On Friday, a new interview with former
Microsoft Xbox leader Peter Moore included his beliefs that his former company, and also Sony and Nintendo, have had discussions about the future of making dedicated game consoles. It is certainly an interesting conversation to have. As cloud gaming continues to grow, it is possible one or more of the big console makers could choose to abandon making hardware consoles in the next decade.
Back in the 1990s however, the console game industry was a bit like the Wild West. Nintendo and Sega were in the mix, and then Sony jumped in with its first PlayStation. Other game consoles like the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO tried and failed to get audiences as well.
In the midst of all this, none other than Apple attempted to enter the game console industry with a bit of a different approach. It created a hardware and software platform called Pippin that came out of the company's desire to branch out beyond making Macintosh PCs.
Indeed, the Pippin platform was based in part on the Macintosh computers at the time that used the PowerPC processor and the MacOS. However, Apple didn't want to make any Pippin game console on its own. Rather it wanted to create a hardware and software platform for third-party makers to use to make their own game consoles, with the Macintosh OS and PowerPC hardware as its basis.
Bandai was the first company to jump in on the Pippin platform. Apple and Bandai publicly revealed their plans to launch the Bandai Pippin game console in December 1994. In an article posted by the
Los Angeles Times at that time, it stated Apple's goals of making Pippin more than just a video game console platform.
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