My point of view is that nintendo did great for videogames but the ones that saved the video game market where consumers, nintendo was the one who realized that there was a need. I'm sure sega was working on their system before the NES was lunched so they did great... they didn't save anyone.

@leo-j and Soriku:
No S-E no KH and we all know that almost happened 17 years ago when Final Fantasy was CREATED.

Yes and no. It did revive the console, and that had a huge impact. Something like this might have happened anyway, but we can't assume it would have happened. A lot of people felt consoles were a waste of time and that home computers were the future of gaming.

If Nintendo had not produced the NES, would someone else have done it? Could someone else have gotten past retailers and consumers who thought game consoles were dead? Could PC gaming have replaced console gaming? We cannot say.

What we can say is that Nintendo overcame a lot of hardships, from retailer biases to constant lawsuits from Atari, to revive the home console. And in North America and Japan it was huge.

Oh yes, that is why the 360 software sales are kicking the crap out of the Wii's in the US and have been all year....

Nobody would be gaming.... try another one.

 and before Microsoft was even a company...

Nope, I haven't. Ignore me. I only started gaming when Sony entered gaming.

 That's a very black and white interpretation of the market now and then. Obviously it's changed drastically since the early to mid 80s. Back then videogames were a small niche, how many people were going to shell out a grand or more for a computer console like the commodore 64 just for a nerdy hobby like videogames? A very small number by comparison to how many would shell out a couple hundred dollars for a toy for their kids. Since then videogames have become a far more recognized and popular form of entertainment, and home PCs have become very common. Having a console that has some PC like functions no longer will drive off the average consumer, and furthermore is drastically cheaper and simpler. Even the 360 which is the most PC like, is still much simpler to buy and play than a PC is. Your parallel is very flawed.

And yes, Nintendo deserves the credit it gets. Why aren't we all playing our apple i-console or commodore 360s right now? Because they didn't succeed like the NES did. It didn't win over retailers, market aggressively, and expand the market. C64 was not a household name, and it wasn't on any track to become one (unless your household had a computer nerd in it) Nintendo was. They didn't single handedly make videogames out of swirling masses of 1s and 0s, like some sort of computer Yahweh, but they did make videogames into the market they are today.

Oh, actually if anything Nintendo/SEGA saved console video games, PC was going strong =] and will go strong forever more even after Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft die.

You aren't alone in your feelings on the issue, Talonman. Trust me on that.