ABSTRACT
As discussed previously, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan with instant success in 1983. After a first failed attempt to export it to the United States through Atari, Nintendo’s president Hiroshi Yamauchi felt that the time was finally right to try again in 1985 through direct distribution (thanks to Nintendo’s own American branch led by his son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa). Market conditions were still quite difficult, though. Video games were considered to be dead and Arakawa and his team had to be extremely cautious about their every move. And they were-they took a lot of precautions in differentiating their product from the old competition while trying to avoid the main problems that plagued the previous generation: namely, an overflow of poor quality games.
