DoctorSpuds Reviews Things

Actually, Nintendo released games for mobile like Super Mario Run and Pokémon Go.

Actually, Nintendo released games for mobile like Super Mario Run and Pokémon Go.

 

The mobile market is a completely different beast. I'm specifically referring to the console market, since the mobile market covers such a large amount of different devices from different manufacturers, it is not fair to lump them into the console market. The Mobile market is more akin to the PC games market than console. When it comes to my reviews I will almost exclusively remain in the realm of consoles, and will rarely ever delve into the inky abyss that is mobile or PC

I suppose the 2600, despite being older and technically more limited, sold in so much larger volumes than both the Intellivision and the Colecovision, that itself was a reason for Mattel (through M Network?) and Coleco to port some of their games to the competitor. Of course the ports must not overshadow the original version, but also not be so poor that it put shame on them.

 

That is a bit different than today. Even though the PS3/4 and Xbox 360/One may have outsold the Wii U/Switch in raw numbers, Nintendo is not so inferior to Sony or Microsoft that they feel the need to port Mario and Zelda to the competitors' consoles.

 

There probably is more about this to read elsewhere on the forum through years of discussions, not to mention other websites bringing up the subject and pros and cons for them to do this.

 

Another reason of course is that if Coleco didn't port Exidy's Mouse Trap to other systems, the risk would be another publisher would make a clone of the game for the 2600. While we're all much too aware of Atari's lawsuit against Magnavox and also how they forced some other manufacturers to withdraw their Pac-Man clones (for which Atari held the home console rights), going to court trying to recoup money probably both is more expensive and takes longer than enter the market themselves as early on as possible.

 

See also the infamous story about how Mattel were about to release Konami's Loco-Motion (a.k.a. Guttang Guttong) for the Intellivision, but Activision got ahead of them and released the very similar Happy Trails. Mattel thought that Activision had violated Konami's IP and waited for them to sue. Konami thought that Mattel was the company losing out on missing sales and waited for them to sue. In the end, neither did sue Activision and instead Mattel had to release Loco-Motion at a reduced price to match Activision. While that is not exactly the same thing as Mattel making games for the Atari, you see what happens if you have the rights to a game but don't act quickly enough to monetize on them.

I suppose the 2600, despite being older and technically more limited, sold in so much larger volumes than both the Intellivision and the Colecovision, that itself was a reason for Mattel (through M Network?) and Coleco to port some of their games to the competitor. Of course the ports must not overshadow the original version, but also not be so poor that it put shame on them.

 

Another reason of course is that if Coleco didn't port Exidy's Mouse Trap to other systems, the risk would be another publisher would make a clone of the game for the 2600.

 

I think it also had to do with return on investment. Mattel and Coleco paid for licenses for games they published (as did Atari, Parker Bros., etc), so by porting them elsewhere they could make more of that money back. The 2600 was a relatively affordable system to port to, and pretty-much expected at that point. So they'd have a minimal investment in the 2600 version, but get maximum exposure. Having Coleco on a bunch of boxes, even if they're for other systems, is still advertising the brand.

Its all about the money. Good for them...

I thought the 2600 was difficult to program for even back then, but perhaps they had more or less standard kernels to base the games upon, plus that perhaps development costs (programmer wages) were a fraction of the total costs in manufacturing, distribution and marketing and would easily be recouped from sales.

 

On the other hand, Atari eventually also established the Atarisoft label to sell their games (and a few of Nintendo's games for which Atari had the licensing) for non-Atari computers and consoles, so everyone went into eachother's territories back then. Again, easier and more lucrative to sell your own games than sue others for infringing on them.

There were a lot of companies publishing 2600 games, and a number of programmers made games for multiple companies (Gary Kitchen for example), so I think there was a pretty broad shared knowledge base. Plus, a lot of those titles had short development cycles to get games out to market quickly, so they weren't spending a ton of money on them.