History of video games/Platforms/Vidéoway

Introduction
The Vidéoway was an experimental interactive video service that found a strong niche in 1990's Quebec. Due to it's unusual background coming from a telecom company rather then a computer or gaming company, the Vidéoway service was an early console that exclusively played downloaded games on a subscription model. Furthermore, true to its Quebec heritage, Vidéoway is one of the few significant gaming consoles to have French as a primary language, with English as a secondary language, rather than being English or Japanese first like most other consoles.

Development
The Vidéoway system cost Vidéotron $40 million to develop. Notably, Montreal had yet to develop it's now massive game industry when the Vidéoway was developed, making this console a pioneer of sorts for the industry in that area.

Launch
"Even the Japanese Are Jealous"

Vidéotron launched the Videoway in 1989. While the service offered a number of features such as interactive camera angles, video games were one of it's most popular features. By 1992 Vidéoway had a competitive leaderboard for certain games, with ranks assigned to players and with high ranking players invited to some TV shows to compete for prizes.

By 1993 the Vidéoway was profitable, costing a fee equivalent to $6.50 USD a month to use the service with 160,000 households subscribing to the service. In November 1993 it was announced a plan to expand the Vidéoway service from Montreal to Dayton, Ohio. To build a market in Dayton, the service would initially be free. However by 1994 Dayton was not listed as an area where Vidéoway was sold, making the fate of the Dayton expansion unclear.

By 1994 the service had 220,000 subscribers in the Montreal Market alone, with 330,000 customers globally, having expanded to the UK. In 1994 the video games offered on the system were considered it's main selling point, rather then the other interactive television features supported by the platform.

By 1995 the number of Vidéoway subscribers in Quebec remained steady at 222,000 with a monthly price of $8.95 Canadian dollars.

Legacy
The Vidéoway service was discontinued in 2000, and shut down in 2006, with the original games having been lost to time. In the 2015 Temporel, Inc was unofficially remade based on using a VHS recording of a play-through.

Despite being poorly documented, this service is notable for being one of the best performing Canadian platforms in console gaming, as well as an early adoption of the game streaming model later seen decades later in the cloud gaming market of the 2010's on.

Technology
The Vidéoway has an 8-bit Motorola MC68A09EP clocked at 1.5 megahertz as a local processor. The Vidéoway has 8 Kibibytes of static RAM and 256 Kibibytes of dynamic video RAM. The system also has a 16 Kibibyte mask ROM.

System RAM temporarily stored downloaded games for the Vidéoway.

In 1994 a partnership was made with the massive American technology corporation IBM (International Business Machines) to improve the Vidéoway.

Notable games
Around forty games were available on the Vidéoway. Notably, many games on the Vidéoway are said to have appealed to casual gamers, an underserved market at the time.
 * Temporel Inc. - An adventure game exclusive to the Vidéoway during the life of the system.
 * Jeopardy
 * Blackjack
 * Chess
 * Q-Bert
 * Mordicus
 * Burger Time / Hamburger
 * Styx
 * Mr. Chin
 * Le fou du Roi
 * Crocomaths

Branding
Throughout the long life of the system, Vidéotron updated its brand identity twice. Most game platforms see their parent organization update their branding only once, if they do so at all, in their time on the market, making this somewhat unusual.