What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

[Zeroth]

http://retro.ign.com/articles/956/956990p1.html

An interesting artical I found on the subject.

To be honest, I think Sony entering the gaming world has been a positive thing, dispite all the times they may have messed up. While I'm a big fan of Nintendo, Sony did things that Nintendo should have done (moving to discs and offering more muture games are just two examples), and because of this, it moved the gaming world in a direction that may have not been possible without them.

[Valkysas]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

gaming has benefitted greatly by sony. no one can deny that. they're still a valuable asset to the industry.

but no one should say sony had any role in getting games moved to discs. they were not the first to do that by far.

[John Mora]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

But they were the first successful disc-based console.

[Zeroth]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

but no one should say sony had any role in getting games moved to discs. they were not the first to do that by far.

Totally agree with you, but it could be argued that Sony is the one the popularised the move. The Sega CD, 3DO (I think), and Saturn all had disc-based media, but they didn't fair so well, as opposed to Sony's Playstation that was extremely successful.

[DarkwingChuck]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

Any praise that goes to Sony for their effects on the gaming industry indirectly belongs to Nintendo anyway.

[Toaster]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

no

[orius]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

Here's my take:

I think possibly they're overstating the importance of FFVII. Yes, it was a major exclusive system seller, but it wasn't just Square jumping ship that influenced the industry; it was all the developers who wanted the greater freedom disks allowed.

Whether or not Microsoft would have jumped in remains debatable. Perhaps if it were still Nintendo and Sega and no Sony, they'd largely stick with developing for PCs. But then again, part of the Xbox's strategy was to take the setup for a gaming PC and make it more affordable as a console, so perhaps they might have entered the race anyway, which would make things very interesting. Would they compete directly with Nintendo and Sega's offerings, or would it be two different market? And that brings me to the last point, which the article spends the entire last page making.

One of Sony's biggest contributions was to move console gaming past a kiddie market. Nintendo likely wouldn't have done this; they would have continued following the same marketing strategies, since that's what worked for them. But that largely meant games exported outside Japan would still largely be targeted to kids. Sega combatted this a bit with the Genesis by aiming for teens, but I don't know if this would have driven any long term success for them.

At best I think that might have been delayed for one or two cosole generations, assuming Microsoft sensed an opportunity. If so, I think they still would have gone with the stripped-down PC approach. That probably would have hurt Sega more than Nintendo because it would compete with Dreamcast in online gaming and the overall global market. It probably wouldn't have done as much to Nintendo, because Nintendo would likely dominate the Japanese market, with the Xbox getting little penetration. My guess is that Nintendo would dominate Japan, and probably market the system to kids in the west, while Xbox would have tapped an adult gamer market.

[gray]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

THEY HAVE HAD BOTH GOOD AND BAD EFFECTS!



OH NO!

[Deeth Irteen]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

With Sony not in the way, Bill Gates was able to launch the windows gamebox. over the following years, Bill Gates was finaly able to take over the gaming corporations of the world, buy Japan, destroyed linux, made Quadrillions, and become President of the united states. Following this, he created an army or windows-based robots to destroy all the remaining opposition and became supreme ruler of the world. In 2008, he began his next mission: building an armada of warships to travel to other planets to take over the solar system.

Oh, and Blinx the cat became the world's number one video game icon, outshinning even Mario.
*Hangs himself*

[Wavelength]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

I'd love to see Bill Gates become President.

We'd have superb foreign policy and a sensible national budget.

As a bonus, he might even release a swarm of disease-carrying mosquitos into a room of Senators. That would be sweet.

[Goufunaki]

Re: What would the gaming landscape be like without Sony?

As a bonus, he might even release a swarm of disease-carrying mosquitos into a room of Senators. That would be sweet.