Would the SNES Play Station have doomed Nintendo?

From the main 'discovery' thread:

Interesting question.

Thoughts? Could the console have been merely a means by which Sony could poach Nintendo's strong presence and reputation in the gaming market and ultimately eclipse it? Although Nintendo are now a diminished presence, they are still a famous and respected contender. Did they dodge a bullet?

 

But Sony did poach Nintendos place in the gaming industry. Just look at these figures

Sony absolutely wrecked Nintendo because of this. I think its actually the opposite question we should be asking: If Nintendo never fucked Sony over with this, would they have gone on to totally dominate the market for years?

I'm actually kind of surprised you came to the exact opposite conclusion lol.

-doulomb

 

I guess that it could be said, that either way, Sony had still beaten Nintendo at its own game!

 

It's exactly because of the success of the PS1 that you have to wonder how bad it would have wound up for Nintendo. Remember Sony was supposed to get anywhere from majority to all the royalties for CD titles, in addition to a cut of the profits from console sales and licensing cart titles. Sony wanted their own system, and although at that point using Nintendo's distribution network was ideal the more successful the system would be the more they'd want to cut Nintendo out of the loop entirely.

So really my posit would be if Nintendo would even be in a position to push another console of their own after this joint venture. They'd still have the handheld market and produce software, but there's a real possibility this could kill any chance for a future console.

Incidentally, the PS1 and PS2 hold ranks 1 and 2 in most sold consoles. Third place is held by Wii.

 

the deal was only for a cd version of the snes so even if the system was popular..the generation afterwards might of actually been similar to what it already was with Sony making their own console

 

tbh i can kinda see it...possibly, but i guess thats exactly why nintendo backed out as sony wanted too much out of the deal...(which they ended up getting anyway), but who knows what would of happened, the snes CD could of flopped and put sony off the idea of getting into the game industry...and tbh addons generally have a habit of going south....and if sony never got in the game industry, perhaps sega and nintendo would still be battling it out to this day

it would of been interesting anyway, but we will never really know what could've or would've happened, i guess things turned out as they where supposed to, but i guess nintendo probably regret ever drawing sony more deeply into the games biz

 

It's neat to think about, but I'm glad I got my cartridge based N64.

 

They would of branched off on their own, majority of companies and hell even music groups do. No one likes to share anything.

 

The deal was never going to happen. Nintendo were never going to agree to handing ANY licensing rights to Sony. I feel it was a ploy by Nintendo to flush out Sony, see what they've got, what they're up to. Kuturagi was going to make a console system. It may not have been the Play Station at first, that could have been a joint effort with Nintendo or Sega, as it almost was. But eventually, Sony was going console gaming by themselves.

 

I love the PS1 / PS2 but IF SONY and NINTENDO had stuck with it it would have been very interesting change in gaming history I think with the two companies working together. Did this system include specs anything close to what would come to be the original PS1? I assume it would have been something more than just a SuperNES with the storage of CD which would have been amazing, how different Nintendos future titles might have been, POSSIBLY it might have just been Microsoft and Nintendo as the main systems today? Who knows, I would love to peek into an alternate timeline where Nintendo and Sony kept working together.

 

And probably we wouldn't have had so much good games and consoles in this first decade. It's a pity Sega got out of the game, but well... bad marketing has long-term consequences, we all know that. If Ninten'doh and Sega were the only successful game industries, we probably would have over 9000 Nintendo-licensed games with Nintendo-brand characters: Mario shooter, Mario formula 1, Mario (Andretti ) Nascar, Resident Mario: Luigi's Mansion, Wario Doom, Bowsquake III, Call of Kanto: Pokèmon Warfare, and so on. The only nice and somewhat modern games would have been on the Dreamcast successor, and on the PC. And, of course, if Sega continued support for crossplatform multiplayer, the console world would be very nice today. But, sadly, we'd probably never see the wonders of the PS2 and the first Xbox

 

Would have worked great for both:

Sony would have been the technology provider and Nintendo would have focused on the things they do right.

Actually it might happen in a few years if Nintendo do not change their view and ways about consoles

 

Well... SCE has released many great and modern games over all of its console lifespan. Nintendo, instead, seems to be stuck to great ideas... too bad most of those are about to turn 30
Let's make an example: Pokèmon. It's a great franchise, one of the only Nintendo games I liked when I was young. I got sapphire first. Awesome. Then got to play Silver. Even better. I was missing secret bases though. Then it came Diamond/Pearl. Still a great game, but sadly full of useless bloat. I don't give a damn about gems found in a cave! I've stopped playing Pokèmon from that time on. It's been the right choice: my childhood would be ruined if I didn't.
Great ideas last long. Maybe Nintendo is pushing good ol' Mario & co. a little too far. I hope that poor plumber's gonna get his retirement soon!
I really hope that we never get Nintendo away from their platforms: it's not worth it.

 

I'm tending to agree with the thoughts that both Nintendo and Sony were just 'feeling each other out' rather than 100% dedicated to working with each other. What better way to keep track of what your competitor is thinking of doing than by actually help them do it

And yeah, Ninty is dead. Killed by mobile gaming, saved slightly by Wii Sports/Wii Fit, but otherwise I think we are looking at a good looking corpse that hasn't started to rot yet.

 

No, Ninty wasn't killed by mobile gaming. Are Sony or Microsoft dead ?
Ninty is dead only because of their hardware choices, and their very bad communication around WiiU/ 3DS / 2DS / New 3DS.

 

Well, when I say mobile gaming I really mean 'casual gamer', which was a market Sony and Microsoft both ignored whilst Nintendo cleaned up with a few decent titles and a boat load of shovel ware. Once phones got to the stage where they had appreciable processing power, all those Ninty casual gamers stopped buying consoles, because they could do it on their phone.

I do agree that it wasn't just one thing that made Nintendos market share slip, not staying on the forefront of technology, ignoring the adult/more mature market. I honestly don't think Nintendo could have done anything different with the Wii U and not still be in the same situation there are in now.

 

Nintendo is sitting on a mountain of money and has the most recognized and beloved game characters in the industry. They're fine. Just not as fine as they would've been if they had made some different decisions in the past few years.

 

I agree with this. They could always be in better shape, but involving what's happened recently, they could be in a lot worse shape. Let's hope the NX turns the tides a bit.

 

Do you have a source for that? I believe the understanding is that Sony would have rights to release their own version of the SNES CD they would call the Play Station, and would receive the majority royalty from CD based games. Nothing to do with carts.

IMHO, I don't think Nintendo suddenly "discovered" that the deal they signed was bogus. I think it was a tactic to gain Sony's superior technology early and commit them to working with Nintendo, and that their dodgy dealings with Philips was a plan they hatched as a way to renegotiate a better deal later on. I also think Nintendo were not really committed to a CD add-on, but had to have a position to go against Sega and NEC/Hudson in case either of those systems really took off and placed them at a disadvantage.

 

imo sony dominated the market based on adult games, Nintendo has always had childish themes whereas the PS1 came out and such titles as gran tourismo / resident evil / wipeout etc appealed to a broader market