Which big 3 would of dominated the 80's

[atari5200dude82]

Which of the big 3 Atari, Mattel Intv , or Coleco, would dominated the 80's if the video game market crash didn't happen.

 

Atari 2600 was still going strong at the time. The 5200 was not much supported by atari, but it going to release some nice games in 84. If the 7800 was released in 84, would it make a difference. Maybe if they would release the 7800 adapter for the 5200, would make a good seller. If the atari 5200 prototypes had been released in 84, would it had turn things around.

 

Mattel INTV . INTELLIVISION wAS DOING GOOD UNTIL MARKETING KEPT SCREWING UP in 83 . IF they would concentrate on releasing the intv 3 and put more expansion stuff for the ECS, would it made a huge difference. The ECS, IS A cool expansion game system, but hardly no support. If Mattel release the intv 4, maybe it would of turn things around.

 

Coleco- The colecovision was pretty strong system also. IT HAD GREAT GAMES, plus nice accessories. If coleco would release some of the games that were supposed to been released. would it made a bigger impact. If coleco didn't release the adam and concentrated of the super module and a system , would it dominated the rest of the 80's.

 

What do you think?

Edited July 20, 2011 by atari5200dude82

[HuckleCat]

Is this question assuming Nintendo, Sega, and Commodore did not show up?

 

 

If so, hard to say. Both Mattel and Atari seemed to think the next step was computers. Probably Atari. I just don't think Mattel would have kept up with anything like the ST.

 

If you mean consoles, well, maybe Intellivision, if they bothered to release a successor that was an actual step-up, and not the INTV 2 or 3.

[Rex Dart]

Nintendo would have.

Edited July 20, 2011 by Rex Dart

[raskar42]

atari : controllers are more ergonomic

[tz101]

With or without the "crash", Nintendo and Sega were bound for greatness. With that said, who knows what the race would have looked like if Coleco and Mattel had remained strong in the VG sector?

 

My guess:

 

Atari goes ahead and launches the 7800 in early '85, Coleco runs out of arcade titles to port, and Mattel launches Intellivision III. The picture gets really muddled when Nintendo brings Famicom to the states and Sega follows suit with Mark III/Master System. Could all five have thrived at the same time? I doubt it and venture a guess that Coleco is the first to bow out.

 

Nintendo ends up killing off 7800 with their exclusive 3rd party licensing scheme, but Mattel remains strong with many new and innovative games for INTV III.

[zylon]

I went to computers by that point. Didn't come back to consoles until late 80's so I missed all the fun or lack thereof pending on your point of view.

[mbd30]

In 1989 we would have been playing the latest "Pac-Man", "Centipede" and "Dig Dug" on our Atari 10400's.

[ATARI7800fan]

With or without the "crash", Nintendo and Sega were bound for greatness. With that said, who knows what the race would have looked like if Coleco and Mattel had remained strong in the VG sector?

 

My guess:

 

Atari goes ahead and launches the 7800 in early '85, Coleco runs out of arcade titles to port, and Mattel launches Intellivision III. The picture gets really muddled when Nintendo brings Famicom to the states and Sega follows suit with Mark III/Master System. Could all five have thrived at the same time? I doubt it and venture a guess that Coleco is the first to bow out.

 

Nintendo ends up killing off 7800 with their exclusive 3rd party licensing scheme, but Mattel remains strong with many new and innovative games for INTV III.

would third party's have agreed to Nintendo's third party licensing scheme though if there had been others to go with at the same time is the question.

[Eltigro]

Nintendo would have.

 

Thanks. I think of all contractions, "would've" should be outlawed.

[raskar42]

alternate history 1985: coleco releases the colecovision 2. nintendo is afraid to enter an already saturated console market and licenses all their games to coleco. coleco markets a computer for women - the coleco eve. Atari releases the cosmos 2 which has vfd display and uses tiny records for sound effects. Atari then delays the release of the Atari 15600 until they all remaining stock of ET 2 for the 7800 is sold. Mattel hires ralph baer to help design the a follow up for the intellivision. he creates the first game console thats also a time machine and Mattel gets out of the videogame business when the entire upper management is eaten by a tyrannosaur.

[tz101]

Nintendo would have.

 

Thanks. I think of all contractions, "would've" should be outlawed.

 

Could've and should've are abused in the same manner. It irks me just like use of the non-word "irregardless".

[VectorGamer]

Nintendo would have.

 

Thanks. I think of all contractions, "would've" should be outlawed.

 

How about "shouldn't've"?

 

Can I hear that used in a sentence?

 

Sure:

 

"You shouldn't've Shat on that Atari 7800 programmer, d1ckH3Ad."

[sheath]

The short answer would be whoever invented monopolistic licensing contracts and spent all of the time and effort locking down retailers like Nintendo did. As that would most likely remain Nintendo even with the "crash" they probably would have dominated no matter what. We also know, thanks to companies like Sega, that making a ton of well made games actually meant jack squat to the success of any game company. Making franchises, and securing exclusive franchises, was the only way to dominate all along.

 

That's not even getting into whether or not Nintendo actually dominated prior to the end of 1988.

Edited July 21, 2011 by sheath

[atarian63]

Atari!! Dammit!

[Metal Jesus]

I was 12 years old in 1983, and fully interested in the C64 instead of consoles at that point... so for me, there never really was a video game crash. There were hundreds of great games both on floppies and games you could type in from print magazines. It's only when I got older that I learned there was this "Video Game Crash".

[PAC MAN FEVER]

In 1989 we would have been playing the latest "Pac-Man", "Centipede" and "Dig Dug" on our Atari 10400's.

