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The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2: Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and the Billion-Dollar Battle to Shape Modern Gaming Paperback – August 24, 2021
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“A zippy read through a truly deep research job. You won’t want to put this one down.”—Eddie Adlum, publisher, RePlay Magazine
As video games evolve, only the fittest companies survive. Making a blockbuster once cost millions of dollars; now it can cost hundreds of millions, but with a $160 billion market worldwide, the biggest players are willing to bet the bank.
Steven L. Kent has been playing video games since Pong and writing about the industry since the Nintendo Entertainment System. In volume 1 of The Ultimate History of Video Games, he chronicled the industry’s first thirty years. In volume 2, he narrates gaming’s entrance into the twenty-first century, as Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft battle to capture the global market.
The home console boom of the ’90s turned hobby companies like Nintendo and Sega into Hollywood-studio-sized business titans. But by the end of the decade, they would face new, more powerful competitors. In boardrooms on both sides of the Pacific, engineers and executives began, with enormous budgets and total secrecy, to plan the next evolution of home consoles. The PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Sega Dreamcast all made radically different bets on what gamers would want. And then, to the shock of the world, Bill Gates announced the development of the one console to beat them all—even if Microsoft had to burn a few billion dollars to do it. In this book, you will learn about
• the cutthroat environment at Microsoft as rival teams created console systems
• the day the head of Sega of America told the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog to “f**k off”
• how “lateral thinking with withered technology” put Nintendo back on top
• and much more!
Gripping and comprehensive, The Ultimate History of Video Games: Volume 2 explores the origins of modern consoles and of the franchises—from Grand Theft Auto and Halo to Call of Duty and Guitar Hero—that would define gaming in the new millennium.
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateAugust 24, 2021
- Dimensions7.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-101984825437
- ISBN-13978-1984825438
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Steven Kent knows video game history better than anyone, and once again provides a thorough and fascinating look into the stories that shaped a generation.”—Andrew Reiner, editor in chief, Game Informer
“A wonderful chronicle of so many games that have shaped our industry and a must-read for both fans and aspiring developers.”—Ted Price, founder and president, Insomniac Games
“Steven Kent has been around the industry for a long time, witnessing key inflection points. This is a must-read for anyone wanting the back story on the companies, franchises, and personalities in video games.”—Reggie Fils-Aimé, former president and COO, Nintendo of America
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sony, the One and Only
Sony can do no wrong even when Sony is very wrong.
—Matt Casamassina, former editor in chief, IGN Nintendo Team
The Emotion Engine—the only emotion I got from it was despair.
—Anonymous
The Second Coming of Sony
Sony had a record-breaking year in 1998, raking in over $51 billion in sales and operating revenue. Profits from television sales had spiked in 1997 and continued climbing. Having recently released such notable flops as The Cable Guy and Striptease, Sony’s movie studios turned a corner as well, releasing hits like Men in Black and Air Force One. Picking up where Walkman left off, Sony’s Discman hit pay dirt in the United States, and its new MiniDisc audio format caught on quickly in Japan. Then, of course, there was the PlayStation.
Sony shipped 4 million PlayStations in 1995, 9 million in 1996, and 21 million in both 1997 and 1998. Nintendo sold fewer than 35 million N64 consoles during the console’s seven-year life span. The Sega Saturn never reached 10 million.
Sony was one of those companies with the magic touch in the mid-to late 1990s, but those halcyon days were about to come to an end.
While PlayStation carried Sony to new heights, the company’s other businesses began snagging. Samsung made a big push into the bustling North American television market, selling competitive sets at considerably lower prices. The 2001 release of Apple’s first iPod obliterated the MiniDisc and Discman markets. Familiar names like Canon and Nikon took over the high-end digital camera business. Nokia overtook Sony-Ericsson as the leader in mobile phones until 2007, when Apple released its first iPhone and everything changed.
With layoffs, plummeting stock prices, and vanishing markets, the only bright spot on Sony’s horizon was PlayStation. By 1998, the game console was well on its way to replacing Walkman as the most successful consumer electronics line in history. This made engineer Ken Kutaragi—who first arrived on the video game scene helping Sony create the audio chip used in the 16-bit Super Nintendo/Super Famicom (also known as “Super Famicom,” “Super Nintendo,” and “SNES”)—both a demon and a deliverer around Sony Corporation.
