Is Nintendo now the name people most associate most with videogames?

[KillerMan]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

Hammertime said:

For years the word Playstation meant videogames, when poeple thought of videogames they thought of the words Playstation and Sony. Do you think Nintendo are now the name most people associate with videogames? Remember i'm not talking about only gamers, I mean the whole public. In other words, if you randomly picked 100 people and said what company represents videogames, would the most popular answer now be Nintendo?

Uh.....before Playstation came around, an entire generation just called video games 'Nintendo' or 'Game Boy'.  And before that it was 'Atari' or 'Pac Man'.  I can't tell you how many people I know who will still mistake a handheld device like an iphone or a DS for a 'game boy'.  Yet I've never heard anyone who's called video games 'Playstation' or referred to Playstation alone when speaking about video games as a whole.  The people who actually know the distinction between a system enough to know the brand names 'Playstation' and 'Sony' are regular gamers.

So to answer your question, if you took a poll of a random assortment of people, in all age groups, I think you'd find Nintendo easily came out as the most identifiable brand in gaming.  Some people don't even know Sony or Microsoft is tied to gaming.  Nearly everyone has heard of Mario and Nintendo.

You have to remember that before PS1 gaming wasn't very mainstream. At least not in Europe. PS1 was for most of us first touch in gaming and because of that PlayStation was the name that was synonym for gaming a long time.