> They can say "Oh, if only.." all they want, but I don't think it would have succeeded
> even if they HAD launched. It probably would have hurt Nintendo's launch, for that
> matter.
>
> See, gaming needed time to cool down and it still required Nintendo to be somewhat
> deceptive in order to get the NES into the market. Atari's name was still mud, and I
> think no matter what they tried it would have hurt the industry more than it could
> help them at that point.
The whole 'crash' thing is interesting, because we really didn't experience it here in the UK.
We had a healthy and open industry for a long time, 8-bits thriving, plenty of original output. Just as much trash, but it ended up getting terrible reviews, sinking to the bottom of bargain bins and being forgotten, companies publishing good games (especially those at cheap prices such as Codemasters) gained a good reputation, as you'd expect in a market..
Piracy was rampant, yes, but it didn't seem to really stop the industry, systems had a long life-span.
That was even when the NES etc. out with everything locked down and 'seal of quality' plastered on stuff which was still really just any old shit anyway.
There were missteps, things like the Amstrad GX4000 were just a bit of a joke (all the disadvantages of a NES, none of the advantages of the computer on which it was based) but again the market rejected them and went with the better systems.
Eventually our systems just weren't good enough to complete tho, as much as something like the Amiga wanted to be able to pull off Sonic the Hedgehog, it couldn't.
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