I was with Mr. Kutaragi yesterday. I have to say that he’s a different breed of animal. He’s an engineer, but also he has tremendous acumen for management. So, he’s a different breed.
—Shukuo Ishikawa, chairman, Bandai-Namco Group
His first project was . . . if you remember back in the 1970s or early 1980s, if you had a cassette player, it may have had a graphic equalizer built into it, little ascending red and green and yellow lines that would show the signal strength as the music volume increased. Ken was the inventor of that.
He has the patent for the LED bars rising as the music peaked and the bar that was on the top would stay on for a while as the sound dropped away so that you could see where the peak got to. That peak level meter LED design was his invention, or co-creation. I think there were a couple of other people involved on the patent as well.
—Phil Harrison, former vice president, third party relations, Sony Computer Entertainment America
But Kutaragi was a brash, temperamental, and outspoken man in a society that taught that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Sure, he was a brilliant, driven engineer, but he didn’t fit into Sony’s traditional power structure.
PlayStation sales carried Sony through a dry spell, but at the cost of empowering Kutaragi and further infuriating his corporate rivals. Misery loves company; it despises other people’s success. Many Sony executives openly despised Kutaragi, describing him as disrespectful, abrasive, and something even more unforgivable in Sony’s buttoned-down culture: “untraditional.”
In July 2000, Sony invited ten top influencers and opinion leaders to tour its corporate headquarters in Tokyo. Richard Doherty, founder and chief analyst of Envisioneering, attended the summit, as did Suzanne Kantra of Popular Science, Rolling Stone writer Steve Morgenstern, and futurist Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. The group met with Sony’s top executives and premier designers, including Kutaragi, who seemed flustered when he realized the group included a reporter he’d been trying to avoid.
The tour closed with a cocktail party attended by Kunitake Ando, the newly appointed president of Sony Corporation. Seeing the reporter who had so flustered Kutaragi, Ando congratulated him on the accomplishment, presenting him with a business card and offering to help him with future projects. As Ando walked away, analyst Rick Doherty commented, “You better hold on to that card. He just gave you the keys to the kingdom.”
Ken was a, you know . . . it wasn’t like he was a table-thumping shouter, but he definitely got passionate about things. I remember one argument with him about something which to this day I can’t remember the details. It’s probably insignificant. His way of finishing the argument was to say, “Well, if you think that, then you must resign.” It was a very kind of emotional way to say, “I don’t want to have this argument anymore.”
—Phil Harrison
The animosity between Kutaragi and his superiors traced back to the early days of the PlayStation project. In the early 1990s, Kutaragi had led the engineering team assigned to co-develop a CD-ROM drive with Nintendo for the Super NES/Super Famicom. Believing that Sony planned to use the unit to open a game division, Nintendo executives quietly abandoned the partnership without telling Sony. Nintendo announced its breakup with Sony and its new partnership with Dutch mega-conglomerate Philips N.V. at the 1993 Consumer Electronics Show the day after Sony announced it was building the “Play Station” drive with Nintendo.
Blamed by some executives for having brought shame to the company, Kutaragi approached Sony chairman Norio Ohga for permission to convert his PlayStation disk drive into a stand-alone game console. While the rest of the board argued against it, Ohga gave Kutaragi permission to pursue the project. Citing Nintendo’s betrayal, Ohga shouted, “Do it!”
There was a meeting with only maybe eight people in it. No other executives. It was just Kutaragi’s team pitching Ohga. Ohga was personally interested in the project.
And after Ohga saw the whole presentation, he just said, “Go for it. Do it. This is a project that Sony needs to be in.” He just decided it by himself. No other executives voted, only Ohga. Ohga said “do it” and that became a legendary story.
—Shuji Utsumi, former vice president of product acquisition, Sony Computer Entertainment America1
Product details
- Publisher : Crown (August 24, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1984825437
- ISBN-13 : 978-1984825438
- Item Weight : 2.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #164,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #337 in Video & Computer Games
- #349 in Communication & Media Studies
- #422 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
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About the author
Steven L. Kent has published several books dealing with video and computer games as well as a series of military science fiction novels about a Marine named Wayson Harris.
Born in California and raised in Hawaii, Kent served as a missionary for the LDS Church between the years of 1979 and 1981. During that time, he worked as a Spanish-speaking missionary serving migrant farm workers in southern Idaho.
