“War” is an easy metaphor often used to describe a given competition, and companies sometimes exploit our tendency to attach ourselves to tribal modes of thinking in order to move product.
In the case of a few media companies in competition with one another, war isn’t a valid metaphor, it’s marketing for invented tribes.
Because of the Wavebird, games which were released for every platform of that generation wound up being purchased just for the GameCube. Wireless was a pretty big deal, especially since the new CRT television didn’t require me to sit so close to the display in order to play. Besides, then you get to use the Wavebird.
The thing about arcades is that arcades are expensive.
Adjusted for inflation, a quarter in early 80s money is approximately 63¢ in today’s money at the time of this writing. Most people probably aren’t used to spending money after the initial investment in the console and then the game for their home, but imagine spending that for every three tries, lives, or continues.
“Failure” is often used as a dirty word by gamers, but this is one of the ways in which gamer culture often gets things wrong. If you fail and try again, that’s essentially practice for success.
I’m not going to suggest that video games were better in the olden days. They absolutely were not; anyone who thinks that they were is probably legally blind or has closed their mind to reality not damaged by Space War for the Atari VCS. At a certain point, video games didn’t exist. And then once they existed, they were objectively terrible for the most part. Being novel was their only saving grace.
