Ka-pi96 said:
Europe has a population of over 700 million and before the PS only had console sales of around 15 million. Not only was it not a major territory at the time, it was also undoubtedly untapped. Console gaming may have been viewed as a child's activity in the US, but it was barely even viewed as anything at all in Europe. |
Indeed. When Nintendo first planned to expand the Famicom outside of its successful home of Japan into other regions, they sought out a partner with an established reputation and distribution network to handle the release. Initially, Nintendo sought out Atari as the reigning market leader of console gaming. A few things ended up getting in the way of this, for the better. For one, there was a kerfuffle at the 1983 Summer Consumer Electronics Show. Atari witnessed their rival Coleco running a prototype of "Donkey Kong" on their upcoming Coleco Adam Computer. Coleco had tremendous success selling their Colecovision system by featuring "Donkey Kong" as their exclusive pack-in game. However, Atari held the exclusive home computer rights for "Donkey Kong" on their 8-bit line of Atari 400 and 800 computers. This led to Atari insinuating that Nintendo was some how double-dealing with Coleco behind their backs, even though it was Coleco who programmed the Adam version of "Donkey Kong" without Nintendo's consent. Soon after, the North American Video Game Crash of 1983 started to take effect. With Atari suffering heavy losses, CEO Ray Kasar was fired/forced to resign. Since Kasar was the driving force on Atari's side behind the negotiation, the deal collapsed from there. Which I mentioned as being for the best, because during the negotiations, Atari was still banking behind the scenes on pushing their own 7800. The exclusive worldwide distribution contract with Nintendo actually would have enabled Atari to handicap the NES outside of Japan by limiting orders to the minimum amounts required in the contract.
With Atari out of the picture, Nintendo sought out other partners to set up a distribution network. In North America, they partnered up with Worlds of Wonder. The company, which came to be known for its Laser Tag & Teddy Ruxpin properties, had been founded by ex-Atari employees and executives. They ended up working very aggressively and successfully for Nintendo in NA.
Nintendo was not so lucky with their choice of distribution partners for Europe. I have read in different books/articles that Mattel, who secured distribution rights for the NES in the UK and Italy, specifically bungled the European distribution by treating it primarily as a toy and limiting it to boutique shops where its sales would be confined to small numbers.
