9-709-448 REV: JANUARY 4, 2010 ANDREI HAGIU HANNA HAŁABURDA Responding to the Wii? Kazuo Hirai, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), had just gotten off a conference call with journalists. It was late August 2008, and the reporters were inquiring about Afrika, a new safari videogame for Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) console that allowed players to watch wild animals and take virtual pictures. Hirai could not help feeling frustrated. Most of the conversation—like many others with Sony outsiders in the past month—had revolved around two questions: Was Afrika Sony’s answer to the casual games that were partly responsible for the runaway success of rival Nintendo’s Wii videogame console? And more generally, …show more content…
This document is authorized for use only in Principles of Strategic Management July 2016 by Dr Paul Spee, University of Queensland Business School from June 2016 to August 2016. 709-448 Responding to the Wii? Market Birth, Collapse, and Rebirthb The videogame industry got off to an uncertain start in 1972, when television maker Magnavox introduced Odyssey, the first home videogame console. Priced at $100 (the equivalent of $516 in 2008 dollars),c Odyssey needed a television screen to project its very limited action. The system came with 12 games, including versions of tennis and ping pong, each on a printed circuit board.5 However, partly due to some uninspired marketing and distribution decisions, Odyssey’s appeal proved limited. Magnavox sold more than 100,000 game systems by year-end, but sales quickly declined and Odyssey was pulled from the market.6 Enter Atari Around the same time, a young entrepreneur named Nolan Bushnell was developing arcade games with the use of then-new microprocessor technology.7 In 1972, the company he started, Atari, launched its first hit game—an arcade version of ping pong.8 In Pong, two players batted a ball of light back and forth between on-screen paddles. The game instructions were simple: “Avoid missing ball for high score.”9 Pong was an immediate success: 8,500 arcade consoles were sold in the first year.10 Bushnell
The very first ‘Video Game’ was invented by Edward U. Condon in 1940, At first it was a simple game called ‘Nim’. In nim players try to avoid picking up the last match. Thousands of people played it, although the computer won at least 90% of the games. Around ten years later in 1950, a new computer program was created by Claude Shannon for the game of chess. In autumn of 1972 the first gaming console was released by ‘Magnavox’ and they called it the Odyssey. Three years later, the next big gaming console arrived when Sears sold the first ‘Atari Pong.’ This was the beginning of a long partnership between Atari and Sears. This relationship lasted multiple years, and Sears sold several successful games. Multiple years later in 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System. This new gaming console dominated the Gaming Industry and grew Nintendo’s Company. Nintendo created several gaming console legends, such as the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advanced, Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy Advanced SD, and Nintendo DS, all of which made a huge impact on everybody’s childhood from 1985 to 2005. In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Playstation and Xbox also started releasing consoles. They are still to this day making successful Gaming Consoles, and individual games, as well as Xbox and Playstation.
Although, seeing as video games are increasingly popular today, not everyone met as unfortunate of a fate. Today, many could credit this to the video game development corporation known as Atari, which arose in 1972 and continuously flourished until about 1982. In 1972, Atari came out with PONG, the first electronic arcade game, and it was an enormous accomplishment that exploded into what is now called the electronic gaming revolution. As time passed, Atari managed to triumph over its competition time and time again, but that is not to say that each of the failed corporations did not feature something that is used today. In fact, a couple of the failed organizations contributed something original to what is common today. For instance, Fairchild Camera and Instrument creating the first system that could play several different games, rather than just one. Another aforementioned group, RCA, was the first to produce and utilize keypad controllers instead of paddles or joysticks. Other consoles that came along, such as Intellivision and Vectrex, sported better graphics than the Atari’s consoles and games, but they still did not manage to gross the amount of money that Atari did because Atari was still on top of collecting all of the most entertaining and enjoyable games of their time. Keep in mind what attracted the masses to video games in the past: fun and addictive gameplay, not how good they looked. Now that the principal eras of gaming have been
The first console was called the Brown Box and was mad by a TV maker, Ralph Baer. The Brown Box was made in 1967. Nolan Bushaell bounded Atari in 1972. Atari then had its first big hit with the infamous Pong. In 1980 Mattel releases the Intelivision which is the first challenge against Atari’s rule. Nintendo wasn’t always the video game we know, it was originally a Japanese playing card company. In 1985 Nintendo releases the Nintendo releases the Nintendo Entertainment System, Wow what a creative name that is. Then in 1989 they released their second smash hit with the Gameboy, to compete with other companies such as Atari, Who released their Atari 2600. It included the newly released Tetris which would grow to become a massive hit to top off the huge sales of the Gameboy. In 1991 the super Nes is released. Then the original PlayStation is released in 1995 becoming extremely popular. To combat this popularity Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 in 1996. It includes favorites such as Mario 64, Zelda, and Metroid. The PS2 is released in 2000 marking the beginning of a new era of game consoles. It is the first console to include 128 bit graphics. A problem with original game consoles such as the Atari 2600 is they had little memory. With such little memory Graphics could only be up to 160 by 228 pixels. The normal today is 1925 by 1080 pixels. Some of the earliest adventure games used text instead of images to create the world you’re in. The first of these “text” games was
World 's first commercially sold coin-op video game was called “Computer space”. It was created in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Unfortunately it wasn 't successful due low marketing, the complicity of game play and difficulty of controls. But creators of “Computer space” didn 't
When video games were first being introduced to the general public, they weren’t all that exciting. Most gaming took place in arcades and most arcades didn’t have many game cabinets due to their being very few games to begin with. However, all of this changed when the Atari 2600 was released. At the time, Atari was known for their home computers and their hit arcade game “Pong”. Though the Atari 2600 might not have been the first video game system, it was definitely the most successful at that time and a great success for Atari’s first attempt at a home video game console. Thanks to the success of the 2600, video games began to take off and arcades started popping up all over the world with hits like “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong”. These would be the
The Nintendo brand has changed over the years, starting out as a simple card company that has expanded into the massive electronic giant we know today. They have had their ups and downs through their time as a gaming company but they always have the gamer’s interest in mind. As the late CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata said, "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer" (Yu, E., & Chan, W.
