@@pghdave420 I agree. If the kid could memorize the obstacles it wasn’t that hard. Me and my brother had written on paper the order of each obstacle and we would switch places practicing the stage until we mastered it and could always easily beat that stage in co op
It's funny how in the end he compares the nintendo situation with a hypothetical situation involving Sony and video players, and basically predicts the whole blu-ray thing
@@ATTJ7628 Before streaming your only way to watch recorded stuff in HD was Blu-Ray. The competitor for it, HDDVD, was beat out because a Blu-Ray player came built into the PS3. Physical media has dropped off cause of streaming (I predict it'll come back a bit with how streaming services treats it content lately), but Blu-Ray has been dominating since 2006. 17 years
Tengen TRIED to play nice with Nintendo at first. They even reluctantly agreed to Nintendo's bullshit limit of 5 games per year rule back then. But when Nintendo did that phony chip shortage stunt where they limited how many 3rd party carts will get made just so they can use the chips on their own games instead to make even more, Tengen got pissed off and went around Nintendo. Tengen even asked Nintendo if they got the chips themselves could they still get their carts made and they found a manufacturer in the US which could do it, and Nintendo refused then cut their supply even more. So it's hard to play nice when the main company was fucking everyone up the ass laughing at them.
Pixar The Great They still make false shortages of their product. Latest is the nes classic...just the way they are... Its why I dont buy anything nintendo
Joseph Bentley I know. I have been saying that as well. Nintendo is a shitty company. I loved the NES but most of the games I love on that console are 3rd party. I don't like many of Nintendo made games.
That guy from "American Video Entertainment" is a scumbag. He's sitting there saying Nintendo won't allow him to sell his games. Well, no shit. He is making and selling UNLICENSED AND UNAUTHORIZED NES cartridges. The NES is Nintendo's console, and they want to control quality. That's what the whole "Nintendo Seal of Quality" sticker is about, the thing that saved the video game industry from the Atari video game crash. Companies were ripping gamers off with horrible games. Nintendo single handedly revived the industry and quality checked all their games. That guy is trying to make a profit with crappy games by making bootleg cartridges for a system that he has no access to.
The problem with that policy is that it locks someone with considerably less funds out from getting a shot at making their game. Buy-in is too high? Better luck next time, sucker. You license your cartridges directly from Nintendo, which gives them an incredible cut. Not only that, you're limited to how many games you can make yearly (again, quality control, but that's a load of hogwash -- the entirety of the AVGN's career is a testament to that) and on top of all that, they forbade developers from returning cartridges if sales fell short of expectations, meaning the developer shoulders all of the risk while Big N shoulders none. And this video already showcases them strong-arming retailers and fixing prices so I won't trod that path. Let me put it another way: there's a reason why Nintendo made a lot of enemies.
Hazy If you don't like it, build your own gaming console and make all the crappy games you want. You have no leg to stand on when you are trying to sell bootleg, unauthorized games on Nintendo's proprietary console. All games sold on their console, are a reflection of Nintendo, and they have a legal right to quality control all of the games sold on their console. A gaming console is not like a VCR or a Blu-Ray player. It's a completely different concept.
bio2020 If they had the funds to create their own gaming machine, to assemble an R&D team, to test, market, work customer service, I've no doubt in my mind they would have. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case. Remember: these are the same people that didn't have the funds to even license their cartridges through Nintendo. That fella in the video was able to sell his games for $20 and still make a "big" profit -- less than HALF of Nintendo's $50 retail price. But even then: who would carry their merchandise? Nobody with Nintendo threatening to drop the hammer on retailers who disobeyed their commands. It was scummy situation. And please don't misunderstand: I'm not arguing that selling bootlegs is right.
Thanks for clarifying, I'm watching the video thinking, "What about Sega", since Frontline did a poor job by not stating American Video Entertainment was in the business of making unlicensed NES cartridges, I was under the impression it was just another hardware manufacturer. Reading your post got me googling that company and now I get it.
Hands down Nintendo saved gaming. Their rules helped keep the product up to par (for the most part) and stopped the watering down of their titles, is the reason console gaming was brought back to life. All the things atari did to kill it, Nintendo stopped.
@@fringeelements no it's not. It's just your beliefs that it is. Nintendo never grew old with me. I quit playing their systems after the 64. I do know what it did because I was there to live it myself.
@@lsodiumoverdosel - Nintendo did not inventing licensing, in fact Atari figured out licensing and royalties, nor was "quality control" ever a problem for the 2600, it was retail glut. The failure of Atari, Mattell, Coleco or Phillips to make a proper successor system for the 82-85 window was down to bad management and a cascade of specific errors at those companies, which did not occur outside of the United States.
