English
Gamereactor
articles

Top 7 Industry Changers

After a brief hiatus due to the E3 onslaught, our weekend double-bill continues. Our Defining Moments series is taking a break as we transition into our new Sunday regular: Top 7.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

Over the coming months we'll be looking at a range of subjects within gaming in a semi-chart show flavoured Top 7 (though there's no real countdown nor order to the lists). Neither will these be the definitive seven: as with any "Top" list, there'll be argument, disagreement and outright fisticuffs (and that's just here at the office).

So first up its the Top 7 moments that have changed the industry.

1. Nintendo dumps Sony

Top 7 Industry Changers
This is an ad:

This one's akin to swinging a punch at your soon-to-be-ex-best mate, only to inexplicably punch yourself in the crotch.

Back in the early 90s Nintendo asked Sony to help design a CD-ROM version of the SNES. But by the time a prototype was ready Nintendo got cold feet and went elsewhere (it wouldn't make the shift from cartridge to disc until 2001). Understandably Sony decided not to be left swinging in the wind and carried on with development regardless.

Both were decisions that'd ultimately change the gaming landscape: Nintendo's unwanted bastard grew up into the industry-altering and mainstream-swallowing behemoth that was PlayStation, while the once-infallible Mario creator spent many years trying to dispel the notion it was behind the times.

2. The Analog Stick

This is an ad:
Top 7 Industry Changers

You could argue for the SNES six button controller that became industry standard. You could even make a pitch for the Wii's motion control, that's yet to be bettered by competitors. Even without mentioning the analog stick, its clear that (CD-ROM aside) Nintendo's been the trendsetter for the console industry.

It mightn't have been the first to try, but Nintendo's was the most important. It's the company's analog stick, taking pride and place in the middle of the N64's three-pronged controller, that gave us a deeper, more precise control over our gaming characters as they transitioned to 3D - and has been adopted in every console and third-party controller ever since.

(Though ask yourself - when was the last time you did anything but hold that stick all the way down?)

3. Sega bows out of the hardware race

Top 7 Industry Changers

Considering where it was back in the 90s, the news this week that Sega was closing its European branches and concentrating on only four key IPs just shows how far the company has fallen.

Back in the 90s, the Sega Vs Nintendo war dominated industry headlines and divided gamers as strongly as any football club allegiance. Even dodgy calls with Mega Drive add-ons such as the Mega CD and 32X wouldn't shake the faithful. The Sega Saturn still has loyal followers today, and one of the best game catalogues on record. 1999's Dreamcast was supposed to change the company's fortunes, offering the first globally-available console with online capabilities and arcade perfect gaming: it instead proved the company's hardware epitaph. The Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001, barely two years after it'd launched.

4. DOOM

Top 7 Industry Changers

Wolfenstein might have been the original, but it was follow up Doom that perfected the idea. Famously - truth or not, it still makes a great story - banned from offices worldwide as productivity dropped dramatically and ported onto more formats than any other game (it even came out in the Jaguar and Game Boy Advance for christsakes!), the FPS granddaddy also highlighted the PC mod scene with user-generated levels. If you've got a favourite FPS, it's here because of Doom.

5. WipEout: King of Cool

Top 7 Industry Changers

Back in the 80s and 90s marketing firms has no damn clue on how to sell video games to audiences other than to those that'd didn't need it sold to them. That all changed in the mid-90s with PlayStation.

Sony wrote the rulebook on grabbing the mainstream's attention by adopting lifestyle marketing philosophy: show little of the actual product, and emphasis the hell out of the associations that came with being part of it.

Sony took sci-fi racer WipEout and embraced it with the club and drug scene that was permeating pop culture at time - note the emphasis of the "E" in the game's title, and a soundtrack that could be stacked in the dance genre section of your local music emporium.

Hooking up consoles in student nightclubs and pushing double-page ad spreads showing 20 year olds, noses bleeding and zombified from playing the futuristic racer, was as subtle as a syringe in the vein: but it achieved its goal. Edgy, dangerous, and fodder for tabloid witch hunts, Sony had made games cool - and soon "PlayStation" edged out "Nintendo" as the coined game reference in media and between friends.

6. Street Fighter II

Top 7 Industry Changers

Why this? Not just because it made one hardware manufacturer change its three-button standard controller to a six-button setup deep into its console life-cycle. No, because this was the proto-exclusive: the first third-party title that could sell consoles by the ton as well as ignite wars between fanboys as well as console makers (Nintendo famously taking out a two page ad in a Sega magazine ridiculing owners because they couldn't play the-then-SNES exclusive).

While we see some big name titles shifting formats after supposedly being format exclusives (Resident Evil 4, Mass Effect) the real fights today have been over timed post-launch DLC deals, and even they've lost their vigour in the past year.

7. Bizarre Creations: Closure, and rise of the Indie

Top 7 Industry Changers

Up to its closure Bizarre Creations remained one of the most exciting and top tier studios of this generation. It was responsible for Formula 1, Project Gotham, Metropolis Street Racer, Geometry Wars - titles that'll continue to have a place in anyone's top tier games lists ten years from now.

Yet that wasn't enough to keep the developer open. Only months after it's 2010 output of critically-acclaimed Blur (Top 20 chart debut) and James Bond 007: Bloodstone (Top 10 debut) owner Activision (who'd only had the studio three years) tried to sell it off. When no buyer was found, it closed the seventeen year-old studio's doors.

It's not the only studio to be shut down this generation (the full list is staggering), but given its pedigree, proved that no-one could escape the guillotine, and highlighted both the harshness of publishers and the marketplace.

It also underscored that publishers can be awkward handlers of those creators under their control."Escalating costs" and "better Metacritic averages" are two phrases churned out frequently this era to communicate the pressure studios find themselves under from one project to the next.

Even a Chart Number 1 doesn't equate to survival: just this week Radical Entertainment, two-decade old developer who'd hit the top spot in the UK with Prototype 2 has had most of its staff laid off.

If there's one silver lining it's that the rise of mobile and digital gaming (which ironically Bizarre was one of the spearheads of with the success of XBLA's Geometry Wars) has seen ex-staff form smaller studios, allowing them an outlet for their creative tendencies without publisher interference.



Loading next content