During Fall 1975 Magnavox odyssey released and it had done something Atari had not done allow 1 console to play more than 1 game.For the price odyssey was a hit, you pay 30$ for 80 games and to people this was amazing Magnavox was good competition for Atari releasing odyssey 100 and 200 later.
Video games have been around since 1958, when physicist William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two to entertain guests for the Brookhaven national Laboratory. MIT arguably created the first real and widely known video game in the late 1960s, Spacewar!. Many people think that the first commercially available game is Pong!, this on the other hand, is not true. The first commercially available video game was called Computer Space. It was an arcade game much like Spacewar!, the only difference being that Computer Space used more processing power and new technology, and that it was the first arcade game as well, not available to personal computers or home televisions. The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home console that was available for the general public. It featured a controller much like the one that pong would eventually make, except that its two dials controlled vertical and horizontal, rather than just vertical. The Magnavox Odyssey as a console was eventually a huge failure, leaving tens of thousands unsold. Games continued to be produced for households, with the most noticeable violent game releasing on August 18, 1995. The game was called Mortal Kombat, the game depicted two
The Odyssey 500, instead of sticks as paddles, it actually had the figure of the sport you were playing, tennis player, hockey player, and squash player. There were a lot of Pong clones that were being made for a home video console. Some listed are Coleco Telestar, Fairchild Channel F, RCA Studio II, and Wonder Wizard 7702. Now there where such an abundance of Pong clones, that a lot of manufactures were forced to closed, leaving a lawsuit between Magnavox and Atari for stealing the Pong idea. Magnavox won, and is now receiving royalties from anyone that used that Pong program. The Second generation of game consoles starts with Atari. They released the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) in 1977. This was a huge step in the video consoles, because Atari made detachable controllers and the first game console to use plug in cartridges. It was slow to sell at first, but when Atari bought the licensing of Space Invaders, it sky rocketed in sales. Magnavox still holding on to the Pong craze put out three new Odysseys, the 2000, the 3000, and the 4000. Odyssey 3000 had detachable controllers. The Odyssey 4000 then included color. Then in 1978, Magnavox released the Odyssey 2, this was sort of small computer which you could do basic programming. It came with a built in keyboard plus joysticks and it used cartridges. Also, trying to take off Atari from their throne, Mattel made the Intellivision. This bad boy was better than the
Gaming has been around since the 1960’s and was nothing like the high definition games that we currently sitting in the living room, it was simply a game where a player controls a paddle and hits a ball back and forth similar to the more famous game the world knows as Pong. In 1970’s the very first arcade video games were being developed and by 1978 to 1982 also known as the golden age of arcade video games these coin hungry machines were easily found in a plethora of
The first games console was created in 1967 by a German engineer called Ralph Baer and his co-workers helped create the first videos game with him that would work on a standard television set. They ended up making 12 games for this console and added in a light gun. Then in 1972 after all of Baer’s team work they decided to create a new console called the Odyssey commercial video gaming console, they added cartridges into the console so you can play up to 12 games featuring dots and lines on a screen, it didn’t do so well as TV dealers didn’t see any potential in this device, this made the company think about what they can do to get their console out there to a wide audience. There was a false rumour that surfaced stating that the console only worked on TV’s that their company made which destroyed their popularity. Later after Nolan Bushnell founds Atari in 1972 the company has its first big hit when the arcade game pong was released, they started selling home versions of pong under a new label (sears tele games label). They had a new unique feature because it had a single chip that was able to produce a live score and when the paddle meets the ball a sound played. They introduced at home video games to the masses. Atari started to realise that a single games system popularity will drop if it can only produce one game at a time, so they started the idea of putting a cartridge in it so the user can play 12 games more than they were able to. They sold the company to Warner communications but they still backed up their project that they were working on, the console was renamed the Atari 2600 VCS. This console was an enormous hit with games like space invaders, breakout, missile command and
3. What are the key success factors in the video gaming industry today? Are these the same as in the past?
Herman et all (2002) points out that history of video games begins from 1971 year, when Nutting association released 1500 machines with Spacewar video game. At the beginning it was too difficult to control the game process and playing machines had huge dimensions. But by the time with new technologies they become more compact and easier to play. According to the information given by Herman et all (2002), the period between the years of 1978-1981 is called ‘golden age’ of video game industry. In this period the arcade games ‘Football’ and ‘Space Invaders’ were released. All previously known sale records were broken by these two games with nearly equal wages. In this time interval great breakthroughs in the field of graphics were achieved,
Associates, addressed this demand when he came up with the concept of a “television gaming apparatus." (Miller)
The video game console industry is a very competitive segment. This segment requires a keen eye on product development as well as strategic product marketing and a rather large logistics arm to ensure rapid distribution to targeted areas. Video game industry in the US, which is hugely driven by retail sales of software and hardware, registered revenues of USD ~ million in CY'2012. Even so with the advent of new video game players in the industry, the revenues decreased by 11.7% compared to