+Timstuff how is calling a (206) area code number a microtransaction? It wasn't a 900 number where you HAD to pay, it was long-distance, some companies even allowed free long-distance. Did you even call the number in the 80's or early-90's? It still exists today but is just a recording, it's (206)885-7529
Hmmmm? The service absolutely was free. All you paid for was the phone call, which could still have been expensive back in the day when you paid extra by the minute for long distance calls rather than an unlimited mobile plan.
sega showed everyone that nintendo was not invincible by punching them in the face and making them stumble a bit, then that left the door open for sony to come in and deliver the knockout blow, for them it was personal, they now control the market
Ha ha, back then as a kid I couldn't fully understand just how expensive those games were (since they were always birthday/christmas gifts). Holy shit though looking at it now. If you adjust for inflation, $50 in 1991 is $89 today. That was the accepted standard price. Imagine every console game costing $89 today. Other insane price milestones: -Phantasy Star 3 for Genesis was $100 in 1990, $186 today -Final Fantasy 3 (US) was $70 in 1994, $115 today -The Neo Geo system was $650(!) in 1990, or $1210 today -Neo Geo games were $200(!!!!) each in 1990, or $372 today $372 each for games!!!!
Yes, but the video game industry provided high-paying jobs. Now the programmers are H1B visa or overseas programmers being paid nothing and the game is still expensive.
@@cooltu2000 I remember Mega Drive games costing around £39.99 each, when all the previous games I bought for my "ZX Spectrum +2A" were about £4.99 maximum. Those WERE budget titles(or re-releases) but I didn't know that at the time. I can't remember the Mega Drive having a budget label, not until the PS1/N64 had budget games again, Platinum for the PS1 and Players Choice for the N64.
The REAL reason to get a Nintendo was because of blockbuster rentals. You couldn't rent computer software. Actually they specifically made computer software rental illegal, but exempted video games. And you guessed it, Nintendo lobbied at the time to include video games in that law.
"Imagine if Sony tried to do this and that" Oh, the irony. But if its any consolation, my poor downtrodden fellow, Nintendo would become their biggest trophy. I also fondly remember the tip lines I saw in Nintendo Power and the like where you could get answers. What a job that would be. Too bad the internet came calling.
@soulfulsilver4917 Actually Sony tried to shaft Nintendo first with the contract for the CD-ROM add-on, which stated that all software royalties would belong to Sony. Nintendo wasn't even interested, but were convinced that Sony wouldn't use it for games. They just forgot to have it put in writing, and soon enough, Sony had already started their first game studio.
I remember buying my boys the original Nintendo. There was nothing like it. Sega and Sony finally became big enough to offer something else. Now in 2023 Nintendo is no longer the top of the stack.
Nintendo Switch is literally the best selling system on every region, month to month, constantly beating records with it's exclusives in both, sales and critiical acclaim. They're absolutely the top of the stack.
9:40 Nintendo Customer Support Employee: "You wanna spear him in the middle of his body then cut his body in half..." "Is there anything thing else i can help you with today sir??"
Good grief, the comments. I did research on this and the reason why Nintendo used the seal of quality logo on their games is because they didn't want a repeat of the video game crash of 1983. Most of those companies were making trash games and the industry became over saturated with those poorly made games. Everybody was trying to make video games to cash in while it was hot. This is Nintendo way of keeping the same thing from repeating because consumers were afraid to invest back into video games. Hell, Nintendo was hesitant to use the words "video games" in the US. They name the unit as the Nintendo Entertainment System and changed the way it looked to match the likeness of an actual toy which is what Nintendo was known for; a toy manufacture. Rob the Robot was included in some bundles for the US to trojan horse their systems into the home market.
I guess they are just ignoring Sega and Atari. They weren’t monopolizing the gaming industry so much as monopolizing the Nintendo industry. Tengen didn’t have their own system. And if I remember, the other game producers made kind of garbage games.
+Jude Law They did in America but absolutely not in Europe. They smashed an enormous amount of money on the table to achieve that as well to later sadly struggle with very poor business decisions. I do miss SEGA .. with the dreamcast for me..they finally sort of reset their image, tons of great titles and stood for arcade style gaming with good devs supporting them. Too bad they lost so much in the market but deep inside i would wish that SEGA was still around with a modern nowadays console. The megadrive or genesis remains their most iconic though. Also eventhough a lot of stuff failed they were early innovators and inspiration for others as well. Back in the days i was lucky enough to have both systems.
