Iwata - Nintendo will not stand still while Sony/Microsoft progress

[mike_intellivision]

To those who are talking about the past

I believe the D-pad, as it is laid out on the NES, is a Nintendo IP. No one directly copies that layout, though the concept has become universal.

The D-pad was not seen in consoles which I am familiar until the NES. Most had variations on a joystick. The nearest was the Intellivision's nearly-universally-lamented directional disc (which interpreted 16 directions in 1979).

As for analog, it was tried in the Atari 5200. It was also non-self-centering and unreliable. Those are thought to be the worse controllers ever for a mass marketed video game system.

Meanwhile, consoles were out there prior to Nintendo, but they were not as popular. The Atari 2600 sold 30M units worldwide before the video game crash -- but no other system topped 6M units (achieved by the Intellivision and Colecovision). And many sold much much less.

After the crash, Nintendo reintroduced the product outside of Japan. But it (and its consoles) have always had more products in Japan than in the rest of the world. The Famicom (NES) had a computer disk system in Japan (I cannot remember if the SuperFamicom/SNES did) while the N64 had a CD add-on. A Vitality Sensor predecessor was sold with Seta's Tetris 64 in Japan. So those of us in the rest of the world don't always see its offerings.

Mike from Morgantown

Just remember that history does not always remember the initial inventor, it remembers the who made things work/made them practical.