What if: Atari helped sell the NES outside of Japan.

[CastletonSnob]

Did you know that back in 1983, Nintendo made a deal with Atari to help them sell the NES outside of Japan, only for the deal to fall through at the last minute?



What would the gaming landscape have been like if the deal had stuck? Would Atari still be making consoles today?

 

[pendragon1]

yes.
slightly different.
doubt it.

 

[whateverer]

They still would have tanked the company - the outdated PC hardware couldn't compete with C64, and Jay Miner had already left the previous year

They had too large of a PC market anchor for it not to sink them.

The Atari 5200 cluster had also cost them trust (that you don't rebuild overnight), so sales would have been slow until a few years in

Also, without SMB (1985), it would have been a pretty boring launch, if all you have is another Donkey Kong game

 

[CastletonSnob]

Given how monstrously incompetent Atari was, I think the NES would have failed if the deal had stuck.