@@Jdudec367 Not really, on sales alone the Genesis/Megadrive outsold the SNES (during the 16-bit era aka 1988~1995) in the US, South America, Europe and Australia, the SNES though won a big one in Japan outselling the Megadrive by almost 16 million units. Wich is the reason behind the around 20 million units difference between the final sales on both systems. However in the final sales reports it is known that Sega didn't took into consideration some units sold by 3rd party manofacturers, so for the Genesis/Megadrive the final sales ain't exactly the real total, since there could be one or two million (or more) sold units undocumented by the company.
Ironically, as this was airing, the Sega Genesis was taking the USA by storm. Sega had 65% market share by 1992, although it began to drop steadily. It was a 2-man race already before SONY came in.
@@zebunker "Irony, in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case or to be expected differs radically from what is actually the case." The irony is that the video makes it seem like there's no way to manufacture and sell video games without going through Nintendo, and yet the truth differs radically, as proven by Sega swooping in and having lots of success. Ironic. The Turbo Grafx also had modest success.
@@LilSkott They didn't have to go around Nintendo. The point is, Nintendo didn't actually have a monopoly. They weren't forcing other people out. All antitrust claims were false. Toys-R-Us already stocked Sega products before then, anyway. With the Master's System. Just Google Sega Master System Toys R Us and you'll see dozens of nationwide Toys R Us commercials for the Master System as well as print ads from '85-'90 showing electronic toy ads from Toys R Us showing the Master System and the NES both for sale on the same page, with games for both.
no, nintendo still do this shit. wii u games keep their day 1 price on amazon, until they're out of stock and their idea of digital sale is %10 or less, while steam, psn, xbox do %75 and even higher sales all of the time
Nintendo's licensing regime wasn't merely because they wanted a monopoly; it was because of what Nintendo learned from the video game crash and their application of the lesson in their operations. Remember when Atari sued Activision for making games on the 2600? Atari had originally intended to be the only purveyor of games for their own system, but they had never anticipated third party publishers trying to get in on the business through Atari's own hardware so they never locked down their 2600. So when Atari sued Activision for making games on the 2600 and ended up losing the case, it set legal precedent that allowed anybody to make games on Atari's system, and pretty much anybody *and* everybody did, *especially companies that had no business being in the game business*. The result was a torrent of mediocre games, crowding out truly good games and diluting the overall value of the market to the point where people stopped buying. (Just one of several factors that led to the industry crash.) Nintendo understood that, thus their institution of a licensing regime, with rules that third parties had to abide by in order to be authorized to publish games on the NES, along with technological measures in their control decks and game paks (10NES) as well as the use of their industrial clout and considerable legal acumen to protect their business interests. It was a way to avoid that kind of a market glut that would seriously degrade the viability and profitability of the whole enterprise. That business model, albeit to a less dictatorial degree, is the standard that first party contenders in the industry still operate by today. Economies of scale works at reducing the price of goods with *objective* purposes, but it doesn't work too well when it comes to dealing with product that's as *subjectively* judged as creative intellectual properties, and that's primarily what the video game market is about in roughly the same vein as movies and music. The hardware is important (and, usually, the price of hardware does decrease over time), but it's the software that drives the viability of the market in the end and newly released games will always command a premium initially. Therefore, it's a stretch for AVE to make value-based arguments with regard to competition decreasing the price through economies of scale in this news report, especially as the bulk of AVE software was never very fun to play to begin with. The comparison between NES game paks and VCRs is too glib to the point where the argument falls apart upon critical thinking. In short: the games hadn't gone down in price because *new* games are different from *old* games despite all being built for the same system and for reasons that should be obvious. Plus, old games tend to go down in price as demand for them falls off in favor of new games. It's more akin to newly released movies on DVD being sold for a higher price than DVDs of older movies, despite them all being made for the same DVD format. Also, Nintendo isn't the only one that makes a profit on game sales; if it's a third party title, the third party makes a profit while also having to pay a percentage to Nintendo as stipulated in their license with them. The best way to compete against Nintendo back then was competing on *hardware* followed by games that make the competing system an attractive alternative. Considering how good Nintendo and the NES was overall, you needed a company that could match or exceed them on both hardware and software and be able to attract competent third parties, and that was Sega with their good Genesis/Mega Drive system and their own experience in making good games.
Come on, nice write up in general but you know it's bullshit when we are talking about third parties. Why would Nintendo force third party developers to sign agreements that don't allow them to make software for other consoles for 2 years? What does that have to do with controlling quality on their console? It's pure greed. An attempt to force a monopoly on the videogame market. They sure came close in America but they made a huge mistake when they backstabbed Sony and then dropped the CD feature for the N64. Squaresoft even tried to convince Nintendo to no avail to include a CD drive.
