[dpratt71]

Penicillin, maybe? But I wonder how quickly it became readily available outside of the Western world.

And I see that Nintendo has apparently sold an extremely impressive number of consoles (https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/nintendo_has_now_s...). But even if everyone only bought one console each, that's only about 10% of world population.

This may be a little unfair, but I do wonder if there isn't a tendency to consider a technology to be widely available when it becomes available to you and the folks farther back in the line don't count or aren't relevant.

[bsanr2]

To say that a single company's products being used by even a single digit percentage of the world population doesn't meet the requirements to ve considered "widely available" is a stretch.

In any case, you said "important," not "widely available," and yes, Nintendo's products are hugely important. Many of today's technological advancements can be traced back to their proving that a given use case for a primitive version of a given technology was viable.

[dpratt71]

Whether it's a single company (or product) or multiple is beside the point. If a technology is only available to (say) 1% of the population, I don't think that qualifies as being widely available.

I will also note that my original comment was in response to someone who is "more interested in tech for the other 95%".