Words of Wisdom

[Eduardo]

"It's a constant source of frustration to me that the video-game industry is dominated by Japan," he says. "It started here; the U.S. should dominate. ... Nintendo and Sony can be dethroned, and they should be."-Nolan.

 

Amen.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I would call that the typical american way of thinking

 

Thomas

[Bob Bytchin]

Typical American way of thinking?

 

The concept of video games was purely an American concept to begin with. It was American students and entrepreneurs who developed the beginnings of the video game industry. Nolan Bushnell was someone who saw the potential in mass-marketing video games.

 

Many of todays video game giants still have their roots in America or in American money. SEGA was originally an American company, and many of the others Namco, Konami, Nintendo etc...owe a big part of their success to American investments. The other big-hitters such as Bally, Midway (later Bally/Midway), Atari, Williams, Magnavox, Fairchild, Mattel etc...are all American companies. When you check out the stats, you will see that the largest single market for video/computer games is the U.S.A. That doesn't mean that other countries don't have large fan bases or fans that are just as important. But the Japanese companies have forsaken the U.S. market for too long. A video game is usually released in Japan several months before it finally makes it to the U.S., yet when it is finally released in the U.S. it sells more in the first week than it did that entire time in Japan. A good example is the N64. It sold very poorly in Japan, but once it was released in the U.S. it sold like hotcakes. Yet Nintendo was insistent on catering to the Japanese game players before considering what the U.S. game players wanted. If Atari 2.0 gets off the ground, I will definitely buy their new system and games. Mainly because I would love to see updates to their vast library of games, and I will be quite sure that they will cater to my wants as a gamer. At 33 years of age I have seen a lot of video game history first hand, and Atari is definitely the greatest name in video games.

 

*just a rumor at this point, passed on to me by a friend in the computer industry, but rumor has it that two of Nolan Bushnell's investors are none other than Activision and EA. Things are definitely getting interesting.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

*** Sorry, this is getting very off topic. ***

 

Ok, i should have replaced "American" with something like "nationalistic".

 

I hope i misunderstood or overinterprete (sorry for my bad english) you, but using the situation of the past as an argument for now or the future, combined with a nationalistic view, looks to me quite dangerous.

 

History is not objective, every nation has it's own view. I'm sure, you will find several people from different countries, who will claim, that their country started with something (cars, telephone, videogames? ...).

 

This can easily lead to very unneccessary conflicts.

 

BTW: The United States are the biggest market for nearly every consumer good, not only video games. But that doesn't mean anything, or does it?

 

Have fun!

Thomas

[Bob Bytchin]

Well, it does mean something if you have a product to push. That's the idea behind a free market. You take your supply to where the demand is...you don't take your supply elsewhere and hope a demand materializes.

[Albert]

quote

*just a rumor at this point, passed on to me by a friend in the computer industry, but rumor has it that two of Nolan Bushnell's investors are none other than Activision and EA. Things are definitely getting interesting.  

 

This threw me off until I went and read the article in MetroActive mentioned in another thread..

 

It would be very interesting to see Atari 2.0, that's for sure. However, with Hasbro/Infogrammes owning the rights to Atari, I'm not sure how much that would be a reality. Perhaps he'd start another game company with a different name, but I doubt he'd wrestle the name Atari out of 'em. But you never know, it's certainly been passed around to many companies to this point!!

 

..Al

 

[ 05-10-2001: Message edited by: Albert ]

[robsterman]

Hey, the beauty about America is that it is a free market. People do not play video games because of the creators; they play them because they are good.

 

When American (or any other country) developers create a kick-a$$ video game, people will flock to it.

 

P.S. If you look at the game Black-and-White, the developers are all British. The founder was the man behind the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Steve Jackson.

 

Five years ago, when this project was started, people laughed at him. What, a non-Japanese person creating a video game?

 

Nobody's laughing now.

 

So, create an innovative game, and the hoardes comes flying.

[Bob Bytchin]

Black & White? Definitely not a good choice for an example. I bought the game, and so did 3 of my friends. We all got bored with it after the second world. Now Tribes 2, now that's a game.

 

But seriously, if you are a video/computer game company, then you should exploit your largest userbase. The N64 is the greatest example because Nintendo was struggling with the system in Japan, but consumers in the U.S. (as well as the rest of the world) were buying the systems and games in a fever pitch. But Nintendo was so insistent on saving face that they threw everything they had a trying to revive the Japanese market. My main gripe is that the userbase in the U.S., although it's the largest userbase, has been left out in the cold for too long.