Exactly. Nintendo was the only player after the video game crash and they employed a quality control system for software. SEGA was able to take the US market (briefly) from Nintendo by taking advantage of Nintendo's censorship policies. SEGA positioned itself as the cool adult system although with a family-friendly killer app (Sonic). That worked wonders
Yeah they started the trend of forcing 3rd party companies to make exclusives, it used to piss me off during the Sega/Nintendo wars. But during the Sega/Sony wars Sony started forcing 3rd parties to make exclusives and releasing games on the playstation earlier than other platforms. And even back then when the N64 came out it was very little 3rd party support. They basically set the trend and lost it in the same decade. Lmao karma is a bitch.
They're all comparing video games to movies and other forms of entertainment that can be used on virtually any device in that genre, when video games are so much different... I can't blame them though, gaming was new back then, and not everyone understood it...
Nintendo made good games and hardware. If these competitors made such great games, even though they were excluded from selling at big retail stores, word would have at least gotten out that they were good games. Then, the big retailers would like to hold their products.
Great example of how people are often short sighted and quick to call out monopolies when in fact it's just a finite window of success for a particular firm. Even when this came out, there were competitors to Nintendo; Sega Genesis came out in 89 and strongly competed against SNES in the early to mid 90s. And then of course we all know what happened when Sony got into the game and then Microsoft. And then of course factors in the market shifted like the growth of the internet and now we have a marketplace of online games, mobile games etc along with consoles. So that even if Nintendo was pressuring retailers like Toys R Us, these changes would have presented significant obstacles to that strategy in the long run. And considering that there were other competitors like Sega, and later Sony and Microsoft, I'm apt to wonder if we're getting the full picture when these other manufactures claim that Nintendo was pressuring retailers like Toys R Us. Not that its a stretch to believe that Nintendo might have tried to broker deals like that with retailers. But obviously retailers were still willing to sell competitors products even with that pressure from Nintendo. So something tells me if companies like Toys R Us were unwilling to carry these other guys games, it wasn't just their relationship with Nintendo that factored into it. My guess is if Toys R Us believed these other manufacturer's products were going to be competitive with Nintendo, they would have carried them as well, just as they carried Sega and later Sony & Microsoft. I figure Nintendo's pressure and influence only goes so far - at some point a retailer is going to act in their interest as well if they think a product is going to successfully sell.
Price fixing is no longer a concern, neither is monopolies. You don't see blantin monopolies, and blantin price fixing to be a problem any more most of the people don't. I went to a computer store a few years back and they told me that all their prices were fixed and that they had no control over their own prices.
***** Some uneducated idiots on the internet don't understand facetiousness and hyperbole. And they also certainly don't know what monopoly means. Calm down unibrow.
It was good that they lost their monopoly,though. We all know how unrivaled monopolies end:They would have stopped caring about the quality of their products and would have eventually died out and console gaming would have with them.
Don't think any company will hit that kind of market share again. Sony didn't. Actually Sony couldn't top their PS1 dominance either and at that time they did not have 85% of the market, closer to 60%.
A big reason Nintendo dominated the industry was because they had the best games, their competitors just didn't have the same library strength. Frankly, they still don't today. The only reason Nintendo is losing out right now is because of 3rd part support issues, and the fact that the majority of young kids would rather play crap like CoD Ghosts and crappy iphone pay to win games.
A big reason Nintendo dominated the industry was because they monopolized all the popular game franchises... and forced nearly all competition out of the video-game market. This is actually explained clearly in this video. Atari did something similar in the late seventies.
willardkraft I would say all 4 games are on the same scale for different reasons. FF7 + Zelda OoT + Goldeneye + MGS? We're talking about beyond masterpieces :)
and consumers. I highly recommend reading the book 'Console Wars', I'm a few chapters in and I can't put it down. It chronicles this very era of the video game industry and focuses a lot on the fight between Sega vs Nintendo. It also looks at the history of Atari during after the video game crash, how many of the significant players operated in the industry from insiders perspective. They are also going to make a documentary and film as well of the book. You'll never see your childhood past time the same way again. :)
Sprites4Ever Entertainment government intervention isn’t “competition” either. It’s the rhetoric of free market, sure, but the effect is exactly the opposite. Want to break into the game industry? Start small and take a risk. These are all con men trying to get rich quick and they fought to make the magic happen for them. It’s bull
"The price for Nintendo games have never gone down at all." gee, that's funny because it's still like that to this day, 27 years later. Nintendo games still never drop in price, and remain at the $60 price point even years after they're released. Not at all the case with PS4 and Xbox though, whose games usually drop to around $20 within a year of release.
There's a reason, sales are determined by demand. Games go on sale when they stop moving, which happens almost immediately for Sony,walking simulators and all generic AAA sameface clutter.
