| catofellow said: It's ridiculous how many think there would be no consoles if not for the NES. Gaming would have continued on PCs on arcades eventually on smartphones and other devices. The idea that nobody ever would have released a new console is ridiculous. The technology that allowed gaming to grow would have continued without NES. |
There probably would be but they likely would be radically different.
Without Nintendo I think there is no Sony, because for what frame of reference does Sony even have for the game business prior to working on the SNES sound chip? Without that they likely are as revelant to gaming as Panasonic or Toshiba is. Their board of directors likely reject any plan to go into gaming, Ken Kutaragi likely doesn't even have a position of influence within the company to begin with.
You're right gaming would've continued on PCs .... and mainly PCs IMO. And the world of gaming in that case would likely be radically different. Things like Megaman or Final Fantasy may never have taken off as big IPs, in such a scenario something like Jazz Jackrabbit might be a bigger IP than those.
With no NES IMO ... there is no Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, Pokemon, sure (or to a lesser degree), but also quite likely Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami do not exist today in the same way. "Final Fantasy" might be some old PC game that never got a sequel for instance or never even got greenlit in the first place. No Playstation likely either, who knows if MS then even bothers with an XBox since Windows PC would likely be the lead game platform anyway.
I think Sega would've stuck around though and made moderately successful consoles (20-30 million) for a few years, but even Sega is likely radically different. They likely don't make Sonic for example, because Sonic was a direct response to Mario's success. So likely you have Sega systems focused on things like After Burner, Out Run, and similar arcade type experiences.
Most popular IP likely would've been Western PC games I think.
