There's something that confuses me about the first real console war between the 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision and so forth - I'm not an expert here so maybe I got some details wrong, but from what I understand, companies were releasing their own systems, and then turning around and porting their games to their competitors' consoles. Wouldn't Coleco have had a better chance at success if Donkey Kong, Mouse Trap and so forth were exclusive to their system? Atari rocketed to stardom because of exclusives - they got the home version of Space Invaders before anyone else, for instance - so why weren't companies eager to guard their hot properties? I've read the rumor about Coleco making rushed or bad ports on purpose to make Atari look bad, but wouldn't Coleco look even better if the legendary Donkey Kong was exclusive to their system?
This practice would be absolutely unheard of in today's industry, and the modern status quo seems to have been in place since the NES days - you never saw Sega bowing to Nintendo's market advantage and porting Phantasy Star and Alex Kidd to their rivals' system. So what advantage did the pre-crash companies get from doing this that later companies can't get?
This practice would be absolutely unheard of in today's industry, and the modern status quo seems to have been in place since the NES days - you never saw Sega bowing to Nintendo's market advantage and porting Phantasy Star and Alex Kidd to their rivals' system. So what advantage did the pre-crash companies get from doing this that later companies can't get?