Why was Europe never a console powerhouse? They were doing pretty good on the home computer scene, but why did this never translate into console success?
>>3214368
Japan dominated the Market in the mid to late 80s and 90s, and America had the background knowledge of Atari and Mattel with the financial powerhouses of Microsoft and Apple. What companies do they have in Europe with that pedigree and experience?
I'm more surprised Apple never released a home console.
>>3214374
>I'm more surprised Apple never released a home console
They did. It was called the Pippin and it failed.
>>3214380
Besides, I doubt even a console thought up by Steve Jobs could have taken on the NES.
>>3214374
Commodore, though an American company, owed its success to Europe and was on top of the world in the mid 80s
They even put out a console in Europe, the Amiga CD32, then promptly declared bankruptcy before they could release in America
>>3214374
>Japan dominated the Market in the mid to late 80s and 90s,
The only Japanese videogame company to be anywhere remotely popular in Europe was Sega. Nintendo had a small success with the gameboy, but the NES was only really widespread in the form of famiclones.
Then in the late 90s the Playstation exploded, and that was when the actual console scene in Europe became more than the odd Megadrive or SNES.
>I'm more surprised Apple never released a home console.
They did, and failed horribly.
>>3214392
>Besides, I doubt even a console thought up by Steve Jobs could have taken on the NES.
Jobs wasn't such a big name in the 90s (outside of mac circles, which were at an all time low marketshare at the time). It was later once the ipod/iPhone became big that people started looking at Steve like the pope, president, and Elvis Presley rolled into one.
Europe overall has terrible copyright laws.
>>3214407
Nintendo was massive across western Europe during the 80's and 90's. What are you on about? Swedish distributor Bergsala was in negotiations to launch the Famicom in 1984, before there even was a NES.
>>3214407
Are you fucking retarded? You must be a Britface or something. Sega was big in the UK but Sega and Nintendo were big as fuck in Europe. GOD there was Mario everywhere in central Europe and EVERYONE had to have a SNES so yeh you are talking BS.
>>3214374
Well, it wouldn't have been far-fetched to imagine some European companies like Philips and Braun - which have excellent pedigrees in electronics, consumer products, and entertainment - would have attempted to enter the console market at some point.
>>3214368
>Why was Europe never a console powerhouse?
Half of the Europe was behind iron curtain, directly affected by the cold war. Times weren't the greatest even if you were on the right side.
In the eastern block, one generation of people missed the video games entirely. It's kinda sad.
>>3214534
Philips made msxs and the cdi
>>3214368
Didn't you just answer your own question? More people were playing games on their computers so there wasn't as big of a market for consoles there at the time.
Because ZX Spectrum in the Eastern block and Amiga everywhere else.
>>3215737
The question you're dismissing is why was that the case. Why did the home computer gain such a stronghold in Europe, that consoles seemed unappealing. Why didn't the same happen in the US?
What about households having home computers and consoles at the same time? Was it a luxury? Were they identified as machines with different purposes?
>>3215742
Amiga was a US/Canadian company. Why didn't the home computer enter US households as much, and instead consoles dominated?
>>3214368
The real question is, why were Europe so huge on computer gaming rather than console gaming in the 80s/early 90s?
>>3215750
>Why didn't the home computer enter US households as much
Americans are simpler people and want simpler things.They wanted entertainment.
People in europe had background not to mention nations wide interest in developing/manipulating programs in a system available to everyone.
>>3215765
what was that background in Europe? The US came down from the Moon/NASA craze and had super computing and the upcoming internet in every major university. Why was there no engineering interest?
>>3215750
>Why did the home computer gain such a stronghold in Europe, that consoles seemed unappealing.
Part of it I think is that they started being introduced in schools at an earlier period in time than in the US and their typical computer classes in the UK and such, even in elementary school, were a lot more in depth, even offering stuff like programming. Also, there was more competition early on for their computer market compared to the US so I'd guess that must have translated into more affordable computers. Just conjecture for the that last bit though because I'm an American. I had a computer growing up but I remember first hand that it was expensive as shit.
>>3215779
Games were the selling point for computers and consoles on both continents.
Consoles doing region locking/unavailability didn't help sales to catch in Europe.
