What struck me from reading this was the amount of failure and "suck" they had to deal with before they finally had any success:
"Despite middling results from titles like Wild Gunman and Battle Shark, Yamauchi remained committed to his new vision and continued to allocate a vast amount of resources toward videogames. "
...
"Space Fever was followed by Space Launcher (underwhelming), which was followed by Space Firebird (disappointing), which was followed by a slew of unsuccessful non-space-themed games. After this string of mediocre misfires, Stone and Judy were ready to quit, and Arakawa couldn’t help but reconsider his new vocation. "
...
"That foreboding was validated after the three thousand units finally arrived and Stone and Judy found that operators had little interest. Radarscope was fun at first, the consensus appeared to be, but it lacked replay value."
on and on through failure after failure they kept trying until finally, Donkey Kong.
It's a lesson: while consistent reliable and predictable success is what everyone wants to achieve, the reality is often "failure, failure, failure, failure... huge success that finally makes up for all of the previous failures".
Though this excerpt of the "Console Wars" book is about Nintendo, according to this Wired article[1], the book focuses heavily on Sega as well, and Sega of America is the protagonist of the story.
It appears like Nintendo acted like Apple does with apps (stringent reviews that have to meet their expectation, share of revenues, etc). Can anyone who has had software development experience with both Nintendo (back in the day) and Apple (iPhone days) juxtapose the two software distributors? (Using any pieces of anecdotal similarities you wish)
Nintendo had two intents - preventing shovelware that killed the Atari 2600, and requiring royalties as well as making publishers purchase ROM cartridges from Nintendo.
It didn't quite work. There were still quite a few downright horrible games for the NES, look at any 'Worst Nintendo Games Ever' list. Two great examples were X-Men and AD&D: Heroes of the Lance.
Also, Tengen (from Atari) released their own games with their own chips, including a copied NES lockout chip. Remember those games that came in the strange black cartridge that didn't look like other NES games, notably the first Tetris, Gauntlet, and Ms. Pacman? Those were Tengen games, and they ended up in a legal battle with Nintendo.
I think Nintendo was a lot more brutal than Apple is; there is a story, of which I forget the details, about how they bought up all of the cart manufacturing capacity in the run up to one Christmas, leaving the third party publishers sitting on great games but with no way to get them into the stores.
I think that this attitude is true for many technology companies. What makes Apple more criticized is the fact that at least 2 of their product lines - personal computers, and ios devices, are directly related to standards, infrastructures, and resources that are basic, mass used and supposed to be public and open.
Growing up with games from Nintendo, Sega, and bunch of old-but-goodies, sort of miss the old days. Playing Super Mario 3 on the original nintendo, then the awe of Super Mario World on SNES.. Sonic the Hedgehog's awesome CD background music...
Life was much simpler back then. You get your game featured on one of the game magazines then you hit gold. No version updates, just plain big releases. Game reviews...
For an important side-note relating to Nintendo's history, have a look for the BBC4 documentary "From Russia With Love" which covered the unexpectedly interesting history of Tetris (particularly the politics and corporate machinations around its move into the west) in which Nintendo played a part.
Well, it's a hardware-based, distribution-based industry. Of course it can only be started by companies which have heavy capital backing. You can't make consoles in your basement. It's actually very natural.
> game developers, like musicians and actors, will work for peanuts.
Completely false for game developers. Look at the salaries in the industry, they are far from being bad. And if you go indie, you can hit the jackpot and make way more money than in any other industry for the same team sizes.
"Despite middling results from titles like Wild Gunman and Battle Shark, Yamauchi remained committed to his new vision and continued to allocate a vast amount of resources toward videogames. " ...
"Space Fever was followed by Space Launcher (underwhelming), which was followed by Space Firebird (disappointing), which was followed by a slew of unsuccessful non-space-themed games. After this string of mediocre misfires, Stone and Judy were ready to quit, and Arakawa couldn’t help but reconsider his new vocation. "
...
"That foreboding was validated after the three thousand units finally arrived and Stone and Judy found that operators had little interest. Radarscope was fun at first, the consensus appeared to be, but it lacked replay value."
on and on through failure after failure they kept trying until finally, Donkey Kong.
It's a lesson: while consistent reliable and predictable success is what everyone wants to achieve, the reality is often "failure, failure, failure, failure... huge success that finally makes up for all of the previous failures".