Alternate Consoles, Gaming, and Computers

[SpudNutimus]

A thread for all alternate history brainstorming relating to the history of consoles, video gaming, and related technologies since I feel like a lot of people probably have pent-up ideas for this sort of thing.

I'll start with a blursed idea for a timeline I had today: Texas Instruments, best known in real life for their semiconductors and calculators, decide to use their previous experience and existing manufacturing capabilities in the consumer electronics sector to try and break into the newly empty video game console market following the great video game crash of 1983 and the collapse of Atari, serving as a lone all-American competitor amidst the rise of the Japanese Nintendo and Sega corporations in the American console market.

 

[RyanF]

Would any American company see sense in diving head first into the video game market after the 1983 crash? Think to have a big player come in would either need to come whilst the industry is riding high or filling the gap following a crash that isn't quite an extinction event.

Texas Instruments entering the video game market is an interesting idea.

 

[Coiler]

There's always Nintendo never even entering the video game business at all and remaining just a playing card company/possible conglomerate.

(The "Richard Nixon the Salesman" part of me wants Yamauchi to strike it rich in the car industry, with Nintendo automobiles around the world, while Toyota remains just an obscure loom manufacturer).

 

[Thande]

This is obviously a big area of interest for me...

The TI what-if in the OP is interesting, I think the problem (as Ryan says) is just how burned American companies were at this point. It seems obvious to us that home consoles would eventually come back, but at the time that'd seem no more or less plausible than arguing that arcades were going to be successful and mainstream forever.

 

[Nofix]

The Panasonic M2 has always fascinated me despite a.) being descended from the 3DO and b.) having basically no clue what it even could have been in the first place.

 

[CTTeller]

This has always been one of my favourite videos on the subject and thinking back it's probably one of the first videos I watched on alt-history.

 

[SpudNutimus]

Would any American company see sense in diving head first into the video game market after the 1983 crash? Think to have a big player come in would either need to come whilst the industry is riding high or filling the gap following a crash that isn't quite an extinction event.

Texas Instruments entering the video game market is an interesting idea.

This is obviously a big area of interest for me...

The TI what-if in the OP is interesting, I think the problem (as Ryan says) is just how burned American companies were at this point. It seems obvious to us that home consoles would eventually come back, but at the time that'd seem no more or less plausible than arguing that arcades were going to be successful and mainstream forever.

According to the Wikipedia article for the TI-99/4A home computer, Texas Instruments actually did have a team in Lubbock working on a video game console in 1977, but it ended up in competition with other divisions of the company and was terminated, and elements of its work including the keyboard and ROM drive were integrated into the TI-99/4A.

In 1977, groups within Texas Instruments were designing a video game console, a home computer to compete against the TRS-80 and Apple II, and a high-end business personal computer with a hard drive. The first two groups were both working at TI's consumer products division in Lubbock, Texas, and continually competed. According to Wally Rhines, the 99/4's "ultracheap keyboard" (with calculator-style keys), RF modulator, and ROM cartridges came from the console design. Eventually, the two teams were merged and directed towards the home computer market. Meanwhile, the third team was merged into TI's Data Systems Division, which had a line of minicomputer products and various computer terminals; they viewed the all-in-one machine as a threat and the project was eventually killed.[10]

The TI-99/4A was released in 1981 but discontinued in 1984 due to a price war brought on by the CEO of Commodore developing a personal vendetta against TI home computer pricing.

The TI-99/4A was launched about the same time as the Commodore VIC-20. Commodore's CEO Jack Tramiel had once been offended by TI's predatory pricing during the mid-1970s, and retaliated with a price war by repeatedly lowering the price of the VIC-20 and forcing TI to do the same. By 1983, the 99/4A was selling for under US$100, at a loss. Even with the increased user base created by the heavy discounts, Texas Instruments suffered a US$330 million loss in the third quarter of 1983[4] and announced the discontinuation of the TI-99/4A in October 1983, with production ended in March 1984. The TI-99/4 was intended to fit in the middle of a planned range of TI-99 computers, none of which were ultimately released but prototypes and documentation have been rediscovered after the TI-99/4A was discontinued.

