Nolan Bushnell

When you're considering the history of the video game industry, the name Nolan Bushnell is almost certain to crop up. Bushnell founded Atari back in 1972 and enjoyed incredible success with arcade hits like Pong and the Atari VCS home console. Although he's not been directly involved in the industry for quite some time, his opinion still holds a lot of weight.

Which is why his comments regarding the Wii U make for difficult reading if you're a Nintendo fan - Bushnell doesn't believe the console will be a success. To make matters worse, he thinks that the home console market he helped to create is on its last legs. Speaking to the New York Times, he said of Nintendo's system:

I actually am baffled by it. I don’t think it’s going to be a big success. These things will continue to sputter along, but I really don’t think they’ll be of major import ever again. It feels like the end of an era to me.

Before we start getting too emotional about these comments, it's worth remembering that despite his legendary status in the history of video gaming, Bushnell has made some particular poor choices over the past few decades. He famously declined the chance to invest in Apple Computers when the company was just starting out, and his Chuck E. Cheese's line of restaurants went bankrupt in 1984 (although the brand has since been reborn). He also publicly backed the abysmal Commodore CDTV, one of the biggest hardware bombs of the '90s.

Do you think Bushnell's comments are worth taking notice of, or has he been out of the loop for so long he simply doesn't understand what modern gamers want? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section.

[source nytimes.com, via vg247.com]