Console Wars
Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars a mesmerizing, behind the scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry.In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David and Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo.The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress It was a once in a lifetime, no holds barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan.Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader It s the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a 60 billion dollar industry. Read Console Wars – kino-fada.fr This book was fucking awful I would have stopped reading it midway, but I had to finish because I had agreed to interview the author, an author who had contacted me personally before I was even sent a review copy he e mailed me regarding a news article I wrote about a film adaptation of the book There was no getting out of it, and I desperately wanted to get out of it.I love behind the scenes stories, but Harris illuminates them horribly In broad terms, it s about underdog Sega finding a wa This book was fucking awful I would have stopped reading it midway, but I had to finish because I had agreed to interview the author, an author who had contacted me personally before I was even sent a review copy he e mailed me regarding a news article I wrote about a film adaptation of the book There was no getting out of it, and I desperately wanted to get out of it.I love behind the scenes stories, but Harris illuminates them horribly In broad terms, it s about underdog Sega finding a way to level the playing field with Nintendo, but Harris writes ...When the folks at Nintendo released the 8 bit NES Nintendo Entertainment System , the home console industry was on its last legs Following a spectacular crash of the gaming market in 1983 Atari s E.T fiasco , Nintendo had its work cut out for it if it believed it could take the medium off of life support By limiting supply, taking a hard stance on game quality and working with some of the largest retailers in North America, the Japanese company single handedly resurrected the industry and p When the folks at Nintendo released the 8 bit NES Nintendo Entertainment System , the home console industry was on its last legs Following a spectacular crash of the gaming market in 1983 Atari s E.T fiasco , Nintendo had its work cut out for it if it believed it could take the medium off of life support By limiting supply, taking a hard stance on game quality and working with some of the largest retailers in North America, the Japanese company single handedly resurrected the industry and put gaming back into the popular culture.While Nintendo was enjoying record profits ...I have fond memories of playing videogames on the Sega Genesis console with my daughter, years ago We loved playing Sonic, Sonic Two, and Toejam and Earl They were great games So, I thought it would be fun to read about the console wars between Sega and Nintendo The subtitle of the book is Sega, Nintendo, and that battle that defined a generation Well, that subtitle does seem to be an exaggeration Defined a generation I m not sure which generation these console wars defined not my d I have fond memories of playing videogames on the Sega Genesis console with my daughter, years ago We loved playing Sonic, Sonic Two, and Toejam and Earl They were great games So, I thought it would be fun to read about the cons...The book gets two stars because I grew up with the subject matter and so the story itself is fascinating to me The book gets minus three stars because it s atrociously written, stretches the boundaries of the term journalism , and has some of the worst dialogue I ve ever read.There s a forward at the beginning of the book that says that scenes and dialogue have often been made upand it shows A few p...The gamble that Harris takes with this book is that readers will find a novelization of the events that transpired between Nintendo and Sega in the early ninetiesinteresting than a factual account or interview collection All of the dialogue is fictional and reads like it , and the book is organized into a collection of stories, with each one ...Harris manages to write in a manner that s incredibly ponderous while also seeming rushed, recalling an eleventh grader pulling an all nighter For a tome that clocks in at nearly six hundred pages and feels twice as long there s remarkably little breadth or context beyond the narrowly chronicled rivalry between Sega and Nintendo I remember the landscape of the 16 bit console gaming era being considerablyvaried than what s documented here Somehow the Atari goddamn Jaguar ratesment Harris manages to write in a manner that s incredibly ponderous while also seeming rushed, recalling an eleventh grader pulling an all nighter For a tome that clocks in at nearly six hundred pages and feels twice as long there s remarkably little breadth or context beyond the narrowly chronicled rivalry between Sega and Nintendo I remember the landscape of the 16 bit console gaming era being considerablyvaried than what s documented here Somehow the Atari goddamn Jaguar ratesmentions than the NEC TurboGrafx ...Executive Summary A good, but not great look at one of the key times in video game history Full Review I don t read a lot of non fiction Most of what I do read tends to be about computer stuff However video games have been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember.I still consider the 16 bit generation to be one of the best The games hold up so much better than the 32 64 bit generation that followed as 3d was being introduced The art style is a lottimeless and some r Executive Summary A good, but not great look at one of the key times in video game history Full Review I don t read a lot of non fiction Most of what I do read tends to be about computer stuff However video games have been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember.I still consider the 16 bit generation to be one of the best The games hold up so much better than the 32 64 bit generation that followed as 3d was being introduced The art sty...This book does not deserve all of these positive reviews It is not something I would recommend to people.It s some sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde nightmare whereby it alternates between an informative and interesting history of the era e.g discussion of Nintendo s rise, the relationship between Sony and Sega, the early history of the Playstation, and the ill fated production of the Mario Brothers movie and some absolutely awful screenplay writing and character studies into people I honestly This book does not deserve all of these positive reviews It is not something I would recommend to people.It s some sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde nightmare whereby it alternates between an informative and interesting history of the era e.g discussion of Nintendo s rise, the relationship between Sony and Sega, the early history of the Playstation, and the ill fated production of the Mario Brothers movie and some absolutely awful screenplay writing and character studies into people I honestly cannot contemplate people being interested in No, I do not care about how some middle aged marketer that worked for Sega was proposed to by her husband WHO WOULD Where is the relevance Who edited this thing Harris fails to obtain any sources from Sega of Japan, expecting the reader to accept Sega of America s scapegoating of SOJ for failures such as the 32x and Saturn notably, the Seg...The battle for video game dominance is a promising topic for a book and indeed, Console Wars is a great retelling of this rivalry and author Blake J Harris does an able job of getting the facts together in an entertaining fashion I appreciated the way that Harris went out of his way not to paint either company as the bad guy in this showdown Growing up in the 1990 s, I wasthan familiar with the console wars between Nintendo and Sega Lines were drawn between the two companies so sharply The battle for video game dominance is a promising topic for a book and indeed, Console Wars is a great retelling of this rivalry and author Blake J Harris does an able job of getting the facts together in an entertaining fashion I appreciated the way that Harris went out of his way not to paint either company as the bad guy in this showdown Growing up in the 1990 s, I wasthan familiar with the console wars between Nintendo and Sega Lines were drawn between the two companies so sharply that you were either a Nintendo kid or a Sega kid and Harris captures this moment in video game history rather well.Console Wars suffers from one, immense flaw that almost completely derails any enjoyment readers might get out of the book Harris has chosen to recreate details, scenes and dialogue of the major players and events on both sides of this conflict to give Console Wars adramatic, cinematic feel While this is a perfectly acceptable choice and Harris has done a capable job in recreating the actual ...As a kid, I loved video games And the whole time, I was never aware of the intense corporate battle behind the lines at Nintendo and Sega What a great story I got to meet a lot of the people that were instrumental in the entertainment and media that shaped my teenage years If you have enjoyed video games in any capacity, I can t recommend this book enough Also, check out the Sega Nerds podcast, as they have interviewed many of the people written about in this book I would wait until after As a kid, I loved video games And the whole time, I was never aware of the intense corporate battle behind the lines at Nintendo and Sega What a great story I got to meet a lot of the people that were instrumental in the entertainment and med...
- English
- 13 May 2018 Blake J. Harris
- Hardcover
- 576 pages
- 0062276697
- Blake J. Harris
- Console Wars