While Kent earned a Bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in communications from Brigham Young University, he claims that his most important education came from life.
Many of the lessons he learned from the Mexican field workers in Idaho have appeared in his stories. Later, from 1986 through 1988, Kent worked as a telemarketer selling TV Guide and Inc. Magazine. His years on the phone helped him develop an ear for speech patterns that has been well-reflected in dialog in his stories.
As a boy growing up in Honolulu in the 1960s, Kent developed a unique perspective. He spent hours torch fishing and skin diving.
In 1987, Kent reviewed the Stephen King novels Misery and The Eyes of the Dragon for the Seattle Times. A diehard Stephen King fan, Kent later admitted that he pitched the reviews to the Times so that he could afford to buy the books.
In 1993, upon returning to Seattle after a five-year absence, Kent pitched a review of 'virtual haunted houses' for the Halloween issue of the Seattle Times. He reviewed the games The Seventh Guest, Alone in the Dark, and Legacy. Not only did this review land Kent three free PC games, it started him on a new career path.
By the middle of 1994, when Kent found himself laid off from his job at a PR agency, he became a full-time freelance journalist. He wrote monthly pieces for the Seattle Times along with regular features and reviews for Electronic Games, CD Rom Today, ComputerLife, and NautilusCD. In later years, he would write for American Heritage, Parade, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and many other publications. He wrote regular columns for MSNBC, Next Generation, the Japan Times, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
In 2000, Kent self-published The First Quarter: A 25-year History of Video Games. That book was later purchased and re-published as The Ultimate History of Video Games by the Prima, Three River Press, and Crown divisions of Random House.
During his career as a games journalist, Kent wrote the entries on video games for Encarta and the Encyclopedia Americana. At the invitation of Senator Joseph Lieberman, Kent has spoken at the annual Report Card on Video Game Violence in Washington D.C.
In 2005, Kent announced his semi-retirement from video games so that he could concentrate on writing novels. Though he still writes a monthly column for Boy's Life, he has mostly concentrated his efforts on writing novels since that time. His first efforts in science fiction, The Clone Republic and Rogue Clone were published by Ace Book in 2006.
Despite his "retirement," Kent continues to write the occasional game article or review. His sixth novel, The Clone Empire was released in October, 2010, and a seventh novel is due in 2011.
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It's mostly a history of first party console and handheld manufacturers and AAA publishers, and a great one it is at that. You do find some interesting niche chapters on state of arcade gaming, the competition between EA and Activision for the most prevalent AAA publisher in the industry, and on the discussion of whether video games are considered 'art' and why film licensed games and film adaptations of games have not been successful. You're not really going to find much detail on mobile, PC and indie games, though the author is begging for a volume 3 since he leaves off unresolved at the peak of the PS3/XBox 360/Wii era towards the end of the 10s. Hopefully he'll fill us in on those things by then when volume 3 is released which he has confirmed that he's working on that to my delight.
Overall I enjoyed it. 5/5.
Picking up in 1996 where volume 1 left off, Kent tells the story of console releases and the people behind them. He liberally sprinkles in quotes from key players and an occasional journalist. These are entertaining and provide insights you're not going to find just anywhere. Really good stuff. And you got almost 500 pages of that kind of material. So that's a good thing, right?
Well...
There are numerous problems. First and foremost is ... where are the games?!!? Oh sure, SOME games are mentioned but "The Ultimate History of Video Games" - not Video Game CONSOLES but Video Games - should have coverage of LOTS of games. Where is Assassin's Creed? Where is Uncharted? Where the heck are all the RTS games that dominated PC gaming for several years? And on and on and on. There are TONS of key games missing here.
Next is that, without stating it, the book stops with the PS3 generation - sort of. Lots of stuff is talked about from after that generation - but not the PS4 or PS5, not the Xbox One or Series S/X.
Next, where are the games for mobile platforms? Kent talks about the PSP and DS but completely ignores phones. If you accept the arbitrary cutoff date of "the PS3 generation", this is still not acceptable. The original iPhone was released less than a year after the PS3 but doesn't exist here. Ditto for Android.
Where are all the indie games? Not here.
Where is Steam? Steam was introduced *3* years before the PS3 yet goes without mention here.
