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NES and the subsequent revival of the console was on account Nintendo being bold enough to invest when the conventional wisdom was that video games were a fad w

NES and the subsequent revival of the console was on account Nintendo being bold enough to invest when the conventional wisdom was that video games were a fad whose time had passed--that combined with a leap in AV quality over the Atari 2600 (the last mainstream console). 70s/80s culture seemed to churn every few years, it was riddled with fads, so the feeling was grounded in reality. Outside of the console market, between the 2600 and the NES, there was growth in gaming on personal computers, but it was driven by floppy pirating. I'm not sure there was a lot of profit there.

bitwize 8y ago
Nintendo weren't particularly bold, they knew the conventional wisdom was wrong. Soon after the crash, Nintendo arcade machines called Vs. Machines appeared; these were basically Famicoms in arcade cabinets playing special versions of Famicom games (including Super Mario Bros.). This was Nintendo's stealth market research program; they used the revenue from these to gauge American interest in games, and found that Americans were still interested in games, they just weren't interested in crap.