Completing and polishing my research
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Themastermindsbehindsavinggamingindustry-RoughDraft.docx
1
Alabbas
Abdullah Alabbas
Ronda Walker
Writing 2010
March 4, 2018
The masterminds behind saving gaming industry
“ We don’t run from the risk. We run to it. We are taking the risk to move beyond boundaries of the game industry to reach new players and current players” (Iwata, 2014). Gaming industry is one of the biggest industries; there are no difference it between it and any other entertainment industry. However, if you look deep into any media, you will find a lot of deep or hidden secrets. The outside of the gaming industry is fun and happy, that’s why people play videogames right? That’s why I am here today to open eyes into something probably you don’t know. It’s called the gaming crash “The great videogame crash 1983”.
The video game crash of 1983 known as the Atari shock in Japan, it happened in North America, because of market saturation. Because of this crisis gaming market revenues dropped from $3.2 billion to $100 million from 1983 to 1985 (almost 97%). The crash led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing home computers and gaming consoles. In 2 years the industry was almost dead, thanks to Nintendo they were the superhero that saved the industry.
There were more than one reason for the crisis, starting with that the market was flooded with a lot of games, third-party games. Which means games has neither quality nor joy. It was easy to create new games, so the people/developers who created games didn’t put much effort. The retailers didn’t have customers to buy the games, and they couldn’t even send the game back to the developers to get their money back. Videogames initial price that time was $35, but with this amount of games, it went down to $5.
Atari one of the biggest gaming companies, they produced a lot of consoles and games, back then they were the most popular company for gaming. E.T an old movie was released 1982, and it was successful. ET is the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time in Canada and the US (141,854,300 estimated admissions). Atari saw this success and they wanted to buy the copyrights to create a game for the same movie. Atari spent a lot of money back then to get the copyright, sadly ET videogame consider one of the worst games ever, if it is not the worst. Basically, Atari dig their own grave.
2014, New Mexico, Alamogordo. A film crew and a dig crew hired by Fuel entertainment and Xbox entertainment Studios dug up an old garbage dump. Looking for Atari dump from 1983, and they found tons of Atari game cartridges; most of the cartridges were for the game ET. They were buried for decades, they had an auction for all Atari items and it was sold for $107,930.15. Atari did that because they lost a lot of money for the copyrights, and they made a lot of copies for the games but it never sell. The irony, after they found the game cartridges and sold them at the auctions, they were sold for high prices like thousands of dollars.
Nintendo, a Japanese gaming company, saved gaming industry. The videogame industry wouldn’t even exist without Nintendo consoles, seal of quality, and their marketing. They are the masterminds behind the whole story. They tried to focus on the reasons why the industry was going down, and they figured out the solutions for that.
In the 80’, Nintendo saw potential in the videogames industry, after the success of the “Famicom” in Japan. Nintendo decided that they want to expand their market, so they want to release their console in the United States. After changing the name to NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The NES was an instant success in America, quickly becoming the best selling gaming console of its time. That was the first step Nintendo took to fix the situation.
However, Nintendo didn’t just release the NES in the US immediately, they were aware of the videogame crash 1983. They had a few strategies up their sleeves. They didn’t want their console to be a failure, so Nintendo came to the US in 1985 brining new life to the industry. They had in mind that the marketplace was prepared to treat any videogame console like a poison after the crisis, so they had this brilliant idea about presenting their console as a toy; the console came with toy gun and toy robot where they can be used in some games.
Nintendo was concern about their American audiences that they will not accept the NES, so they did three major adjustments; completely redesign the console appearance, controllers that weren’t hardwired to the console, and marking the console as a toy. As Andrew Cunningham states in his article The NES Turns 30: How It Began, Worked, and Saved an Industry, “The original Japanese Famicom looked like some sort of hovercar with controllers stuck to it.” (Cunningham 1) The NES design looked more attractive and mature even though it was marketed for kids. Nintendo made the NES with controller ports so you could plug in and take out controllers. This solved the problem of being really close to the console because the new controllers were both longer hard wired to the console, and the controller ports allowed for controller extensions.