The PSN Network was hacked in 2011 but goes unmentioned here.
Speaking of PSN and its competitor, Xbox Live, the rise of online gaming is pretty much ignored here. Oh, they're discussed but only as a feature of hardware platforms rather than the global communities they've become.
Next, there is somehow a lot of rehashed material here. The formation of Electronic Arts and its "album cover" boxes was discussed in Volume 1 - why is it included again here? Same thing with Activision.
In addition, Kent has a somewhat strange selection of sources. He's got a lot of key players and industry insiders and then remarkably few journalists. There's a ton of quotes from N'Gai Croal, a video game journalist I've never heard of previously - perhaps because he wrote for Newsweek rather than an actual video game publication. Croal is quoted over and over and over with his words being given way too much importance. Kent also makes sure to tell us what Croal's favorite game is for no apparent reason.
Finally, we get 30-some pages on movies about video games. I suppose that's OK but seems out of place here, especially considering the huge number of, you know, GAMES that are missing.
At the end of the day, Kent's Volume 2 is a highly entertaining read that will end up frustrating almost as much as it entertains. There are just so many things ignored and missed that, unlike Volume 1, this one does not live up to its "Ultimate" title. I do recommend the book, just be forewarned.
p.s. Don't believe the "592 pages" information. The actual book ends on page 530. The acknowledgements and index take you to 562. And there's a few pages of intro. Being very generous, there's barely 570 pages here. Realistically, it's more like 530.
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The only weakness is that the book is published in 2021, and it doesn't' cover the PS4 generation - the most important generation when the entire gaming busniess model transformed to an online model. I really wish it had been included.
Couple of typos though, but they don't detract from the book.
The History of Video Games Vol. II to start with, reads like Mr. Boring suit, didn’t get on with Mr. Who cares, another corporate suit, because he did something that showed him up, and so Mr. Who cares was denied a promotion.
It’s Microsoft history, makes no mention of how Gates initially found fortune by providing BASIC to every known 8 bit computer one earth. Or how he stole the O.S business from CP/M with a rip-off version.
On Page 42, in the small print he talks about Gerald Larry Lawson. Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel invented the video game cartridge along with the system that would one day become the Channel F(un) in 1974. It was called RAVEN (Remote Access Video Entertainment). Lawson was involved with streamlining and fine tuning. He turned the prototype into a commercial product. Now it was called STRATOS. He repeats this on Page 533.
On Page 112, it is stated that 57% of Playstation owners are 18 year old. On Page 113 this is repeated. Why? Supposedly many people helped with this book, I guess none of them did any editing. This happens repeatedly.
On Page 272, we learn Jawel Karim’s “Me at the Zoo” was the first video uploaded to the most popular video hosting site. Not sure what’s that got to do with videogames.
It is interesting to read on Page 308 that a reason for Xbox 360(Red Ring of Death) failure was the use of non-Lead Solder. Lead Solder, is supposedly illegal now, but when I have been doing electronics projects, Lead Solder is recommended for the long life of a joint. Non-Lead joints don’t last as long. It may not be healthy to breathe in while you actually solder through.
On Page 323, we get a section of greyscale photos. It includes a comparison between the VCS game Spiderman and Marvel’s Spiderman. He seems to have a thing about movie games on the VCS more on this later.
On Page 364, we learn about a “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest which was a drinking water contest that resulted in the death of the runner up candidate and the sacking of 10 Radio station Staff. They supposedly signed disclaimers, which turned out to be garbage. The family of the candidate got 16 Million(this bit is not in the book). And all because she wanted her kids to have a Wii. Apparently over drinking water is very bad for the brain because the brain does not have much room to swell. This is probably the dumbest thing I have ever come across.
Around Page 400, he starts talking about the Record and Movie industry and how smaller companies were gobbled up by bigger companies until a situation was arrived at whereby there was no more format exclusive games only exclusive content within those games.
Page 418 - he’s back to talking about Atari again. What is interesting about the programmers who broke away from Atari to form Activision is that from a current perspective, the games they created before leaving Atari were on the Dull and Boring side. E.g. Outlaw, Football, Video Chess and Bowling. Yet Activision created some of the best games ever released on the VCS.
