Kotaku
For your Thursday lunchtime perusal, Next Generation's Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh has posted a decent read for whilst you're otherwise employeed stuffing a sandwich into your craw: "How the Console 'Losers' Really Won."
A curious thing about videogames is that, underneath the bluster, you'll nearly always find that the "losing" platforms - from the Sega Saturn to the Turbografx-16 - are in many ways either objectively superior to or subjectively more intriguing than what "won"; what they typically lack is balance. Like root beers or politicians, typically the top candidates rise to the top not out of pure excellence; they rise because they serve the basic desires of the greatest audience while offending the fewest.
Like many articles with an overarcing thesis, the author (a man with both two first names and two last names) tries a bit too hard at points. Still, he's right that many features inherent in failed consoles were then polished by competition until they shined on their own.
How the Console 'Losers' Really Won [Next Generation]
