Console Wars

Author: Blake J. Harris
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062276719
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 683

Book Description
Now a documentary on CBS All Access. Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars—a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo. The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan. Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It’s the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry. A best book of the year: NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Goodreads

Game Over

Author: David Sheff
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307800741
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 558

Book Description
More American children recognize Super Mario, the hero of one of Nintendo’s video games, than Mickey Mouse. The Japanese company has come to earn more money than the big three computer giants or all Hollywood movie studios combined. Now Sheff tells of the Nintendo invasion–a tale of innovation and cutthroat tactics.

Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA

Author: Sam Pettus
Publisher:
ISBN: 1311080821
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
Starting with its humble beginnings in the 1950's and ending with its swan-song, the Dreamcast, in the early 2000’s, this is the complete history of Sega as a console maker. Before home computers and video game consoles, before the internet and social networking, and before motion controls and smartphones, there was Sega. Destined to fade into obscurity over time, Sega would help revolutionize and change video games, computers and how we interact with them, and the internet as we know it. Riding the cutting edge of technology at every step, only to rise too close to the sun and plummet, Sega would eventually change the face of entertainment, but it’s the story of how it got there that’s all the fun. So take a ride, experience history, and enjoy learning about one of the greatest and most influential companies of all time. Complete with system specifications, feature and marketing descriptions, unusual factoids, almost 300 images, and now enhanced Europe specific details, exclusive interviews, and more make this the definitive history of Sega available. Read and learn about the company that holds a special place in every gamer’s heart. Funded on Kickstarter.

Super Mario

Author: Jeff Ryan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591845637
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
The definitive story of the rise of Nintendo. In 1981, Nintendo of America was a one-year-old business already on the brink of failure. Its president, Mino Arakawa, was stuck with two thousand unsold arcade cabinets for a dud of a game (Radar Scope). So he hatched a plan. Back in Japan, a boyish, shaggy-haired staff artist named Shigeru Miyamoto designed a new game for the unsold cabinets featuring an angry gorilla and a small jumping man. Donkey Kong brought in $180 million in its first year alone and launched the career of a short, chubby plumber named Mario. Since then, Mario has starred in over two hundred games, generating profits in the billions. He is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse, yet he’s little more than a mustache in bib overalls. How did a mere smear of pixels gain such huge popularity? Super Mario tells the story behind the Nintendo games millions of us grew up with, explaining how a Japanese trading card company rose to dominate the fiercely competitive video-game industry.

Regular Show Original Graphic Novel Vol. 3: A Clash of Consoles

Author: Rachel Connor
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1608868001
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Chaos breaks out when three mega-corporations release their new video game consoles on the same day, and slacker friends Mordecai and Rigby get caught up in the ensuing console war.

Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware

Author: Dominic Arsenault
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262341506
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
A critical look at how the Super Nintendo Entertainment System—and a resistance to innovation—took Nintendo from industry leadership to the margins of videogaming. This is a book about the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that is not celebratory or self-congratulatory. Most other accounts declare the Super NES the undisputed victor of the “16-bit console wars” of 1989–1995. In this book, Dominic Arsenault reminds us that although the SNES was a strong platform filled with high-quality games, it was also the product of a short-sighted corporate vision focused on maintaining Nintendo’s market share and business model. This led the firm to fall from a dominant position during its golden age (dubbed by Arsenault the “ReNESsance”) with the NES to the margins of the industry with the Nintendo 64 and GameCube consoles. Arsenault argues that Nintendo’s conservative business strategies and resistance to innovation during the SNES years explain its market defeat by Sony’s PlayStation. Extending the notion of “platform” to include the marketing forces that shape and constrain creative work, Arsenault draws not only on game studies and histories but on game magazines, boxes, manuals, and advertisements to identify the technological discourses and business models that formed Nintendo’s Super Power. He also describes the cultural changes in video games during the 1990s that slowly eroded the love of gamer enthusiasts for the SNES as the Nintendo generation matured. Finally, he chronicles the many technological changes that occurred through the SNES's lifetime, including full-motion video, CD-ROM storage, and the shift to 3D graphics. Because of the SNES platform’s architecture, Arsenault explains, Nintendo resisted these changes and continued to focus on traditional gameplay genres.