Marketplace with all these changes Nintendo is willing to do still not ready to take the risk again after Atari shock. Chris Kohler states in his article Oct. 18, 1985: Nintendo Entertainment System Launches that “Retailers didn’t want to listen to the little startup Nintendo of America talk about how its Japanese parent company had a huge hit with the Famicom.” (Kohler). However, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi believed strongly in the quality of the NES, so he told American executives to launch it in the most difficult market: New York City. Basically if the NES succeed there that will make the marketplace believe in gaming consoles again, more importantly Nintendo. That was risky, and it was completely a failure, Nintendo didn’t give up.
Minoru Arakawa came up with a brilliant idea to get the NES on the market. Minoru Arakawa “took a huge gamble that he didn’t share with the president”, this “huge gamble” that Arakawa came up with was that “Nintendo would provide them with product and set up all the displays, and they only had to pay for the ones that sold and could return everything else.” (Kohler) After all, Nintendo didn’t give up even though the launch for the NES in the American marketplace was a huge failure. They had compassion in their console and their high quality games, and they made it clear to everyone that they can cure the scars after the videogame crash. It has been thirty years since Nintendo Entertainment released in America, and Nintendo is one of the lead companies in this industry, they have accomplish a lot, and they are still achieving amazing goals. Nintendo also made a big profit from the gaming industry, not only that they also revived gaming in America after the country thought it was dead.
Nintendo Seal of quality. One of the major reasons for the Video Game crash of 1983 was customer dissatisfaction with a large portion of low quality games. There were tons of unpleasurable games, released just to make profit as much as they could. Customers didn’t like the idea of boring games, they preferred having one good game than ten tasteless games.
The 10NES lockout chip solved the problem of controlling access to the NES, Nintendo added this chip to have some quality standards for any game maker who want to devolve a new game. It’s a great way to gain your customers trust again, so the Seal of Quality to show gamers that the games met quality control standards in terms of basic programming. Publisher were encouraged to create high-quality games, also Nintendo limited publisher by how many games they can release a year, which was five games a year maximum. Nintendo basically was filtering the industry to become better.
Seal of Quality is large, black and gold circular starburst. The seal read as follows: This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product. The have been changing the seal since then, adding some designs and colors, but you still can see it on Nintendo videogame cases. Also, they now they remove the quality segment, because every gamer now know who is Nintendo.
Nintendo previous attempt to the US via the arcade market came with mixed signals. Some games were a big hit in Japan, become huge failure in the US. Nintendo knew that success in Japan wouldn’t guarantee success elsewhere. Nintendo decided that the “Famicom” best chances to success abroad would be to work with a videogame company that had strong brand recognition in the US and beyond. According to Howard Lincoln (Chairman Nintendo of America) “ Mr. Yamauchi said, “Why don’t you contact the Atari people?” So I called Ray Kassar (Atari President) and then the next thing we knew, we were going down in a corporate jet to Warner”.
Nintendo are know for their iconic characters, most of the games in the past didn’t have an iconic character, which means they didn’t have backstory or even a remarkable design. Now I have to talk about the most iconic character in the gaming industry, they call him “The plumber that created an industry”, but he is known for “Mario”. What did Nintendo think when they created characters like Mario? They wanted to make the players get attached to the protagonist. Super Mario bros, the first appearance for Mario ever, and it was one of the first games that came with the NES in America, they sold 40.24 million copies. Mario has become the main franchise for Nintendo, whenever people see Mario face, they understand it is related to Nintendo. Mario franchise since 1985, until 2017 proved that he is the gaming industry icon, Mario games usually sells more than 5 millions copies. Nintendo realized that creating iconic characters is going to support the company gaming titles.
Gaming industry is full of secrets, like any other industry. The video game crash 1983 was caused because more than one reason, starting from markets were full of tasteless games, anyone could create a game without putting much effort. Atari played a big role in that too because their name was popular worldwide. Nintendo was the company who saved the industry; people can argue the opposite but I strongly believe for the time they release their console (NES), and their seal of quality, which helped them to gain the player trust again, and their marketing. They revive this industry one more time.
Work Cited
How Nintendo Revived Gaming - Connor Hemminger: American Long-Form, Connor Hemminger, 12 Dec. 2015, diocesefwsb2.instructure.com/courses/6077/pages/how-nintendo-revived-gaming-connor-hemminger.