Funny how they did this story in 1991, and they made virtually no mention of Sega Genesis or Turbografx 16, which by this point had both been out for almost 2 years. I guess Sonic hadn't yet come out.
Reading "Game Over" in 1997 was a revelation, I grew up thinking that Nintendo was nothing but nice and wonderful only to learn that during its greatest era the company was run by greedy, litigious, strong-arming jerks with the living embodiment of the cold and ruthless Japanese businessman stereotype overseeing it all.
If you read up on Atari and Sega it's a wonder they ever saw any success at all. The state of the game market in the mid 80s pretty much required someone to take it much more seriously and aggressively if it were ever going to survive.
4:45 I was a kid at the time, but did get the $5 coupon good toward another Nintendo purchase from the class action lawsuit. All you needed was a receipt that you bought a game during a certain time frame, though not everyone checked for it. Nintendo really got off easy on that one.
This all started because Nintendo wanted QUALITY games to be on the NES. They did not want the system to be another ATARI leading to another crash in the game industry. Companies were churning out crappy games (cough, E.T., cough) by the dozens, this lead to crappy sales and the fall of the industry back in 1983. That’s why Nintendo imposed the 5 game per year per developer rule, to encourage (some will say force) companies to make good games that would sell, it would have been a win-win for everyone. Tengen did not like this and illegally tried to put out unlicensed games. I’m not saying Nintendo is a spot-free company, but many people fail to realize that this all began with Nintendos wanting to improve the gaming industry by only carrying QUALITY games. Of course, there will always be and there were crappy games on the NES, but at least the game industry survived to this day.
this is why 3rd parties were like "fuck this" and jumped ship to playstation 1. no loyalty to a dictator, if a more powerful company was willing to step in the video game ring. nintendo fans act like nintendo was pure and innocent. they ruled with an iron fist, and got a taste of their own medicine at the time. it was incredible to see a small company like sega give them a healthy fight (although snes eventually outsold genesis in north america), before sony and later microsoft really marginalized them. anyway, this is probably the most accurate video game investigation i've seen from mainstream media
Thanks for the upload. This was such a hit piece. The whole "price fixing" thing was stupid. a merchant can charge whatever they want. It's up to the market to decide whether or not the product is valuable enough to them to pay the price tag. Funny the "lack of competition" didn't stop Sega from challenging Nintendo and making them bleed and bleed badly. They cut Nintendo's market share in half within Nintendo alleged "monopoly". Winners make plans, losers make excuses.
Yes, a lot of this comes off like they either didn't understand what they were reporting on or were being willfully disingenuous. The impression the story gives is that Tengen is making games for a rival system, but they were actually wanting to publish games on *Nintendo* without paying a license. That may be perfectly legal (if it hadn't involved hacking the NES, that is), but I don't see any reason why Nintendo should tolerate a self-described "competitor" interloping with their products.
The Nintendo Wii sold over 100 million units worldwide, beating out the Xbox 360 and PS3 by nearly 20 million units. And let's not forget the Nintendo DS and 3DS sales over the past decade destroying everyone else. Nintendo has more money than Sony, and while obviously Microsoft as a company has far more money than anyone else, Microsoft's video game division has less money than Nintendo. Nintendo is sitting on nearly 18 billion dollars. So I don't think Nintendo is doing all that badly nowadays, and they certainly are not "at the bottom" as a lot of people are saying. I think everyone should own a Nintendo console. It's a whole different gaming experience. Xbox and PlayStation share most of the same games, but Nintendo is the only one with first-party Nintendo games. The console wars should be between Sony and Microsoft. The Wii actually had a really great library, if people would do a little research. The Wii U already has great games, and Nintendo has a past of not releasing the greatest games they can until years after the console. I feel bad for people who will never play the new Legend of Zelda because of their egos and thinking the Wii U sucks because it's not as "powerful" as a PS4 or Xbox One. The GameCube and Xbox were both more powerful than the PS2 but that didn't seem to make any kind of a difference. Besides, what's the point in having the most powerful system when it has technical issues as Sony and Microsoft's consoles have had so many times in the past? Nintendo games don't need to look like Uncharted 4 to be great. Nintendo was awesome nearly 30 years ago and still is today.
That's the way it is now at least the way i've seen in the comments you have xbox one vs ps4 but now your seeing pc vs ps4. Nintendo isn't even mentioned or taken into consideration at all. ps4 fanboys say xbone doesn't have great graphics pc says it will always overcome graphics ps4 fans say it's not about graphics blah blah. Yes a lot of these problems have to do with stubbornness, ignorance, and contradiction. I don't ever watch tv so i don't even know whats advertised more i rely on the internet and i can't lie i haven't really cared too much about consoles since around 2006 since i've been using a PC the ps3 was a disappointment to me that i just gave up. Apperantly it's all about graphics and details and FPS recycled explosions etc i guess people still see Nintendo as childish with no variety of games. I know this may seem fucked up and all but people can actually Emulate the wii u on PC now. Also i didn't know the wii beat both xbox and ps3 lol
No one from Sega was available to speak to? By this point, the Master System and the Genesis were already available, not to mention the shitty 90s Atari systems.