Page 424 – I remember Talladaga on the C64. Terrible Graphics but it had captivating gameplay. Madden Madden Madden. Why have one Sports game when you can 42? One would be too much for me. Good to see him acknowledging his error from the first book – Pele’s Soccer for the VCS was the first celebrity tie in. Populous. Ah yes the god game. Sim City. Slooow brainy games.
Page 438 – we learn that every modern WW2 game can be traced back to Saving Private Ryan.
Page 446 - We learn the origin of all those pretend to play guitar games started in 1996 with Parapper the rapper.... except I remember a 1987 C64 game called Street Beat. But this was about delivering demo tapes and getting people dancing. Really, these games are a variation on the 1970’s repeated colours/sound game Simon from MB, which was a rip-off of Touch Me from Atari in 1974, except it didn’t have the musical bleeps. And Like Guitar Hero it was originally an arcade game.
Page 455 – We learn about Electronic Arts gobbling up every company in sight. And apparently destroying them, as the talent left. We learn about the start of pretend money in games, microtransactions, and how just like in the arcades when in certain games you could win by paying your way through the game, you could do the same with home games too. You see this everywhere now. It reminds me of how you used to get a limited version of a game as a demo for free say on a disk or tape on a magazine, and find you only have the first level and would have to buy the whole thing, in order to play more. But here you have paid for the game and apparently you need to keep paying to unlock what you thought you had paid for. I remember Electronic Arts, for Deluxe Paint on the Amiga. The go to tool graphics tool on the platform.
Page 462 – We learn about the depressing death of originality in games these days, the quirky games that once came out of bedrooms and were published commercially are gone, at least for big publishers, now it’s this year’s version of the several games that just have no end of sequels, buying the same game over and over which seems completely insane. People can still do stuff like this of course for smart devices.
By Page 470, we learn about mass lay offs followed by massive profit annocements. Developers who thought they were about to get a big bonus instead got the boot.
Page 488, we are back to talking about Atari and E.T. It stated that no one cared about movie games, I think that could be extended to coin-op conversions too. Why else would you buy a game, and find you have photos of the coin-op on the package, yet you power it up and wonder what the connection to the photos were? Page 497, We are talking about Superman on the VCS, the first movie game, not Raiders of the lost ark as HSW says in his book..
On Page 534, he talks about Ray Kassar, the man who axed all the R & D at Atari, who milked rubbish coin-op conversions to death on the ancient VCS that wasn’t fit to run them, another book called Zap! - The Rise & Fall of Atari will tell you all about how he went everywhere in a Limo. About his plush offices. And how he treated staff like rubbish. When David Crane and co, demanded more, he was told they are no different than towel designers. On another time, he told others, that they were no more important than the people packing the cartridges into boxes. Yet, the author thinks the man who ran Atari into the ground has been wrongly recorded by history. There was a lack of managerial talent at the time that had the required knowledge and skills so they had to go with what they had. Managers who had no knowledge of IT or Video Games. What happened to Atari is the result. Not that Commodore fared any better.
He is always talking about the pecking order and sales figures of various consoles as if the author was commentating on a horse race. Sometimes he is not sure, but continues anyway to try and place a pecking order anyway. This stuff gets tiresome, like some one reading a spreadsheet for an accountant.
The book is easy to read, but not that interesting, at times when we get quotes from launches of consoles, it may have been better to just refer the reader to the Internet to watch it. I remember the original volume as being riveting but this just seems tedious. It also seemed to be comprehensive. This volume seems to be less so, but then there are less systems to talk about so that may be a factor in this. Also, the original volume was about pioneering days, whereas now it’s all about profiteering days and endless same old same old. In every area you care to look at.
The Text is double line spaced, which make it easy to read, but sometimes there is a paragraph in microscopic small print at the bottom of the page. It is a strain to read.
It also goes back into territory of the original book e.g. Atari and Nolan Bushnell repeatedly. As I have pointed out above.
The book gets repetitive in places, repeating information it stated earlier. It also goes on about how much money one console made in comparison to another which gets tedious and meaningless after a while.
The first volume, was quite daunting in it’s size initially, and a slog to start with, until I got drawn into it. The same is true of this volume, except the drawn in stage, occurred quite late into the book.
The book ends with a debate regarding if videogames can be regarded as art. Then goes on about Roger Ebert for some reason. Who didn’t think they could. And then the book goes on and on about making the case for them to be Art.