Today, we are no longer able to imagine an internet console, whether to play online, download games and updates or even receive other players. However, in the mid -90s, no one was so sure. Yes, since Atari 2600, experiences had been carried out, but, in the midst of a computer revolution, the decisive jump was missing to the network. In 1996, the first consoles with the Internet appeared: the Apple Pippin, the Philips CD-I, and we all know what was their cruel and bitter destiny. However, everything would have been different if Nintendo had dared to take precedence with the Nintendo 64. And believe us: it almost happened.
Internet 64
In 1995, all video game production companies knew that a change was underway. We left behind the 16 -bit graphics of the Super Nintendo to focus on three -dimensional graphics and A new way of playing that seemed to us resolutely futuristic. Sony, who, as we know, failed to conclude an agreement with Nintendo to create a console using CDs (the Nintendo Playstation), was going to launch direct competition, and Sega did not stay behind with the Dreamcast. Everyone wanted their share of the cake, but in this boom, there was something that could have changed the situation and on which all hesitated: Internet.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen had gathered to found Mosaic, the first company in history to want to take advantage of the Internet. And of course, who contacted first? The brand that has been revolutionizing everything for years: They prepared a 20 -page document and went to the Nintendo offices to offer them an online gaming service For their new console. In the offices of the Grande N, there was a small excitement, but, in the end … it was useless.
After all, they made the presentation at the beginning of 1994, and the console was released at the end of 1995. At Mosaic, they were very hungry and thought it was too long, so they put aside the Nintendo project and began to create something else: a navigator for the Internet. On October 13, 1994, even before the launch of Windows 95, The world saw the arrival of Netscape, one of the first navigators, which quickly won three -quarters of the market. It was not very tall, it must be said.
Nintendo finally launched the Internet on the Nintendo 64 years later. It was not his intention: the company planned to launch it in 1996, only two years after the console was released, but It was finally delayed until 1999. However, it happened either too early or too late, and the 64DD device never really found its audience: it only sold 15,000 units exclusively in Japan before disappearing (by scratch, what), and it is impossible not to wonder what would have happened if the creators of Netscape had decided to wait a little longer.
The navigator got out of it better, even if now alone those who were there at the first stones of the Internet remember it. In 1999, he was bought for $ 10 billion and with his source code, he ended up creating the Mozilla Firefox browser. Netscape finally disappeared in 2008, but Firefox remains one of the best browsers on the market. And think that everything could have been very different if, instead of diving into the complex waters of the World Wide Web, They had devoted all their resources to promoting the Nintendo console. If you are less than twenty years old, indeed, all this will seem to you Chinese, but there was a time when we lived without the Internet. It was not worse. It was simply different.
