8 Interesting Facts About Gaming's Greatest Companies
Posted by David Savage at 3:46 PM Aug 19, 2009
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Almost every gaming company has something interesting about their history that defines who they are today. Something that launched the company into a perfect sequence of events that led to their current success and image. Many of these events are good, but only Microsoft is bad.
Where would Nintendo be today if they hadn't hired Miyamoto? Would there have been games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom without John Carmack and id Software? What would Final Fantasy VII have been like if developed on the N64 and how would that have effected the console wars between Sony and Nintendo in the late 90s?
Nintendo Rejected The Future id Software's PC Gaming Graphics Breakthrough in 1990
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John Carmack, founder of id Software, is one of gaming's most influential icons. While he rarely gets the recognition figures like Kojima and Miyamoto receive (even Cliffy B. gets seen more), this college-dropout created some of the greatest innovations in 3D gameplay. In September of 1990 while working for digital publishing company Softdisk, John made his breakthrough and along with his future id co-founders, used the technology to create a carbon copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 using character graphics from one of their Softdisk games. With hopes of licensing their creation to Nintendo, the crew made contact, but were quickly shut down. Nintendo made it clear they were not interested in PC games. Even Softdisk refused to work with the technology due to graphics compatibility issues.
While working freelance for Apogee Games, id's future founders created a very successful game called Commander Keen. This led to a $10,000 royalty check, a dinner with the boss, a 4-way resignation, and in February of 1991 id Software became a reality.
One Of Capcom's Greatest Employees, Yoshiki Okamoto, Joined Capcom After Being Fired From Konami
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Yoshiki Okamoto came to Capcom after being terminated from video game company, Konami. While at Konami, Okamoto created some new and at-the-time innovative techniques in shooting games when they were at their peak popularity in arcades. Unfortunately, Okamoto's job was to create a racing game and despite the success his shooting games received, he was eventually let go from the company due to internal disagreements.
Luckily, Okamoto set-up shop with Konami rival, Capcom soon after and began working on shooting games. He ended up directing one of the most classic shoot-em' up arcade games of all time, 1942, which was released in December of 1984. Okamoto may not have much more on his resume, but he oversaw the development of games as a producer and personally recruited the character designer who worked on Street Fighter II and Final Fight. He also had his hand in developing Resident Evil and actually produced the movie and its sequel.
It's no doubt Konami made a big mistake on letting a piece of talent like Okamoto go. Would Capcom's Street Fighter and Resident Evil franchises turned out the same without Okamoto there? No one wants to find out.
Sega Was Founded By Americans
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In 1940, three men founded a company called Standard Games in Hawaii. Its business was based around providing American military bases with coin-operated machines for soldiers. In 1952 the company was relocated to Japan under the suggestion of one of the their founders. This move was due to the outlaw of slot machines in America and the blossoming post-WWII Japanese economy. Standard Games from then on was then called "Service Games of Japan".
Another company, Rosan Enterprises was also taking advantage of the growing Japanese market. Founded by David Rosan who was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, Rosan Enterprises was originally an art exporting company but expanded into the photo booth industry and later the arcade game industry.
The two companies, Rosan Enterprises and Service Games merged in 1964 to become Sega Enterprises.
Square Planned To Develop Games For N64, But Development Costs And Lack of Memory Led Them To Sony
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Square's Final Fantasy VII is one of the most beloved games of all time. Development of this game took an enormous amount of time, money, and man-power. Over 100 programmers and artists were tasked to work on the game that would be the first Final Fantasy to use polygon 3D graphics. With a budget of over $30 million, the Square crew had many breakthroughs in development, but the amount of memory needed far exceeded what the N64 could output and CD-ROMs had to be used. Sqaure's long partnership with Nintendo came to a bad end because of this and they began to use the PlayStation as their main development platform.
Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997 and has since sold nearly 10 million
copies. Square did not release a new game for a Nintendo system until 2002.
Check out the next four facts -->
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Comments
very interesting great read
Posted 08/19/2009 at 11:18:18 PMwow i didn't know that about SEGA, i love that console! long live mario :)
Posted 08/19/2009 at 11:22:05 PMNintendo and playing cards? Interesting facts. thanks
Posted 08/20/2009 at 12:41:09 AMI didn't know about SEGA either being American. But um why are you saying you love that console and long live mario? Mario is on Nintendo. Sonic the hedge hog was SEGA. Look it up wiki
Posted 08/20/2009 at 01:12:46 AMSome interesting info you have there. Maybe another article with some stuff about atari,activision, and coleco.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 01:18:20 AMInteresting facts dude....some astonishing....great read...