Also they did what Valve is doing now aka $1=1Eur/Deutsche Mark which made the consoles as expensive to own as the computers with while having limited options.
>>3215785
Part of it was also the fact that people already used computers for word processing, so instead of buying another machine that required cartridges that were around 50 quid a piece, they just bought their entertainment for the machines they already had. Computer games were much cheaper and also easy to pirate.
>>3215791
the US have a higher population. What was the ratio of computers/households?
>shitty PCs
does it matter when they managed to do what the consoles in the US did? Because that's what the thread is about
>>3215823
>The simple answer is plainly
How? US invented terrible copyright laws
>>3215823
The population of Europe excluding Portugal (which was anti-globalization IIRC) and Eastern Europe is far lower than the US.
>>3215829
>How? US invented terrible copyright laws
America has some of the best copyright laws out their in terms of protection to the owner.
Something 3rd worlders like Europeans don't understand is shit like famiclones and what not simply didn't exist in America. I never even saw a clone cart till GBA came out.
>>3215831
I checked Wolfram Alpha and was corrected. Western Europe around 1985 was just shy of 400 million, while the US were somewhere in the 200-something million area. Guess all that fly-over country in the middle is really just grains
>>3215834
Most Famiclones came out in East Europe where Nintendo didn't even sell consoles.
Retro consolefag cannot handle the superiority of home computers,
>>3215831
Try google dumbass.
>>3215834
>protection to the owner
Ah, you're mistaking really bad and hostile copyright for something good. That would explain it.
>>3215835
Still, in Europe consoles were less popular.
>>3215842
More like they were communist countries and weren't allowed to. Home computers were also cloned en masse and yet sold well.
>>3215846
IBM didn't sell well.
Nintendo stays away from Italy and other shitholes like it.
>>3215850
IBM didn't sell well because it was extremely pricey. The Spectrum sold very well and even the Elk eventually shifted units.
America and Europe were almost completely different markets.
>>3215856
And where did I say I support "hostile copyright laws"?
Or is simple protection for the owner considered "hostile" by millennials now?
>>3215859
IBM is PC. You can't have PCs without IBM.
I don't know why Euros bought what they did. I'm American and 9/10 of those Euro only PC look so terrible to me.
>>3215862
IBM is PC? Maybe in the brand name sense but up until Wintel that wasn't really the case, at least not if you aren't an Amerifat.
Europeans generally bought them for utility most and therefore didn't want expensive gaming platforms. Plus it was extremely easy to pirate tape games.
They look awful in retrospect but at the time were a lot cheaper, especially when many were peoples' first computer.
>>3215860
>where did I say I support "hostile copyright laws"?
You called Europe's copyright law terrible (or at least agreed with a post saying that). You contrasted it with US copyright law, which you must in turn consider not terrible, or the contrasting is unsound. The US copyright law is consumer hostile. It follows that you favor consumer hostile copyright law.
>Or is simple protection for the owner considered "hostile" by millennials now?
I missed the word "consumer" in my initial statement. It was supposed to say "consumer hostile". The rest is just you being outraged.
>>3215867
>They look awful in retrospect
Do they? As comparably weak as they were, they brought digital data creation and modification, not only consumption, to the european masses. Can't say that about consoles, which are purpose-built for consumption only.
>>3215867
Look up pretty much any hardware standard that involves PCs. If IBM isn't part of it then GE is. Ie the AIEE or IEEE. Not sure of a single Euro PC company that contributed anything to PCs. I'm not just saying that either. I don;t think there's anything. Maybe some insignificant thing that's irrelevant now.
It cracks me up when the 3rd worlders shit on IBM.
>>3215750
>home computers didn't gain any ground in the US
Funny, I seem to have missed all those millions of Apple IIs, TRS-80s, Commodore 64, and PC clones.
>>3215868
>"consumer hostile".
Got anymore buzzwords to fling out?
>>3215873
I am not shitting on IBM. They were great machines but people couldn't afford them. Again, modern PCs and "vintage" computers are quite different categories and IBM only dominated the market due to clones.
>>3215872
Awful in the sense that if you compare them to more expensive American computers the American ones are at least on paper better.
That said I will always like the Spectrum and Sinclair for basically blowing up the PC market in Europe.
>>3215878
IBM pretty much created DOS.
