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SvennoJ on 14 July 2025
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Otter said:
SvennoJ said:

Seems more like a confluence of circumstances rather than groundbreaking.

Famicon launches in 1983 in Japan.
MSX fails to gain traction in the US.
Atari bungles up the release of Famicon in the US and starts a decline / video game crash in the US by poor quality management.
Nintendo parts ways with Atari and relaunches the Famion as the NES in the USA with "Nintendo seal of quality" marketing.
Full release in 1986 after 2 limited test markets in 1985.
Since Famicon launched in 1983 already, Mario and Zelda had time to be developed to accompany the US launch.

I don't see the groundbreaking part of the console...

Nintendo's marketing strategy was though, the "Nintendo seal of quality" was genius and as effective as Sony's "This is how you share your games on PS4" that killed the XBox One launch. That doesn't make the PS4 groundbreaking though.

I think you can measure impact as ground breaking. If it was Nintendo's system that set a popular precedent and introduced forever IPs that shaped the industry, then that is groundbreaking, even if there was no technical wizardry going on.

For me though, N64 >>>

In that case (impact) it would be Gameboy, which is how this "Why NES" discussion started, Why NES at the top and Gameboy at the bottom in the poll.

Gameboy also introduced forever IPs, Pokemon being the biggest. Actually much bigger than Mario when it comes to revenue and overall impact.


N64 is also more groundbreaking, It's the Nintendo console that had me buy in to Nintendo. PS1 still had very awkward 3D controls and warping textures all over the place. N64 fixed all that. As well as starting the path to haptic feedback.

To me Wii is still the most groundbreaking by daring to abandon the tech (and multi media device) race, setting the path to the Switch and standardizing motion controls. While six axis was doing crappy tilt games, Wii had Wii Sports, Zack & Wiki, as well as pointer controls for menu navigation and shooters.

Wii Mote spawned Move, which (together with Eye Toy) spawned PSVR1, hence my vote goes to Wii as VR is where my playtime goes nowadays.



Head tracking demo with the Wii mote in 2007! You could credit Nintendo with inside out tracking now used in VR everywhere. 

The Wii Mote was the most groundbreaking and now a standard part of the Switch.