 

Aww That would be so cool

[Chilly Willy]

1984 - the Amiga Lorraine is released and all other video consoles tank.

 

The Lorraine was only redesigned to be a home computer because of the VG crash of 83. Without the crash, the Lorraine would have taken the VG market by storm.

[chrisbid]

basic answer - the winner would be the first company to release super mario bros on their console.

 

the more complex questions/answers - which company would have been in the best position to land smb? colecovision made a mint from licensing donkey kong, atari saw this success and got the rights to publish mario bros. could mattel sneak in and obtain the rights to smb? they were hungry for arcade licenses and took full advantage of their rights to burgertime.

 

nintendo was shopping the famicom around for a us distributor. would any of the companies be willing to discontinue their own systems for the right to distribute japanese hardware? or would smb be competently ported to a home grown next gen console? could the 7800, or intellivision iii/iv handle it? the colecovision and sega sg1000 were very similar, when sega developed the backward compatible mark iii (master system), could that have been a path for coleco to pursue? imagine super mario bros on master system hardware.

[Pixelboy]

To answer the question, you have to start with the root of the issue, namely the crash itself: If the crash hadn't occured, then that would have implied that consumers and retailers would not have lost confidence in the video game console industry (like they actually did back in 84) and thus this industry would have kept on going. From that starting point, we can make certain assumptions (looking at the north-american market only):

 

1) Video game consoles and home computers would have been in competition for market shares in a much more balanced fashion (when the crash of 84 occured, it facilitated the penetration of home computers in north-american homes afterwards).

 

2) This "balanced" competition between game consoles and home computers would have caused players in the industry to choose sides. Some companies like Commodore would have likely placed its chips on the C64, while other companies like Atari and Mattel would have likely stuck with consoles, or at least they would have made their home computers an obvious secondary venture. I'm not sure what Coleco would have done, perhaps they would have chosen to market the Adam anyway, even if the ColecoVision had been doing better than it did.

 

3) Console gaming in Japan would have followed its own course, and companies (like Nintendo and Sega) looking to expand their profit margins would have tried to penetrate the american console market at a certain point in time. What would have happened then is anyone's guess (marketing/distribution deals with Atari or Coleco? Attempt to market the japanese consoles on their own and compete with established players?) but japanese games like Super Mario Bros, Ghosts'n Goblins or Mega Man would have likely attracted the attention of gamers, as a pure novelty. The "Japanese gaming culture invasion" would have likely occured, regardless of exactly how it would have happened historically, fueled by many arcade games that originated in Japan.

 

4) There would have likely been a competition of hardware R&D in Japan, which would have produced 16-bit console successors like the Super-NES and Genesis. American companies would have likely pushed their own R&D divisions to develop new hardware to keep up, giving us the console life cycles that we know today. Perhaps these life cycles would be even shorter than they actually are now, given a wider and healthier industry competition. It's also possible that the home computer market would have come out on top, with consoles marketed with keyboards and mice, as well as joysticks. The gaming industry would have then expanded to give us games like Civilisation, and later the first FPS like Doom.

 

So who would have dominated? Those that would have best taken advantage of the japanese gaming culture invasion. That could have been Nintendo and Sega, or perhaps Atari, Mattel and Coleco if they had placed their bets on the japanese wave. Another possibility would have been Sony, who could have acted as distributor for Nintendo or Sega products. Sony was already well-established in North-America for consumer electronics (Walkman, etc.) so Atari, Coleco and Mattel could have been pushed out of the top spots even without the crash of 84.

[high voltage]

In 1989 we would have been playing the latest "Pac-Man", "Centipede" and "Dig Dug" on our Atari 10400's.

 

 

Just like Nintendo is doing for 20+ years with Mario and Zelda. So nothing changed.

[Rex Dart]

Still playing the latest Dig Dugs and Pac-Mans here

[BydoEmpire]

I think it'd be Atari - those late 80s Atari coin-ops were awesome and it would have given Atari a big edge for their home consoles.

[Nukey Shay]

None of the above...since everybody was using a flawed business model that LED to the shakeout. If your hypothetical scenario was that the "crash" didn't happen, there would be no incentive for the companies to change their methods...now would there?

 

 

Hindsight is tricky. This is why time-travel stories are complete rubbish (i.e. the "act" would have already altered history).

[mbd30]

In 1989 we would have been playing the latest "Pac-Man", "Centipede" and "Dig Dug" on our Atari 10400's.

 

 

Just like Nintendo is doing for 20+ years with Mario and Zelda. So nothing changed.

 

Good point.

[high voltage]

The company with the biggest pockets of course.

 

Atari would continue to be in the strongest position, continue to innovate, continue licensing titles from Nintendo, Konami, Capcom, Namco, Arcades etc...

Nintendo hardware would not show up in the rest of the world, just like Bandai, Casio, Epoch never did.

 

Sega would have returned to his American origins, and maybe they would have continued doing arcades only.

 

Philips, having with Videopac the second strongest selling console in Europe, also have loads of money, so they would come up with Videopac 16-bit or something like that.

Mattel would leave the hardware sector, doing software only, and Coleco would have crashed with the Adam anyway (they so badly wanted a computer add-on).

 

And, as already mentioned, Jay Miner working on his Amiga console would have been gobbled up by Atari (as they wanted to do so in the first place), so the Amiga console would have been a flyaway hit, as with all the stuff Jay did (unless he would have stayed with Atari in the first place, then it would have been the next big Atari console anyway).

Edited July 22, 2011 by high voltage