Playing at the Next Level

Author: Ken Horowitz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078649994X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Today a multinational video game developer, Sega was the first to break Nintendo's grip on the gaming industry, expanding from primarily an arcade game company to become the dominant game console manufacturer in North America. A major part of that success came from the hard work and innovation of its subsidiary, Sega of America, who in a little more than a decade wrested the majority market share from Nintendo and revolutionized how games were made. Drawing on interviews with nearly 100 Sega alumni, this book traces the development of the company, revealing previously undocumented areas of game-making history, including Sega's relationship with Tonka, the creation of its internal studios, and major breakthroughs like the Sega Channel and HEAT Network. More than 40 of the company's most influential games are explored in detail.

Press Reset

Author: Jason Schreier
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1538735482
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels comes the next definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the video game industry: how some of the past decade's most renowned studios fell apart—and the stories, both triumphant and tragic, of what happened next. Jason Schreier's groundbreaking reporting has earned him a place among the preeminent investigative journalists covering the world of video games. In his eagerly anticipated, deeply researched new book, Schreier trains his investigative eye on the volatility of the video game industry and the resilience of the people who work in it. The business of videogames is both a prestige industry and an opaque one. Based on dozens of first-hand interviews that cover the development of landmark games—Bioshock Infinite, Epic Mickey, Dead Space, and more—on to the shocking closures of the studios that made them, Press Reset tells the stories of how real people are affected by game studio shutdowns, and how they recover, move on, or escape the industry entirely. Schreier's insider interviews cover hostile takeovers, abusive bosses, corporate drama, bounced checks, and that one time the Boston Red Sox's Curt Schilling decided he was going to lead a game studio that would take out World of Warcraft. Along the way, he asks pressing questions about why, when the video game industry is more successful than ever, it's become so hard to make a stable living making video games—and whether the business of making games can change before it's too late.

The Comic Book Story of Video Games

Author: Jonathan Hennessey
Publisher: Ten Speed Graphic
ISBN: 0399578919
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
A complete, illustrated history of video games--highlighting the machines, games, and people who have made gaming a worldwide, billion-dollar industry/artform--told in a graphic novel format. Author Jonathan Hennessey and illustrator Jack McGowan present the first full-color, chronological origin story for this hugely successful, omnipresent artform and business. Hennessey provides readers with everything they need to know about video games--from their early beginnings during World War II to the emergence of arcade games in the 1970s to the rise of Nintendo to today's app-based games like Angry Birds and Pokemon Go. Hennessey and McGowan also analyze the evolution of gaming as an artform and its impact on society. Each chapter features spotlights on major players in the development of games and gaming that contains everything that gamers and non-gamers alike need to understand and appreciate this incredible phenomenon.

Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars

Author: Osamu Inoue
Publisher: Vertical Inc
ISBN: 1647291453
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Back in the 80s, Nintendo ruled the home-entertainment market with the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). But then rival Sony introduced PlayStation, which featured advancements and cutting-edge technology that put Nintendo's Super-NES to shame. Nintendo quickly lost its dominant market share to Sony and found itself floundering. In 2006, Nintendo released Wii at the same time Sony introduced its highly-anticipated and much-vaunted PlayStation III and Microsoft's XBox 360. Wii's David defeated PlayStation's Goliath, inversely echoing the SNES/PlayStation outcome of a decade previous. Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars is the story of what went right, discussing the business strategies and marketing savvy that took on the mighty Sony and won. Topics include: How where you put your company is just as important as how you run it: being in Kyoto From work force to policies, why Nintendo's "just enough" attitude succeeds Why the ability to read a balance sheet is overrated Respect seniority but approve huge R&D budgets for talented junior employees Allowing maximum communication between disparate divisions (hardware and software) Enlarging the pie: going after casual gamers (The art of mainstreaming) How the Wii will be the next major household appliance and the DSi will be the cell phone of the future. Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars should serve as a warning to similar powerhouse industries never to understimate the modest competitor. It should occupy the bookshelf of any business person smart enough to know they don't need to be a giant to win.