1. How inaccurate: Retailers would not sell AVE's games because of licensing problems. why is there no discussion about that? 2. No comment from third parties who are licensed? (e.g. Capcom, EA, Konami, Activision etc) 3. No mention of SEGA? (maybe because this was made before june of 1991, when Sonic the hedgehog was released)
It's not like it was illegal to sell unlicensed Nintendo games. If it weren't for Nintendo strong-arming them (or at the very least misleading them) they could have sold whatever games they wanted, from whoever they wanted.
Akumacornflakes actually it is, the SDK for nes was a licanced software. So Tengen, AVE and wisdom tree were all pirating the SDK and breaking copyright laws in the process.
Evild00k That's the developer's problem, not the retailers'. They only ever went after developers legally, not retailers. However, they did "threaten" retailers with slow shipments and artificial shortages, not just if they sold unlicensed games, but competing systems and games from Atari and Sega as well. All the tactics Nintendo used to maintain their stranglehold on the industry were a LOT more illegal than anything Tengen and AVE were doing. It's worth noting Nintendo never actually went after Wisdom Tree, and they were probably the most successful unlicensed developer on the NES. Nintendo was already getting plenty of heat from conservatives, so picking on Christian small business owners wasn't going to win them any friends.
"they did "threaten" retailers with slow shipments and artificial shortages, not just if they sold unlicensed games, but competing systems and games from Atari and Sega as well." Really proof? I remember giving incentives to stores who sold more of nintendo product then other stores. I think your confused with what you think was going on in your head vs what was going on.
not to take away from Nintendo's obviously horrid monopolistic practice, but they were not the first in the video game industry be like this. Atari was starting to somewhat become like, especially when Time Warner took controlling interest, and many of the original programmers left the company (which Ironically formed Activision and Apple). Sony I think could have done this too, if it didn't become a 3 way battle with Microsoft entering the market and I really, really have no doubt Microsoft would pull a "Nintendo" if things went their way. game companies love to play death-match just like many gamers.
Patrix Vids CoD is better than you grown ass social rejects with your obsession with anything that looks like its made for 4 years olds now go play with your amiibos
Here's the thing, the original videogame industry crash was due to a lot of bad games flooding the market of the then very popular Atari 2600 (yadda yadda yadda, hundreds of E.T. game carts being buried in the desert), in order to prevent that Nintendo build the NES in a way that it could only play games that had built in a chip with software that was their intellectual property, called the 10-NES chip. Nintendo only allowed developers to put out 5 games every year so that they'd focus on making few good games instead of a lot of mediocre ones. This was completely legal and you could legally play unlicensed games if you modified your console or the person who made the game retro-engineered the chip and made their own code that didn't require the chip. Tengen was a subdivision of Atari that wanted to publish more than said 5 games a year, at first they tried to break Nintendo's code, but when they couldn't they went to the patent office falsely claiming that Nintendo was going to sue them for this and that they needed to see the patent of the code to make their legal case, then they flat out stole the code and started producing unlicensed games for the NES that contained code stolen from Nintendo. While they were settling that in court Nintendo told their retailers that if they sold Tengen products then Nintendo wouldn't sell them their's.
BS. Nintendo had no problem letting companies like LJN, THQ, etc., flood the market with crap games. It was nothing more than a monopolistic setup to choke the competition, when the hot game made to the NES they were not allowed to release it for competitor's consoles.
EarlFaulk if you can show me somewhere where it says LJN or THQ did more than 5 games a year or that they stole intellectual property from Nintendo and they let them publish anyway I'd say you're right, but like the old saying goes "pics or it didn't happen". Nintendo has always been a bully to third party and now they are paying for it, but as far as the Tengen business went they flat out abused the legal system to steal Nintendo's property.
