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Forums - Gaming - Each of the big three's greatest contribution to gaming, and why

Vinther1991 on 30 April 2025

I think Nintendo has done so many great things for gaming, it is honestly difficult to count. I think I am just gonna say Super Mario. To me he is still essentially the face of video gaming.

Sony is a bit more mixed, they did a lot of small great things, but pointing to a really big one is harder. Maybe the dual shock controller?

Microsoft's greatest accomplishments are probably not even related to Xbox, but more what they did for gaming on PC. They certainly has done a great job building an operating system that is great for gaming. The biggest single leap was probably introducing MS-DOS.

So in short:

Nintendo: Super Mario

Sony: Dual Shock

Microsoft: MS-DOS



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pokoko on 30 April 2025
TheRealSamusAran said:

While I usually prefer a more hands off approach, the market *needed* Nintendo's iron fist in the 80's. The very reason why it crashed in the first place wasn't bad consoles, it was bad, extremely bad software, and Nintendo came in to fix that. Hell, one of the policies that software partners had to follow was that they could only release X games per year (it was like 5 or 10, really not a big number), and you can't tell me they did that to create a monopoly, they did that because they wanted their partners to focus on quality over flooding the market with shovelware, leading to another crash.

The only monopolistic thing they did was the exclusivity contracts, prohibiting their partners to release games on other consoles, which of course was monopolistic af, but it's not like that was keeping other companies out of the market. Truth is, back in the 80's, no one could compete with Nintendo anyway, it was like Steam versus other PC game stores nowadays.

And what anti-consumer practices were Nintendo doing in the 80's and even in the 90's exactly? Are you confusing anti-consumer with anti-competition?

Obviously the NES had more than just that going for it but locking up the best third-party games AND developers before other companies even get to market is a major advantage.  Look at what happened with the N64 and GameCube in a situation that wasn't nearly as bad as what Sega faced.  Not having the most popular titles on your system is tough to overcome.

Nintendo policies at the time went well beyond what was necessary to stabilize the market.  They were sued by the US government for price fixing.  They prioritized production of their own games during the holidays which left third-party titles out of stock.  And no, they did NOT care about quality, they cared that the game wasn't broken but nothing more than that.  Some absolute trash games carried the "Seal of Quality".  I don't fault them for that but people pretending Nintendo only wanted good games on their system is obviously untrue.

Anti-competition is often anti-consumer by default, especially when it unfairly robs consumers of options.



curl-6 on 30 April 2025

My personal picks:

Nintendo: The standards and framework they established in games like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, etc would shape the industry for decades to come. It's almost impossible to find a game made today that doesn't share DNA with Nintendo's pioneering works.

Sony: Expanding the audience for gaming

Microsoft: Establishing the template for the modern games console; standardized parts and architecture that are easy to develop for, with onboard storage.