Nintendo Seal of Quality
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The Nintendo Seal of Quality is a gold seal that Nintendo places on any game licensed for use on one of its video game consoles, denoting that the game has been properly licensed by Nintendo (and in theory, been checked for quality). It is a golden starburst seal that says inside "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" or just "Official Nintendo Seal" in the more recent version. The starburst is oblong in the United States, but circular in PAL regions such as Europe and Australia.
One of the major reasons for the Video Game Crash of 1983 was customer dissatisfaction with a large portion of the introduced games. They were considered technically poor, tasteless or both – a particularly odious example is Custer's Revenge, an Atari 2600 title that featured a pixellated white man raping a Native American woman tied to a post. Many games were simply commercial tie-ins, little more than ads. The 2600, the biggest console on the market, had no lockout, so anyone who could get programming tools could make and market a game for it. Games were rushed to market, resulting in poor titles and low consumer credibility.
Gamers understandably were wary of game makers when the Nintendo Entertainment System came out. The 10NES lockout solved the problem of controlling access to the console (somewhat), but there was the issue of customer confidence – the market had been burned, and was wary of being burned again. So Nintendo introduced the Seal Of Quality to show gamers that the games had met quality control standards. Of course, it was mainly marketing (many games for the NES are widely considered extremely poor), but marketing worked – consumers were reassured, and the NES became a great success. Publishers were encouraged to create high-quality titles in other ways as well. Each publisher was only allowed five releases per year, so effort was put into making those few titles successful.
Unofficial companies like Australian Home Entertainment Suppliers Pty. Ltd. to combat the Nintendo Seal of Quality introduced their own seal, and printed them as stickers so new and old stock could be sold with the newly fashioned logos.
The Nintendo Seal of Quality is still used today, with all Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo GameCube games bearing it on their packaging.
External links
- Nintendo Puts a Seal on Gaming (http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/25smartest/index16.shtml) — GameSpy.com