>>3215878
>Awful in the sense that
thing is, do you believe more powerful and hence more expensive computers would have done the same? That they would have gained a home in so many households all across Europe? What's the value of power that nobody can afford and hence use?
>>3215765
>Americans are simpler people and want simpler things.They wanted entertainment.
>People in europe had background not to mention nations wide interest in developing/manipulating programs in a system available to everyone.
>>3215885
IBM laid the foundation for PCs. That's the point.
>>3215886
Go play on your nintendo
>>3215886
the fear of some american posters that feel threatened by some mom&pop computers is laughable.
It's also completely confusing the thread subject. Why weren't consoles as much a thing in Europe as they were in the US? Why was the computer substitute working in Europe, leading to quite a bit of active homebrew as well, while in the US consoles were the thing?
Pictures about oh so superior US hardware aren't helping. All that hardware lead to what? People getting other hardware and just consuming? That's a pretty pathetic picture you can draw of the american consumer in that time. It may be the truth, but it's not really something to be proud of.
You may now return to your scheduled "USA" chants. It really makes you look great.
>>3215892
IBM was the market.
>>3215894
Haha, fucking no.
No-one could afford it, no-one bought it and even fucking Apple innovated more. IBM only became big among home users in places other than America in the late 80's/early 90's and then even then faced a big battle and ultimately lost to clones.
>>3215885
>on paper they were awful
I guess this is the phrase I have a problem with. I do not consider weaker hardware "awful" by default. I love balanced systems, smart systems. If the weaker numbers do the job better, then the weaker numbers are everything but awful. They're smart, and well set. I have a bit of a personal problem with a quick "bigger is better" attitude. Even though you understand and expressed that these machines worked, the statement is still prefaced with an implicit "normally bigger is better", and, well, to me that's really not the case.
>>3215901
Hm... I guess so. I guess I am coming from the modern angle of more powerful == better.
>>3215903
You could do work on a Spectrum £1000+ cheaper than on an IBM.
>>3215898
>no-one bought
Ok 3rd world.
>>3215908
Like anyone's gonna run Lotus 123 on a 48k computer with tape storage and rubber keys. Do ho ho ho.
Wew, seems like some americans are really stroking that ill directed patriotism lately.
To contribute to the thread though, I personally think that consoles never really took off here because as it has been mentioned before consoles are purely meant for consumption, whereas PCs could create content.
One of the greatest craze for the Commodore 64, at least here in Italy was using it to create music, a lot of magazines here used to have very detailed articles about musical and graphical composition, besides of course making small programs.
Adding to this problem, consoles were thought of as something for children, specifically because you could just play games on them, something even my uncle always told me, he used to pick on me and constantly reminded me that I threw away money on my Megadrive when I could have just saved some more for an Amiga and/or learned to code and shit.
In hindsight, he wasn't completely wrong, but six years old children don't really care about writing code.
One other thing to consider is that Europe isn't an easy market also because of the languages, it's true that most releases were english only, but that alienated a lot of people who didn't know english back then and to this day, it might seem stupid but the language barrier is a pretty big problem when it comes to media here, especially for those who want to sell a product and have to spend a lot of money on localizing it.
the population has always been older on europe
dunno if thats the whole reason but im sure it affects on the fact that computers were more popular here and consoles were mostly marketed to children
>>3215908
>the modern angle of more powerful == better
Even in the present I don't follow that philosophy. What's the use of power if it's not efficient, or fitting the task? With a little less power I don't need a fan, or my battery will last longer, with a little more balanced cache I don't need insane throughput, with a slightly smaller engine I'll save money on fuel, etc. It applies to many things. I do not consider the "more powerful == better" tenet useful, at all, past or present.
>>3215920
I guess so. I think a lot of it comes from me generally using my computer for gaming so I consider specs to be important.
>>3215916
First off, great post, many thanks for your contribution.
>but six years old children don't really care about writing code
What would you say about your 7 or 8 year old self? I mean, was there any point where you felt that desire to create and ever so lightly regretted getting the megadrive? Not saying you did a bad deal, at all. Just saying that the mere availability of these computers, and the mindset your uncle had, had a big impact in europe. Producing cool things with computers was not something restricted to nerds. It was seen as a valuable tool for people with all kinds of interests. Be it music, art, writing, programming, probably much more.