In 1992 onwards they released well more than five games for Nintendo's systems. Game Boy Beetlejuice January 1992 North America Game Boy Terminator 2: Judgment Day January 1992 North America NES T&C Surf Designs: Thrilla's Surfari March 1992 North America Super Nintendo WWF Super Wrestlemania March 1992 North America Game Boy WWF Superstars 2 August 1992 North America Game Boy The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (1992) August 1992 North America Super Nintendo Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball September 1992 North America NES WWF Wrestlemania: Steel Cage Challenge September 1992 North America Game Boy Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball September 1992 North America NES Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six October 1992 North America Super Nintendo Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge November 1992 North America Game Boy The Incredible Crash Dummies November 1992 North America Super Nintendo NBA All-Star Challenge December 1992 North America Game Boy NBA All-Star Challenge 2 1992 Europe 1993 Game Boy Alien 3 January 1993 North America NES Alien 3 March 1993 North America Super Nintendo Alien 3 05/31/93 North America Super Nintendo WWF Royal Rumble June 1993 North America Game Boy Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers July 1993 North America NES The Incredible Crash Dummies 09/23/93 North America Game Boy WWF King of the Ring September 1993 North America Super Nintendo The Incredible Crash Dummies October 1993 North America NES WWF King of the Ring November 1993 North America Super Nintendo Terminator 2: Judgment Day November 1993 North America Game Boy NFL Quarterback Club November 1993 North America Game Boy T2: The Arcade Game 1993 Europe Super Nintendo T2: The Arcade Game 1993 Europe Game Boy Spider-Man / X-Men December 1993 North America 1994 Super Nintendo Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage September 1994 North America Super Nintendo Wolverine: Adamantium Rage November 1994 North America Super Nintendo WWF Raw November 1994 North America Game Boy WWF Raw 1994 Europe Super Nintendo NFL Quarterback Club December 1994 North America Super Nintendo Warlock 1994 The whole five game a year thing was specifically designed to stop or minimize competition.
This doesn't even touch on Nintendo's most egregious business practice at the time which was their control of the game carts they sold to third-party developers. They made HUGE profits from software developers charging them an arm and a leg for carts and had several legal battles when companies started making their own carts that would work on their systems. Kids these days really have no clue how much of a 500-pound gorilla Nintendo was in the late 80's and early 90's. They had absolute control over the gaming industry during that time.
It was great what Nintendo did for the gaming world, they kept companies from making shitty games and causing another video game crash. I for one am glad they owned the market for so long. Great games great era. Too bad Atari messed up their chance to own the American market. I still play games from that old 8 & 16 bit era as some of them have lots of reply value.
i absolutely agree with you for the most part, but atari never had a chance to control the game market they were an american company with trade unions breathing down their necks, nintendo's saving grace was that they were a foreign company and because of that they were able to worm their way through legal loopholes and eventually were able to dominate, they're downfall on the other hand was their arrogance and allowing sony to develop a CD rom add on for the SNES which they scrapped and so sony took what they learned working with nintendo and developed the PS1. but you know what they say. hindsight is 20/20
SofaKingWeTodEd666 actually their grip on the market started to slip the moment they signed a deal with sony where sony supplied them with the sound chip for the SNES, in the fine print it gave sony the rights to have all SNES games playable on Sony's SNES/cd-rom system that would be called the playstation. Nintendo realised this after signing it and were really uncomfortable with it. Hence they stooged Sony and abandoned their cd rom addon for the SNES and started working with phillips instead. That pissed Sony off in a major way and Sony were all like screw you Nintendo we'll go off and make our own system ... and the rest is history. That's also why the playstation controller is basically a SNES controller with prong handles and extra L and R buttons.
Atari had the same knack of experimentation that Nintendo had back in the day...their issue is that they let it get out of control and were having many reliability issues. Nintendo would do sometimes excessive testing of all hardware inside the console, even more so than software in quite a few cases, but they kept their curious nature and their marketing nature at balance extremely well, and spended the money where needed to prove to the consumer exactly why they should buy their product quite strongly. Nowadays, Nintendo seems to be on the fence all the time when it comes to their gaming products....they are making consoles aimed toward family gaming but are gladly releasing games that Microsoft and Sony usually put out on the track, seemingly with either too much or too little second thought. In the meantime, Microsoft and Sony are battling their way through a crowd of PC gamers who are pretty much saying, "Anything you can do, I can do better," as sung in the original song's lyrics...there is no longer any conclusion as to what Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are pushing to achieve as far as I am concerned. And keep in mind that we have almost too many tools to spread information nowadays, and all the gaming companies had to spread word back then was magazines, TV, and rumours. Nothing more, nothing less. I can't tell if any of them are coasting, boasting, or what anymore.
Toys "R" Us is still alive in Canada, but unlike other stores, it no longer carries new video games. I bought a GBA e-Reader and GameCube there. While I know that non-gaming toys are important for children, it's sad to see video games leave Toys "R" Us. Also, the Nintendo eShop for 3DS and Wii U closes this month, which is a further reminder of why competition and physical games are important.
