Gaming Industry Part-2

We are back with the second chapter of the Gaming Industry. This is the story of a Japanese company who jumped into the gaming market and is still playing strong.

Kyoto, the Japanese based Nintendo began as a playing-card manufacturing company. It entered the home video game market in Japan in 1983 after it started its entry into electronics in 1970s with its Famicom system.

Nintendo focused on producing fewer, but higher quality games. The Famicom could display 52 colours at a resolution of 256 *240 pixels, superior to the competition of the day. Famicom cost 50% less than the closest competitor. A security chip was installed into every console to ensure that only Nintendo approved games could be played on the system.

Atari filed a number of lawsuits against Nintendo complaining of monopolistic practices.
But by 1990, Nintendo had captured 90% of the US home console market. It had big hit titles like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. In the meanwhile it faced competition from another Japanese console maker – Sega who had also successfully entered US market. The marketing and relatively softer licensee policies of Sega paved the way for an extremely competitive market.

But the big war was just about to begin. By the mid 1990s Sega was the least of Nintendo’s worry as Sony the Big Electronics player entered the video Game market with a bang- Playstation.


~Naineet

Read more... :)