>>3215924
I agree with that, kind of. You're definitely right that gaming is pushing hardware and you're advised to pick from the high end hardware shelf. And I do value gaming as this driving force of hardware development.
>>3215917
My dad used FleetWriter on his C64. I'll give you a tip. Word processing with 64k of memory, 40 column text on a TV, and one floppy drive really, really sucks. If he had had $4000 for an IBM XT, you can bet he would have jumped on that shit faster than...
>>3215934
I know. I've used a Spectrum and Tasword II. But your second point is my main point. Most people don't and didn't have $4000 for a computer.
>>3215935
You're arguing the development and resulting sales of shader based GPUs is not primarily driven by game development? Or that SSD adoption in home computers was not strongly driven by gamers wanting the better loading times? Or the adoption of sound cards. Even the CD-ROM on the desktop computer was largely motivated by gaming.
Just because you're still running out of cycles today, the hardware has not grown massively because of gaming? Gaming is practically the only thing the wide masses do that peaks any of the components in their computers. Web, mail, text processing and video streaming certainly aren't.
>>3215940
>Most people don't and didn't have $4000 for a computer
That's the key thing. The options were not "slow as fuck cheap word processing" and "delightfully fast and efficient word processing". They were "affordable word processing" and "no word processing"
>>3215940
Here's the thing though, Yurop was always way the fug behind us. When the Apple II and TRS-80 came out in the late 70s, Sinclair didn't even have an actual computer yet, they were peddling glorified calculator kits. The ZX-81, a rubber toy, came out in 1980 when we had the Apple II+, TRS-80 Model III, and numerous CP/M boxes. They tried selling it here as the Timex-Sinclair 1000 and it was just considered a funny joke. In 1983 they move up to the 48k ZX Spectrum when the US market is preparing to move into 16 bit computers. By the late 80s, PC clones, Macs, and Amigas with 256k-1MB and hard disks ruled while Europe were still loading cassette software off their 8-bit children's toys. Not a stitch of cassette software was sold here after 83, yet it persisted over there until the early 90s.
>>3215949
>Here's the thing though
Here's the thing though: superiority, perceived or otherwise, does not matter for this thread. It's all about adoption and mindset
>>3215949
But how many people could actually afford a computer?
Specs =/= better.
>>3215953
>But how many people could actually afford a computer?
Could afford which computers?
>>3215958
A computer. If American computers were all high end as you say then how many could afford it?
>>3215961
He's forgetting that on average, Americans had more disposable income than Yuros.
The TRS-80 Model I sold for around $600 and was the biggest selling computer in the US at the time; they sold over 200,000 in its 3-1/2 year run although probably most of them were the base 16k cassette model.
Consoles gain success when people have money to afford $50 per one game and people should have respect to the multimillion corporations.
When Russians had money, they had socialism, so Russians were ought to "either perish or overtake and outstrip the advanced countries economically as well" (that's how Lenin said).
There were either their own systems, or clones of IBM computers (cloned as EC series (Yedinaya sistema, Unified System)), ZX Spectrums (myriads of them).
Later, after Perestroika (Rebuilding), a lot of people became poor and no one had respect to the multimillion corporations so Dendies and cloned Megadrives became popular, but geniune Super Nintendos were too expensive for everyone (one cartridge costed as much as a Megadrive clone or a Dendy with a couple of games).
Buying a console for a kid was (and is) pretty doubtful present because aside of gaming, kids can use their PCs for school studying.
Even later, talking about non-/vr/ timesPSOnes and PS2s all chipped, everyone plays bootlegs; later XBoxes 360, because it was able to play pirated games.
>>3215946
I will be short.
You don't know what you are talking about.
have at it I don't have straight to argue over stuff that you dont seem to grasp on a basic level.
>>3215968
For comparison, the only thing they had in the UK back then was this.
>>3215927
>What would you say about your 7 or 8 year old self?
Well as I said before, in hindsight, he wasn't completely wrong.
Now I'm 28 and I'm working on videogame design in my free time, and if I did learn how to code when I was younger I would be able to work much faster now, but you can't change the past.
>Producing cool things with computers was not something restricted to nerds. It was seen as a valuable tool for people with all kinds of interests. Be it music, art, writing, programming, probably much more.
