Unfortunately, the legacy of David Sheff's Game Over is tarnished. He took shortcuts and got some important details wrong. An historian should find additional sources for the statements made in the book.
The article's mission was to summarize the most important and most interesting information in the video so I don't have to spend an hour and 45 minutes watching it. Since it failed to do so, it has no purpose.
I can't stand localizers. The famicom didn't need to be completely redesigned in order for it to succeed. There was clear market success in Japan already, so they knew the software would be capable to sell systems. I feel like there are other strategies to get stores to stock the product that don't involve redesigning everything. For example they could give guarantees to purchase back unsold stock, and if the famicon failed in America they could ship the units back to Japan to sell them there.
Also, revealing they were doing illegal price fixing with Sega is not surprising.
I'm glad they never released the Famicom Disk System in North America and instead retrofited those games in cartdrige format for our market. I was a kid and while my parents bought me a NES they would never have agreed to buy the FDS. They are probably not alone. Also, to a north-american eye, the Famicom was ugly as sin, looks like a Fisher Price piece of crap. Can't put that under the living room's tv set and most of the homes in the '80s had exactly one tv. A redesign was mandatory. The loading mechanism was an error but we know that only in hindsight.
After the video game crash, retailers (particularly department stores, where most major purchases were made in the 80s, usually on payment plans) were extremely resistant to stocking another console (and consumers were resistant to buying one -- they had been buying home computers like the Commodore 64 since the video game crash to better justify the expense.)
The redesign was intended to position the NES more as a home video accessory and remove it from the tainted video game category, hence the front-loading (like a VCR) so that it could fit into an entertainment system / TV table. It may seem silly from a modern standpoint but it was all about perception, and it was what was needed to successfully 'reboot' the video game market in North America.
What’s always been missing from it for me is whether it actually mattered.
The NES wasn’t cheap. It didn’t do anything but play video games. Did its looking kinda (but not really) like some other piece of AV equipment (but having no other actual capabilities) contribute meaningfully to its success? Were a lot of its buyers, who weren’t exactly making an impulse purchase, swayed by the appearance?
I kinda doubt it. Meanwhile, the redesign did make it less-reliable than its Japanese counterpart.
I don't think the attached controllers with cord lengths appropriate for Japan would have done well in the US. Our Intellivision had attatched controllers and that wasn't great.
The only thing anyone needed to aid their perception and reboot the video game market in north America was 15-20 minutes with super mario bros. I knew a lot of people with an NES and not one of them could care less about how front-loading or VCR-like it was. Everyone, including the adults, knew a fun time when they saw it.
Nintendo already had an answer to the problem of people being afraid of the low quality games that gave Atari a bad name, and that was their "Seal of Quality" which ultimately didn't end up meaning much since shovelware has always been an issue with Nintendo (especially when it came to their handhelds). Still, their first party games were good enough that Nintendo could keep selling consoles even when there were few other games worth buying for them.
Stores weren't stocking video game consoles in Japan either. I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same. Technology was moving fast at this time, and when a kid gets a taste of a game like Super Mario Bros, they will want the console since there is software they want to play with. There was practically a guarantee of market demand, and the software demoed well with American kids. I don't believe the perception was that much of an actual roadblock to shipping the famicom. I feel like if you were to ask kids if they wanted a NES because it looked like a VCR they would look at you funny. They would want it for the games.
> I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same.
I mean, they kind of do. Before the NES rose to dominance, people who didn't care that much called everything an Atari. During and after the NES, people called everything a Nintendo. Now, people are likely to call everything a PlayStation.
If you're a toy store and you've just been clearancing all the systems for whatever they went for and have a barrel of games for $1 at the checkout that isn't selling and a couple more barrels in the back, you might be more interested in something that looks different than the others.
Video on which this very small article is based on: https://youtu.be/f2WDfsiLiRA
The article itself is just explaining what the video contains, and then embeds the video.
This should have [video] in the title
If this is interesting to you, I recommend the book Game Over by David Sheff.
