What If? Vol. 2

11/4/2009 5:41 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

It's sometimes comforting to think that the way things are is just the way they were meant to be -- that events were simply fated to turn out the way they did. But any honest look at history shows that changing just a few small decisions at key moments would have had a profound impact on the state of the world today. This is no less true in the 40-odd-year history of the videogame industry, which has already had its share of truly momentous moments. In this feature, I examine what might have happened if those moments had turned out just a little bit differently.

For each hypothetical here, I tried to imagine a semi-plausible situation that could have caused these seminal events to turn out differently. While not all of these situations are entirely believable given the state of the industry, I tried to give each "What If?" at least a minimal grounding in reality. These stories are meant to be entertaining thought experiments, not definitive historical takes.

With that, let's take a trip into an alternate universe where nothing is quite as we know it.

What if there was a single, standardized videogame system?

By the great videogame crash of 1983, Ralph Baer's patent for a "television gaming apparatus" had earned Magnavox much more money than the defunct Odyssey and Odyssey² ever had. Licensees like Atari, Mattel and Coleco had to pay tribute to Magnavox for the right to sell and market their systems in the United States.

When a Japanese company named Nintendo starts teasing its Famicom system for an American release in 1985, Magnavox feels it is time to take a more active role in the market. Wielding its patent like a finely honed weapon, Magnavox presents Nintendo with a choice: Sign over the exclusive American rights to the Famicom for a small percentage of the profits, or resign itself to being locked out of the American market forever. Nintendo balks at Magnavox's restrictive terms, deciding instead to fight the patents in court. When the court rules in Magnavox's favor, though, Nintendo has no choice but to agree to the deal, figuring a small slice of the profits from American market is better than no profit at all. The renamed Magnavox Odyssey³ becomes a huge hit with Americans as soon as it hits the market, riding interest in revolutionary new games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda to bring the domestic video game market back from the brink.

By 1997, the names Magnavox and Odyssey have become synonymous with home videogames in the United States, in much the same way VHS became synonymous with home video recordings. The system has sold over 100 million units, and many more hundreds of millions of game cartridges representing thousands of games that push the system to its limits. A few competitors try to break Magnavox's lock on the market in the intervening years, but the company's legal team has a perfect track record defending its broad patent and defending its system from any undue competition.

But many industry watchers are unhappy with Magnavox's stewardship of the domestic game industry. They point to the arcade market, where technology has advanced well past the kinds of games that can be effectively ported to the Odyssey³'s now-ancient technology. They point to Japan, where the lack of patent protections has led to a robust, competitive market, including new systems from Sony, Sega and even Nintendo.

All three companies say they'd be happy to release their latest systems in the United States, but Magnavox is reluctant to introduce a new standard into the American market. Sure, the new systems with their fancy graphics and CD-based storage might have been cutting-edge, but the Odyssey³ was familiar, dependable, a known quantity. Why confuse the market with a new system that won't work with the hundreds of millions of Odyssey³ games sold so far, Magnavox asks privately? Why ask gamers to spend hundreds of dollars on a new system when they're perfectly satisfied with the Odyssey³, for the most part? Why risk alienating the established base of consumers when there's no risk of competition?