Exactly, but keep in mind that children are generally much more interested in "easy" instant gratification.
I say "easy" because coding takes time to learn and the results aren't immediate, even though it isn't some arcane stuff like it was back in the days, now you can find a lot of material for free not only on the internet but in every library, back then you had to buy VERY costly book or subscribe to magazines, not to mention it's not something as extravagant as say, quantum physics, it's akin to making music or learning a language.
So unless you show kids how to write code and make some interesting things with it it's almost certain they'll choose a console over, say, a Pi or a cheap laptop with Lynux.
I did show my little nephew, who's just 7, how to make some rudimentary stuff in Javascript, and even though he liked it and was positively impressed he still plays more on his 3DS rather than coding with me, and you know, it's normal, I can't really blame him.
The good thing is that I believe he understood that there's a lot of potential in learning how to code, which is what I didn't get back then, he often complains about how he can't move like he wants in Zelda and that some things in Pokèmon are pretty stupid, like stat growth and other little things, he's already complaining on how he can't change that stuff to make the game play like he wants, so I can only hope he doesn't forget what little I can teach him.
>>3215969
Forgot to say, there were either Agats (Apple ][ clones), or Yamaha MSX computers named КУBT (Education Computing Techniques Kit) in schools in late 80s/early 90s.
>>3215968
A fully-decked out Model 1 could have 4 disk drives, a Centronics printer port, a serial port, and 48k of RAM.
>>3215979
>Exactly, but keep in mind that children are generally much more interested in "easy" instant gratification.
I think hobby computing magazines had the right approach. Listings of games to type off and get your very own game running. Fixing the typos meant gaining an understanding, and the programs were simple enough you could start tweaking variables. You didn't have to start from scratch and had immediate results.
>I can't really blame him
Shouldn't. As cool as coding may be to some people, it's not everybody's thing. The offer and opportunity is there, all that matters. What people do with it, is up to them.
>he's already complaining on how he can't change that stuff to make the game play like he wants, so I can only hope he doesn't forget what little I can teach him.
Sounds like you two really need to have some kind of "tweak me" game. Something he can not only play, but actually alter and see the effects. Can't do that with Zelda or Pokemon, for obvious reasons. But if you're into game design, you got all the tools at hand to do that initial basic game.
>starting nationalistic flame wars over 30 year old computers
I shiggidy...
>>3215996
UNITRON 512 BEST COMPUTER
Why couldn't Amerifats make anything as good as Turrican? All they had was IBM CGA bleeper rubbish.
>>3214508
Not him, but I grew up in Italy and Switzerland and have visited most-to-all of the other Latinate or partially Latinate (like Belgium and Luxembourg) western European nations along with Ireland, the UK, Germany and Danmark: Nintendo was never popular in any of them other than /northern Europe/, starting only as far south as Germany. I don't think the Netherlands had NES, but it might have. I know Belgium and Luxembourg did not.
Sega was the big thing for the rest of Western Europe, beginning with MD. I'm not even sure SMS was ever released. NES was available in the Italy and Switzerland of the 80s, but it was only about as popular as 3D0 was in North America IE you heard about it, but you've never seen it, no one you know had ever seen it and you only know of its existence by way of photographs and still-images in magazines.
Gameboy, however, was common and popular, and Famiclones were very common in Eastern Europe.
>>3216017
That anon prefers owner-friendly copyright laws
>>3215750
>>3215765
Um... Home computers and computer games were fucking huge in America in the 1980s and 1990s. What are you on about? Do you not remember the thousands of computers ads constantly everyday on tv? YOU HAD TO HAVE A COMPUTER back then. They pushed it super hard. By the mid 1990s if you didn't have one then you were doing a disservice to your family. Especially if you didn't get internet as well.
>>3216017
>US copyright laws
>not stopping us from pirating every computer game that existed
I've had people tell me they didn't even know you could buy Apple II games back then.
>>3215990
>I think hobby computing magazines had the right approach. Listings of games to type off and get your very own game running
They sure did, what amazes me is how detailed they were, I might still have a few issues of the ones my uncle bought somewhere. I remember reading a few of them some time ago and most articles were actually long running tutorials on how to make illustrations and music with detailed intructions, tips, bug reports and common problems, it was really a goldmine for people who were into PCs back then.
