Current Events > On this day 40 years ago: Sharon B makes a prediction about video games

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/4/8/AABfkMAAD8Qg.jpg

She's a word processor? Isn't that a computer program?

DeadBankerDream posted...

She's a word processor? Isn't that a computer program?

She means she types stuff up.

Well Sharon B, looks like you were on the wrong side of history.

edit: then i saw the date. SHARON B CAN SEE THE FUTURE

She was right. Video game crash happened in '83. But Nintendo changed the game afterward.

Yeah, because TV failed decades ago for not being 'educational' enough. Or the movies.

Kids be like: "But im not learning from my video games thus they are not fun!"

To her credit vidya was pretty much a niche hobby in the early 80s. It would be a bit more sus if she said it after the NES dropped.

Ah, so this is where people got the opinions of random nobodies to trump up and demonize before Twitter was a thing. Interesting... A New... Paper? Hmm...

I mean, in theory, she was correct.

Video games/Home consoles were introduced around 1977ish, and sales rapidly grew into the early 1980's.

But home consoles were virtually non-existent in stores from 1983-1985, due to saturation of the market combined with the thought that... it was just a fad. From 1983 to 1985, the sales of home consoles fell something crazy, like 95% or something like that.

I love Nintendo; I really do, but let's be clear here: they did not save video-games, they saved the home console market. Without Nintendo, we probably become computer gamers instead.

I think calling video-games a fad, even with the knowledge of the home-console crash, is quite a silly thing.

PiOverlord posted...

they did not save video-games, they saved the home console market

That's the same thing.

DeadBankerDream posted...

That's the same thing.

Europe and Japan would disagree. Home-consoles were still strong during '83-85 in Japan, and computer gaming was still big in Europe. Europe has always been notoriously not as big into Nintendo as other regions.

Arcades were still a thing that people would have done, and it would have only been a matter of time before computer gaming would have become more popular over in America.

Nintendo probably just slowed our ascent into the PC Master race era.

EDIT: Nintendo, obviously, also has a major hand in all the major players today. Computer gaming would probably have been vastly different in who were the big guys and IPs. Even someone like Sonic, was a response to Mario, so who knows if Sonic would have been a thing without Mario's popularity.

ZX Spectrum never really attempted a US launch, or things may have been different.