I can't help imagine those helpline phone calls being made today, being taken out of context by the NSA, and the next thing you know you're arrested for trying to "spear him midway through his body. Cut him in half, basically".
Nyxi Imagine if the subject matter was The President's Run level in the Driver PS1 game. The tech support telling you how to evade the police and secret service with the President of the United States in the back of your car. Next thing you know, you're arrested for kidnapping the President.
According to WikiPedia Sega had 65% of the market (some time between 1991 and 1994) but then it fell to 35% in 1994. But that just proves that Nintendo didn't have a monopoly in the 90's. They really had to fight for their market share.
***** Suffering?, with 6 Billion dollards in the bank and the ability to survive for 50 years without selling anything, also with all the exclusives, i dont think they are suffering, in fact, i think Sony is the one suffering, maybe the PS4 is winning the first place, but Sony lost 2.5 Billion dollards, even when the PS4 sells, the company still losses millions with their cell phones and their TVs, PS4 can´t cover the losses.
Funny how Nintendo effectively shut out competitors in the market at that time, and now they're the ones getting shut out of having AAA titles for their consoles.
I'm sure they're really feeling the pain there after just outselling the PS4 and on its way to potentially outselling the PS2. They know what they're doing, they're just in a different game. If they wanted better hardware they could have it.
@@twincherries6698 Yeah, out selling a discontinued console that just moved onto the next gen ps5. Their next console better can handle newer AAA games for a while, because as of right now, all that the Switch is a handheld indie machine with some great exclusives. Sure they can pump more exclusives but will miss out new AAA hits or have to downgrade those games. Not to mention the Steam Deck, it might be big but the ability to play demanding-AAA games on the go make it a balance choice for AAA games and portability
@@mordercainear9573 PS4 isn't discontinued lmao. God of War just came out for it. The rest of your post doesnt really counter anything considering how well theyre doing without those releases. It'd be nice if nintendo had better hardware and also could get more AAA on its next hardware, but it's far from necessary for them. The hardware is extremely dated, yes, but that hasn't stopped the switchs momentum much particularly, for better and for worse. Steam deck is great and I'm glad it exists, but if you think that is genuine competition for the switch in terms of sales then your whole post is a joke.
@@twincherries6698 They discontinued in Japan, and barely anyone buy PS4 since the PS5 came out the only reason they still supporting ps4 for 3 more years since 2021 it;s because the lack of PS5 on the market, And what does GoW had anything to do with the ps4, it's still possible for games to release on a discontinued console at the end of its cycle, Ragnarok was made for PS5 mainly, they just didn't want to piss ps4 owners off. Switch momentum hasn't stopped yet because of Indies and portability and also that there's literally zero competition, even Steam Deck was experimental so Valve doesn't put out as many as the switch, if they really want to, then Nintendo really should be worried, and you seriously comparing the Switch which came out 4 years later than the PS4 which is at the end of its life so no one buys it any more, and the Steam Deck which was just recent, then of course the Switch it's gonna have the highest number, why don't you wait another 4 years then see what happen, it's probably peaking right now
Accusations were on point and played a big part in Nintendo losing many of their best third-party developers from the Nintendo 64 onward. Of course their use of non-standard storage media, controllers, programming languages, and developer's kits did not help either.
Pretty funny how they thought this Nintendo these days just works with other studios, while Xbox and PlayStation buy up huge companies and studios constantly
It took them until the GameCube to realize that discs were the way to go, and letting the licensees manufacture the discs was a good trade off for what they could go with their games in that format. Even then, though, they chose to go with the mini DVDs, which in the end only held 1/3 of the data of PS2's single layer DVDs and 1/6 of PS2's and Xbox's dual layer DVDs. Nintendo has always felt the need to be different, but at least their Wii U discs have Blu-Ray equivalent capacity.
Sure, it hasn’t gone down… but it’s barely gone up. It’s hard to imagine games being $50+ back then, and now we are complaining about $60/$70 games. They are relatively way cheaper now, which explains why everyone has them now.
Console Wars is a great book if you want to dive further into Nintendo’s monopolization and how Sega managed to take more than half of gaming sales by the early 90s.
The reason nintendo keeps prices high, even today, is that they want people who buy early to not feel ripped off later. Because if prices dropped over time, customers would wait a while after a new game comes out, and quick buyers would pay more than others, leading to them feeling ripped off as mentioned
being a better competitor is not a monopoly, people will buy the systems or games they think are best. if you wanna talk sales, sony eventually came in and won over a significant majority of the market and then microsoft got in there too.
Even back then, comparing video games to movies/cassettes/CDs just shows that we didn't quite understand that game consoles were never designed to be one-size-fits-all like with non-interactive media. That the technology between the two is vastly different.