>you got all the tools at hand to do that initial basic game.
Sure, I already hooked him up on RPG Maker, that's one thing he really likes, I guess because it's very immediate and the interface it's simple and direct enough.
One thing I really like about it is that you can use it to teach simple code one step at a time and very quickly, sure, it might not be the most orthodox way by he was put off by just doing abstract exercises and making pong or pacman clones really didn't cut it, he's still too young to appreciate that stuff I guess.
Just programming a simple NPC behaviour through scripts was much better for him, you should have seen him when we made a little city with all the actors performing simple daily routines through scripts, he couldn't believe it.
Then I showed him how to make submenus and little animations but that's a bit too much for him to follow I guess, he likes it but he'd still prefer to make ME write the code instead. Besides, I fear that teaching him code in this fragmented and disjointed way might be a little counterproductive in the long run, but then again, it's just Javascript and he's only 7, as long as I can nurture his curiosity and make him realize the potential behind coding in general I'm sure he'll do the rest by himself, If I decided to learn in my mid twenties I'm pretty sure he'll start earlier, he's got many more means to do so than I did back then.
>>3216034
You are putting words in my mouth.
Never said that.I just said that Europeans were looking something more that a device dedicated for playing video games and Americans not.
>>3215750
>Amiga was a US/Canadian company. Why didn't the home computer enter US households as much, and instead consoles dominated?
Here's the thing - during the early 80s, the casual home computer market boomed and then the video game crash killed it off; during 1985 to about 92, there was no casual computer market, computers were either for business use or for neckbeards who played Ultima. When multimedia and the Web came around in the 90s, casual users returned.
>>3215979
>he still plays more on his 3DS rather than coding with me,
You know, 3DS has Petit Computer or SmileBASOC that lets you program games.
>>3216038
Wait, what? European PC games were just low-rent clones of console games because they didn't have actual consoles over there. No way to play Super Mario Bros, but you could play Giana Sisters on a C64 cassette tape. The Yuro computer scene was kiddie and casual af. Whereas over here, kiddies/casuals had a Nintendo while computer gaming was for neckbeards.
>>3216045
Really?
That's pretty neat, I don't have a 3DS so I didn't know that.
Thanks a bunch man, I'm looking it up right now.
I suppose you'll need to use a virtual keyboard on that though, hope it's not too clunky.
>>3216037
>Just programming a simple NPC behaviour through scripts was much better for him
run with it. High level scripting is a very useful part of game dev. Not everyone needs to write the engine or draw the assets. Some people are just better at the big picture, or the world building
>>3216046
>what is elite
>>3216038
Americans were buying computers for doing computer work, not just games... It was a very big thing to be able to have a computer to make your life easier. Games were just a plus for the kids and the neckbeards... How old are you guys? You guys are either europeans or don't remember what happen back then.
Thing is, I actually like American vintage computers. I just think its stupid to try to make Euro-computers seem like shit.
>>3216058
Another lame SMB ripoff.
>>3216067
So you are trolling then?
>>3216070
Elite was an SMB ripoff. The BBC Micro was just really bad with scrolling and sprites, so many people mistook the main character's mustache for a pair of lasers and the slow walking enemies for space stations. Happens all the time.
jap computers > us computers > euro computers
in therms of scenes:
jap computer scene > euro computer scene >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> us computer scene
>>3216086
>Most computers from USA were not very useful though
>>3216089
If you cant afford it then it isn't useful.
>>3216093
Feels good being American and not having rubber toys with cassette storage as late as 1988.
>>3216109
You realize that later brit computers did have floppies etc. right?
>>3216114
They were like 5-7 years behind us? Like I said, there wasn't a single piece of software here released on cassettes after 1983 yet Britbongs were still peddling Spectrums and Amstrads with tape storage years after that point.
>>3216120
Technology moved slower in Europe; the 8-bit era for us ended after Reagan's first term, but it didn't end there until like 1990.
>>3216120
Amstrads had floppy drives as early as '85.
>all these americans discussing europe as if it was a single country
>>3216140
I'm German and we did have disk drives and so did every continental country. It was only Britpoors who were still using tapes.