Unfortunately, the legacy of David Sheff's Game Over is tarnished. He took shortcuts and got some important details wrong. An historian should find additional sources for the statements made in the book.
Still much more accurate than some other books like Console Wars.
The article's mission was to summarize the most important and most interesting information in the video so I don't have to spend an hour and 45 minutes watching it. Since it failed to do so, it has no purpose.
I hate to be that guy, but is there a transcript or even ai summary of the video?
Youtube has a built-in transcript feature. You can find it in the video description
Also a built in AI summary feature, if you subscribe to Gemini I guess
I can't stand localizers. The famicom didn't need to be completely redesigned in order for it to succeed. There was clear market success in Japan already, so they knew the software would be capable to sell systems. I feel like there are other strategies to get stores to stock the product that don't involve redesigning everything. For example they could give guarantees to purchase back unsold stock, and if the famicon failed in America they could ship the units back to Japan to sell them there.
Also, revealing they were doing illegal price fixing with Sega is not surprising.
I'm glad they never released the Famicom Disk System in North America and instead retrofited those games in cartdrige format for our market. I was a kid and while my parents bought me a NES they would never have agreed to buy the FDS. They are probably not alone. Also, to a north-american eye, the Famicom was ugly as sin, looks like a Fisher Price piece of crap. Can't put that under the living room's tv set and most of the homes in the '80s had exactly one tv. A redesign was mandatory. The loading mechanism was an error but we know that only in hindsight.
After the video game crash, retailers (particularly department stores, where most major purchases were made in the 80s, usually on payment plans) were extremely resistant to stocking another console (and consumers were resistant to buying one -- they had been buying home computers like the Commodore 64 since the video game crash to better justify the expense.)
The redesign was intended to position the NES more as a home video accessory and remove it from the tainted video game category, hence the front-loading (like a VCR) so that it could fit into an entertainment system / TV table. It may seem silly from a modern standpoint but it was all about perception, and it was what was needed to successfully 'reboot' the video game market in North America.
That’s the standard story, yes.
What’s always been missing from it for me is whether it actually mattered.
The NES wasn’t cheap. It didn’t do anything but play video games. Did its looking kinda (but not really) like some other piece of AV equipment (but having no other actual capabilities) contribute meaningfully to its success? Were a lot of its buyers, who weren’t exactly making an impulse purchase, swayed by the appearance?
I kinda doubt it. Meanwhile, the redesign did make it less-reliable than its Japanese counterpart.
I don't think the attached controllers with cord lengths appropriate for Japan would have done well in the US. Our Intellivision had attatched controllers and that wasn't great.
The only thing anyone needed to aid their perception and reboot the video game market in north America was 15-20 minutes with super mario bros. I knew a lot of people with an NES and not one of them could care less about how front-loading or VCR-like it was. Everyone, including the adults, knew a fun time when they saw it.
Nintendo already had an answer to the problem of people being afraid of the low quality games that gave Atari a bad name, and that was their "Seal of Quality" which ultimately didn't end up meaning much since shovelware has always been an issue with Nintendo (especially when it came to their handhelds). Still, their first party games were good enough that Nintendo could keep selling consoles even when there were few other games worth buying for them.
Stores weren't stocking video game consoles in Japan either. I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same. Technology was moving fast at this time, and when a kid gets a taste of a game like Super Mario Bros, they will want the console since there is software they want to play with. There was practically a guarantee of market demand, and the software demoed well with American kids. I don't believe the perception was that much of an actual roadblock to shipping the famicom. I feel like if you were to ask kids if they wanted a NES because it looked like a VCR they would look at you funny. They would want it for the games.
> I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same.
I mean, they kind of do. Before the NES rose to dominance, people who didn't care that much called everything an Atari. During and after the NES, people called everything a Nintendo. Now, people are likely to call everything a PlayStation.
If you're a toy store and you've just been clearancing all the systems for whatever they went for and have a barrel of games for $1 at the checkout that isn't selling and a couple more barrels in the back, you might be more interested in something that looks different than the others.
But the redesign was targeted at stores, not end consumers