Famicom Nation

Nintendo's Famicom (known as NES in western markets) is generally considered to be the great grandfather of the modern videogame industry.

Famicom's influence can be seen everywhere. For example, today's third party licensing systems are largely variants of the model established by Nintendo during the 1980's. Famicom also introduced several other elements that would later become foundations of the industry, including controller design, various new game genres and even significant hardware expansion options (including networking functionality).

Perhaps even more importantly, Famicom literally resurrected an industry that had ostensibly died as a result of Atari's collapse.

In the upcoming generation, Nintendo has positioned its Wii console as a kind of "new Famicom"; a system that discards many previous conventions and seeks to invent several new ones.


Today's industry is far different from that which existed during the early years of Famicom and NES. However, several factors that led to the genesis of Famicom bear a striking resemblance to the challenges evident in the industry as it stands today.

For example, most of us are aware of reports that suggest a declining interest in videogames among so-called "core gamers". Such reports indicate the source of the phenomenon as being primarily Japan-centric, but a combination of industry analysts and publishing representatives have begun pointing to what they see as early signs of a similar trend emerging in the United States and other western markets.

Another growing factor in today's industry is the concept of "sequelitis", or in other words, an over-reliance on sequels in response to rising development costs and a diminished acceptance of risk.

The latter case is particularly similar to a trend that occurred when Atari was purchased by Warner Communications in 1976. Atari's internal culture changed from embracing creativity and innovation to publishing a larger number of games with less emphasis on how well they played. "If we publish it, they will come" was very much representative of Atari's attitude during the time.

Due to the fact that consumers were unable to rent games and try them before making a purchase, many gamers were burned by their experience with Atari's games. After buying and playing mediocre game after mediocre game, many consumers simply stopped purchasing games altogether. As a result of its lack of focus on quality, Atari quickly hit a proverbial brick wall.

In some ways, this experience is similar to what we see in the industry today, where various influential companies have placed a seemingly all-encompassing emphasis on image quality, at the potential expense of gameplay quality and innovation.

In the same way that Atari executives did not see the need for continual product innovation, various executives in today's major hardware manufacturers are apparently satisfied to rely on established formulas for the foreseeable future.

This very approach is credited by many analysts, developers and publishers as being one of the major sources for the industry decline in Japan. In other words, declines in hardware and software sales are not simply a result of consumers suddenly losing interest for no apparent reason; it is a direct result of the decisions made by the industry's leaders.