The 10NES was the first mass-market use of what we'd now generically call DRM, and it allowed Nintendo to initiate the industry-standard 30 percent licensing fee which, in its evolution, is still a source of contention with developers (and customers). It wasn’t all entirely positive (if you weren’t Nintendo that is). In turn, this created some form of quality control which would go on to become an industry standard. When the NES came along, it introduced the concept of licensed third-party games thanks to the NES’s 10NES “lockout” chip that prevented just anyone publishing a game for the platform. In the early ‘80s, third-party game development was a wild west with few checks and balances - any company could develop and publish games for any system. We can broadly thank Nintendo, and specifically the NES for this. Today we expect console titles to be of a certain standard, even if that doesn’t always pan out. This format proved so popular that you’ll be hard-pressed to think of a modern console that doesn’t use some form of this layout. The design was so effective that it was included on the NES controller along with two input buttons, instantly becoming a winning formula. Cue a little bit of design magic and the iconic D-pad as we know it was born. A tiny joystick was impractical, plus the company wanted something more reliable than the four directional buttons some systems experimented with. Nintendo’s early Game & Watch handhelds needed a control system that was pocket-friendly. Like all good inventions, it was born out of necessity. The cross-style design would become a standard on controllers to this day. As wild as it might sound, the NES was the first home console that sported the humble D-pad. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time where game controllers were almost as unique as the console they were connected to.
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