Are there any other great platformer-esque euro pc games like Turrican or is Turrican the best europlatformer pc game?
>>3215886
They sold Apple IIs in Europe but it bombed due to price and because it couldn't display color on their shitty TVs.
>>3216147
Turrican seriously isn't that good. Manfred Trenz was a genius programmer, but a complete retard at game/level design.
You wouldn't believe the delusion some of them have on Lemon 64 about C64/Amiga games versus Nintendo titles.
>>3215751
Because computers are better.
We had a much more reluctant home market to sell to. The general population is somewhat technophobic and early adoption is rare.
In America, facebook is full of 50 year olds.
In Europe, 50 year olds hardly touch computers.
>>3216274
>he thinks Europe is one country
>he thinks computers were a rarity over here
Underage much?
Europe was completely flooded with home computers during the 80s. Even the commie block. They said that more Poles had a computer than a color TV back then.
>>3216291
Czechoslovakia was making their own ZX Spectrum copies which are fully compatible with real ones. Pretty much every office had them, they were used for bookkeeping widely.
>>3215862
You're right most 80s computers are called micro computers
>>3215916
UK and much the same experience here, my dad bought an msx + Yamaha Addons to use for music. Not as a job but a hobby. He also made a serious effort to learn basic
>>3216291
COMECON in fact made a comprehensive effort to promote computer knowledge in the Eastern Bloc back then (benefit of a planned economy mebbe?)
>>3217643
couldn't have been that big yet if they still felt the need to inform people
>>3215916
>To contribute to the thread though, I personally think that consoles never really took off here because as it has been mentioned before consoles are purely meant for consumption, whereas PCs could create content
Here's the problem. Europeans generally didn't have the space or disposable income of Americans so they tended to prefer the computer since it as you said could create content.
>>3217662
Not to put them down, but let's be realistic that at least in the 80s, they were several years behind the US technologically and nearly all innovations in PC gaming pre-90s came from Americans. Europe caught up fast in the 90s, but during the Sinclair Spectrum era all that was coming from there was bad clones of console games.
Commodore 64s in the late 80s were the lowest, cheapest personal computer you could get in the US. In Europe they were mid-range with the Spectrum being low-end.
I notice Americans never had the demo scene on their computers like we had here with the bazillions of C64 and Amiga demo competitions.
>>3215962
Not so much more that $200 computers like the Spectrum and C64 can be compared to $2,000 ones.
The Spectrum was poorfag rubbish for people who couldn't afford a C64 or Amstrad.
>>3218081
Wasn't his point more that Americans could afford better gear?
>>3218102
so poor people had an option. That is bad why?
>>3218118
You get what you pay for. At least the other computers had a real keyboard.
>>3218128
>You get what you pay for
of course. And again, what alternative do you suggest? That poor people wouldn't have any affordable computer?
Americans didn't have anything like the Speccy though? I can't remember any American computers as low-end as that.
>>3218172
>The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) which could be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In defiance of these doctrines, he claimed that he and Germany were great only because of "Polish blood in their veins", and that he would be "having all anti-semites shot" as an answer to his stance on anti-semitism.
>>3218185
beautiful machine though
>>3215834
>An American calling Europe third world. He's probably circumcised too the idiot.
>>3214368
>Why was Europe never a console powerhouse?
Because Europe is not a video game company.
>>3215886
Amstrad PCW
CPU: 4 MHz Z80
RAM: 256K or 512K
Storage: 1 or 2 disk drives
Display: 90x32, bitmap graphics @ 720x256
You Americans make me laugh because you're so naive. The Amstrad PCW cost one quarter of what an Apple II cost and came with the disk drive(s) and a printer. Apple were ripping you off and you stand around praising them for it.
P.S. Britain invented the ARM processor, the most widely used processor in the world. How's it feel having a dirty Europe CPU in your swanky 'American' smartphone? Suck it.
ZX Spectrum will be forever in my heart. I will never forget the joy of writing my first BASIC program. I was so proud of myself. Back then I didn't even know english beyond the bare basics and I must admit that BASIC is truly a wonder of a educational tool. It change what programing was in my eyes. I'm pretty sure that a tape with a unfinished text adventure game I was making on it is still somewhere in my parents house.
>>3219682
Neither is Japan but that tiny country dominates vidya
