| Legend11 said: Ok so I'm watching the latest episode of Bonus Round and the topic is "Japan: Culturally Biased" and one of the panalist, Nathan Paine co-owner of Pink Godzilla - a major importer of Japanese videogames and other products, and he says something which bugs me everytime I hear it, that "Nintendo saved videogames and if it wasn't for Nintendo we likely wouldn't have videogames today". I have to ask, have these people never heard of the Commodore 64, Apple 2, or any of the other computer platforms that did well after the collapse of the Atari 2600 and other videogame consoles? |
Consider the sales -- those units got to hundreds of thousands. Nintendo's system reached almost one hundred million. That's a factor of a thousand more. Nintendo influenced Sony into the video game business as well -- top Sony brass did not want to get into gaming even after working with Nintendo on the super nes. Kutagari saw the value after working with Nintendo and convinced them to get into it. Without Nintendo there would still be gaming, of course, but it would be years behind where it is today. Nintendo first generated the common public interest in gaming. Nintendo did bring video games back into the forefront of the culture when everyone else thought they were a dieing fad.
The gaming industry is struggling right now due to high costs. Nintendo is, once again, coming to expand the video game market. They already did it significantly with the DS, and if they can do the same with the Wii it will help all areas of the gaming industry. It is extremely unlikely to have the level of impact that the NES did, of course, but it could make a big difference for an awful lot of gamers and an awful lot of companies.