Posted 08/20/2009 at 01:20:05 AMKnew the ones about Square and Nintendo being a card company. I did extensive research into Nintendo's history. They made the Game & Watch systems before they even made the FamiCom.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 02:25:34 AMThe Sony section is not entirely true. Crash Bandicoot was created and developed by Naughty Dog Studios, which wasn't owned by Sony until after creating Crash 1-3 and CTR (Sony bought the studio after seeing progress on Jak & Daxter early in development). Crash wasn't even published by Sony, it was published by Vivendi/Universal. The latest SOCOM game was developed by 3rd party developer Slant Six Games, who was not and still isn't owned by Sony.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 07:16:31 AM"This was not given any positive reception from Xbox gamers who pay $50-$100 for premium service."
Now don't get me wrong I don't like the ads much either, but we don't pay for the dashboard, Silver members see the same dashboard along with all the ads too. Gold members (I myself am one) are simply paying for the opportunity to play online not for the dashboard.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 08:10:27 AM@BP:
Thanks for filling in the rough details. I'd love to write way more in-depth on this type of thing, but I try to allow readers to absorb a lot of information with as little reading as possible. Most of the people who want to know more will go snooping for themselves. :-)
@Metalhead092:
Don't you see it as obtrusive either way? When you pay for something that is bundled with a service (XBL silver) you expect to get an ad-free experience whether you pay for premium services or not. As for gold members, we shouldn't have to deal with ads at all. I think if MS wants to put ads on the dashboard for silver members, it's debatable only because that's something I personally don't care about, but a lot will. However, if you own an Xbox, $50 a year really isn't that much extra to pay to enjoy a gold membership (if you game a decent amount). The whole situation is kind of a catch-22 I guess.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 08:14:33 AMTrust me I agree, I wish they would remove all ads for Gold Members but keep them for silver members because lets be honest they are getting a whole lot for free, so a few ads here and there should be expected. Almost like radio...its free so you have to accept there will be ads, otherwise you have to pay for satellite radio.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 08:40:06 AMAlso per BP's post, Killzone was developed by Guerrilla Games while it was independent, the studio was purchased by Sony during the development of Killzone 2.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 09:18:48 AMI knew about the "playing-card-producer" past of Nintendo, but the fact that Hioshi Yamauchi is adopted, as well as his father is a very interesting detail.
Posted 08/20/2009 at 06:54:18 PMExcellent article overall and there are a couple of interesting facts that I didn't know about. Great job!
I would like to expand upon the fourth fact: "Square Planned To Develop Games For N64, But Development Costs And Lack of Memory Led Them To Sony"
The whole thing is not as simple as that. Square was by no means a large company affording to put $30m into one title for a relatively new an unestablished console. Also, the Final Fantasy franchise was not very popular outside of Japan and even in Japan, it lagged behind the Dragon Quest series in popularity.
The reasons why they developed such a massive game for the original PlayStation were:
- Sony helped them financially and technically
- Sony funded DigiCube, a subsidiary of Square, which sold Square-related merchandise.
- Sony spent close to $100,000,000 on marketing for the game in the US and published the game there, which explains the sales numbers and the popularity of a Japanese RPG outside of Japan.
In conclusion, the move was mutual and, in my opinion, Square gained much more than Sony from this deal which made the Final Fantasy franchise popular worldwide and would help Square establish a sizable fan base in the West.
This strong partnership continued for years up until Yoichi Wada took the helm at Square-Enix. We all know what happened afterwards. ;)
Posted 08/21/2009 at 03:29:57 AMAlso per BP's post, Killzone was developed by Guerrilla Games while it was independent, the studio was purchased by Sony during the development of Killzone...
Posted 08/21/2009 at 04:42:38 AMWhen cable television first came out there were absolutely no ads during programming, it was one of the main privileges of paying for your programming. That eventually changed and a lot of people complained, now it's just accepted. The same will hold true for these video game memberships (Gold or otherwise). People are complaining about the ads now, but as future generations get into gaming and know nothing different, the complaining will stop.
Posted 08/23/2009 at 09:33:52 AM"Anyone who turns an Xbox 360 on knows that their new Xbox dashboard looks more like a magazine with all its ads than something you pay monthly for."
And how often do most magazines come? Remind me again how you acquire said magazines?
Oh, thats right, they comes out monthly and you pay for them.
Posted 12/22/2009 at 03:24:13 AM