How big was the European gaming market in those days? Probably not very big.

Shove it up.

I disagree

I just want to know who the hell wrote that article, ad or whatever the fuck that is. It looks like a 7 year old wrote it? Heeeeeeeeeeeeee, heeeeeee, heeeee, hee, he

I like how people claim NES wasn't important but then list a bunch of unsubstantiated "what if" statements to somehow confirm their argument.

America is the biggest market for video games, a video game crash there would still have a big impact on the direction of the industry, even though it may not have killed it entirely.

Sega Gensis and PlayStation 1 were reactionary systems to Nintendo systems/policies. If Nintendo never existed, there is no telling who would have entered/left/stayed in the market.

Saving the industry outside Japan goes much farther than sales, Nintendo mostly gets this title because of the software they developed, mainly Super Mario Bros. when people played that game, it was clear what gaming could be vs what it was on Sega platforms at the time, SG-1000...

If you're asking about 86/87 when NES and Master System launched in Europe until the SNES/Genesis era...I'd say it was fairly computer based. ZX Spectrum was on the market for some 4-5 years, C64 was on the market for some 3-4 and Amstrad CPC 464 was for some 2-3.

Nobody can tell for sure how many units were sold in Europe, but out of 17-22 million C64 (including C128), 5 million ZX and 3 million 464, my guesstimate would be around 12-14 millions combined for those 3 systems (since both ZX and Amstrad were much more popular in Europe)...add few millions on top of that for Atari consoles and 8-bit Atari computers, as well as other systems.

So, speaking only about 8-bit systems, you have probably around the same number of (mostly) home computers sold (not counting IBM PC clones) as NES + Master System sold combined in Europe.