| Leadified said: Well Sony wouldn't join because the SNES CD thing never happened and then MS wouldn't join because the PS1 would have not happened. So we would be forever ruled by Sega, Atari and Coleco. |
Not very likely. It's not a guarntee, but the home video game market in the US was all but DEAD in NA in 1983. Nintendo took a huge risk that no-one, especially not Sega, was willing to take in 1984 with a NY test-market release of the NES. They spent a ton of money to redesign the thing, to develop R.O.B., and to market it as a "toy", NOT a video game console. It worked, and they mass-released NES in 1985. Without that, Atari wouldn't have made a comeback, Coleco and all the other "Visions" would have stayed dead (which they basically did anyway, in point of fact), and companies like NEC and Sega and SNK surely wouldn't have bothered trying to put out game consoles in such a dead market. Meaning that while not guaranteed, it's entirely likely that Sega never would have released the Master System, let alone the Megadrive/Genesis in NA.
We would have still had arcades (in fact they'd likely still be thriving to this day), and PC games would have still grown. But there is a very strong argument to be made that Nintendo did in fact basically "save" the NA (or western for that matter) games market with the NES' success. Not a single one of us might have played much of anything in home gaming beyond the by-then-defunt Atari 2600, for all we know. And yes, Sony and MS certainly would not have bothered ever getting into the console race, that much is certain. They only tried because of Nintendo and Sega's success.
Regardless, if Nintendo had never brought the NES to NA, the world of gaming would be a very dark place indeed, if you ask me.