If you keep the console team in Lubbock from being destroyed by the company and let them complete a working product by early 1983, around the time the crash is emptying the market already, then they could end up in just the right place at just the right time to release in 1984 and sweep up the tattered pieces of the competition and pave the way for TI as a major player in the console market without even doing anything they weren't already doing.

Alternatively, just keep Jack Tramiel from going on his pricing rampage and let the TI-99/4A itself see more success than it did in real life, eventually releasing several of the planned expansions and modifications which were canceled in real life in the mid-1980s, including a gaming extension which could turn it into a more rudimentary but also cheaper competitor to the Commodore 64.

In either case I feel like TI's relatively advanced speech synthesizers, famous in real life for creating the Speak & Spell, could be a major marketing point for their hypothetical console, with the company marketing its games' characters as having realistic voices that can talk to player unlike the typically mute flagship characters of early Nintendo and Sega. Maybe you could even get some kind of microphone extension and have a weird abortive speech-based one-off game kinda like Seaman for it.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Look, I just want one world where the Dreamcast did well

 

[Will Lucky]

Look, I just want one world where the Dreamcast did well

Unfortunately you need to go back to the 32X/Saturn to manage that one.

 

[SinghSong]

A few possibilities in this field which I've wondered about- firstly, what if the fallout between Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould on the board of Commodore International in Jan 1984 never happened, with Jack Tramiel's subsequent purchase of Atari Inc. carried out by Commodore instead of by Tramiel's Tramel Technology start-up company? Could the acquisition of Atari Inc by Commodore, which would also avert the ferocious Atari-Commodore rivalry and lawsuits which contributed greatly towards both companies' demise IOTL, endure to the present-day as a significant player in the home computer and console markets?

Secondly, as more of an AHC; having capturing more than 25% of the European computer market after its acquisition of Sinclair Research's assets in 1986, is there any way that Amstrad could hold onto or increase its market share (comparable to those of HP Inc. and Lenovo today IOTL) to the present day? As a POD, let's say that the problem with shipping the Seagate ST277R hard disk with the PC2386 model is identified and resolved in-development, rather than necessitating these models having to be recalled and fitted with Western Digital controllers, along with a (successful) lawsuit to sue Seagate, which generated bad press and cause Amstrad to lose its lead in the European PC market IOTL. It's a good starting point, but from there, what would Amstrad (along with the Sinclair brand, in its ownership) have to do to remain successful, to the extent where it remains a member of the FTSE 100 to the present day?

And thirdly, related to ATL consoles, what about the Konix Multisystem? This was also a British project, which began when the founder and chairman of Konix (a British manufacturer of computer peripherals, with a successful range of joysticks, and had an advanced peripheral design codenamed 'Slipstream' in the works intended to build on this success; resembling a dashboard-style games controller, which could be configured with a steering wheel, a flight yoke, and motorbike handles, which promised advanced features such as force feedback, hitherto unheard of in home gaming), Wynford Peter Holloway, came across a magazine article in July 1988 that described the work of Flare Technology. This was a group of computer hardware designers who, having been laid off by Amstrad after its take-over of Sinclair Research, had built on their work on Sinclair's aborted Loki project to create a prototype system known as Flare One (tying in with the previous AHC- what if Amstrad had kept their team on board, and used the Loki project as a basis for a Sinclair-branded effort to break into the games console market, brought to market a few years earlier than the ill-fated GX4000 IOTL?). Holloway approached Flare and proposed a merger of their respective technologies to create an innovative new kind of gaming console with the computer hardware built into the main controller, and in July 1988 a partnership was formed to create the Konix Multisystem. IOTL, this wound up being beset by delays, and in spite of all of the media coverage and apparent demand for the machine, the project ultimately went under when Konix ran out of cash without a completed system ever being released. Some people, including Holloway, contend that this was due to major international competitors leaning on Konix's suppliers and financiers to prevent the project reaching the market; and IOTL, the Flare Technology team and their work was ultimately incorporated into the Atari Jaguar console instead. In an ATL where it was brought to market though, how successful would you envision that it'd be possible for the Konix Multisystem to be?