and almost a quarter of those 158M is just 1994 alone. Even we acknowledge a growth in office use, that alone can't explain the explosion of PC sales in those years. In other words, the market was growing, not shrinking. As an anecdote, I remember far more PC gamers from that period than console gamers. I remember 14 computer gamers (2 Amiga, 2 C64, 1Mac LC, 1 Amstrad, 8 PC, 9 if you count the fact that I had 2 different ones (a 286 and a 486 DX-40) in that period), yet only 6 consoles (1 NES, 2 Master System, 2 Super Nintendo, 1 Megadrive). Like I said, it's just an anecdote, but console gaming was simply not that popular. I think you might be under the impression that what happened in the UK would be true for the continent, too. I know the UK has pretty much switched from their tape computers like the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum straight to consoles in the late 80's, but that's simply not true for mainland Europe except maybe in France (who jumped at the NES and the Guillemot brothers (founders of Ubisoft) imported the PC Engine through a special company just for that). In fact, this might be the reason why France and UK sell more consoles than Germany despite their smaller population and economy: They jumped at the consoles when they arrived. But the other countries in Europe for the most part did not follow that trend at that time and only really jumped in during PS1 or even PS2 times. Why do you think Europe is Sonyland, after all? Certainly not because of nostalgia for Nintendo... |
Games like Pokemon, Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter 2 and such release back then and hit those numbers if not more also the is a discrepency in your claim as 10m people playing the game doesn't mean sold as google searches show it sold 2-3m or so well below the 10m you think and further highlights my point the version you're citing was a shareware version that was free and acted as a sort of demo this would mean the main bulk of console games outsold Doom.
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Sales
Compatibility issues were far from rare at that point they were a common issue that put people off it as not as many people back then were as versed in PC usage it wasn't until Steam took off and GPU companies got their act together that these were removed for most part as the platform handled everything for people from patches to updates to not needing to keep CD keys and so on while GPU providers began being more up to date with drivers.
Sure people played on their PCs but playing solitaire or minesweeper and claiming that is equivalent to the gaming we're on about is like claiming snake on old Nokia phones competed with the portable market.
To claim that console gaming wasn't popular during 85-95 is just making a false statement because numbers say a different story you have your anecdote mine is is most of my class mates had a console and only one kid had an Amiga. I'll also call your mainland Europe claim into dispute as well because earlier we had a Link that showed UK sold around 2m or so consoles for both Sega and Nintendo so unless you're trying to say France bought the remaining 10m? I highly doubt that they didn't take off in mainland like you claim.
Europe is Sonyland because Sony was the first company to approach the region the same way as they did Japan and NA this meant better stock allocations and more consistent releases this is a null and void point tbh because Japan now is heavily into Nintendo despite preferring Sony a few Gens ago.
