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by bitwize 901 days ago
I think the "defend it or lose it" nature of trademarks may be a US wrinkle, but I'm not sure.

During the 90s, Nintendo popularized the use of the term "game console" to avoid people's moms calling their competitors "Nintendos". Like Atari before them, their name had become synonymous with video games in general, something they wanted to avoid in order to protect their trademark.

There are references to "consoles" before this happened, dating back to the early 80s, but in everyday language most kids called them "video game systems" or by their brand names (Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc.).
1 comments
Dwedit 901 days ago
The manuals for the NES, SNES, and N64 never once used the term "Game Console". They exclusively called it the "Control Deck". It's not until the GameCube (2001) that they finally refer to the system as a "Console" in the user manual.

Does anyone know any people who actually called their consoles "Control Decks"?

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bitwize 901 days ago
Again, Control Deck was how they branded their own products. In the 90s they ran advertisements advising people to refer to their competitors' products as game consoles. I don't remember anyone using the term "Control Deck" to refer to the console.

Nintendo also referred to their cartridges as Game Paks, another term not used outside official Nintendo materials (including Nintendo Power). Everybody just called them cartridges, carts, or just games. It kind of reminds me of how Texas Instruments tried to get "Command Module" over as a term for their TI-99/4(A) cartridges. It didn't go over.

Oddly enough, the official TI-ism for the 99/4A unit itself was "console".

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Dwedit 901 days ago
The famous 1990 ad saying "There's no such thing as a Nintendo" https://images.nintendolife.com/16326a1099812/no-such-thing-... does not mention "Consoles". Do you know of any 90s Nintendo ads that do use the word Console?
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bitwize 901 days ago
It was one of those things I could've sworn I saw at the time. It would've been later than that one, and I swear it was Nintendo urging the use of the term console. It could be something else, or I might be misremembering entirely.
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