Where would an alternate scenario without Sony(and MS) have brought this industry? PS1 and PS2 made gaming go mainstream selling a combined 259,000,000 units. It's what eventually lead to the Wii as it triggered Nintendo to stop competing with a hardcore machine and try something else.

Without Playstation imo gaming would be in another crisis and succumb to the threat of mobile gaming already because it didn't innovate enough.

-Microsoft wouldn't have entered the console business with Sony.

-Sony didn't kill Sega's business, Sega already lost their way before Gen 5 started with the awful X32. No PS1 would mean delaying the Saturn and going forward with the X32 addon.The Saturn now would still bomb releasing closer to the N64 launch date.

-Nintendo 64, would be the leader of Gen 5 which means gaming held back another generation of the constraints of cartridges.

-Online gaming coming much later to consoles, yes Sega invented it but with Nintendo as leaders it wouldn't have become standard. (hell Nintendo still hasn't sorted out their online platform).

-Without Sony and MS, the industry would be much weaker with just Nintendo and Sega, a 3rd console manufacturer could enter but I doubt they'd be as serious as Sony and MS. I can imagine a few companies trying like NEC etc

So my conclusion is, without Sony targeting the young adults and +30 age groups, Nintendo would be the leader with a fickle install base (kids, teenagers, older casuals), they are not loyal as the transition from Wii to Wii U demonstrated.  As we know, kids, teens and casuals mostly flocked to mobiles. This means Nintendo competing for the same audience with the dominating mobiles.

Now this is just all speculation and maybe without Sony Nintendo's hardcore install base could grow? I doubt that, going from SNES to GCN(and now Wii U after the first year) not much had changed in Nintendo's strategy, they are bleeding out gamers for 2 decades. Without the Wii anomaly the install bases of Nintendo consoles have gradually slowed down since the SNES to where Wii U is now, add figures of a few bombing Sega consoles and gaming wouldn't have cracked another 50M consoles total in a single gen.

Where do you think gaming would be without PS?

Apologies for any grammatical errors.

I have always been claiming the same (and now as well in that strongest brand thread). Without PS, gaming would still be a fringe hobby catering only to children and hardcore hobbyists, and we would probably have seen a huge decline by the mid 2000s. Sony significantly expanded the market, brought it to be of mainstream relevance, and Microsoft helped significantly to further expand it to online interactions, thus taking it out of the child's bedroom/hobbyist's basement and bringing it to the living rooms worldwide.

There would be no Uncharted, Legend of Dragoon, and no Star Ocean: The Second Story etc. It would be pretty bad with just Mario and friends for all of eternity.

Wow without PS we wouldn't have Crash, Uncharted, TLOU, we wouldn't even have Xbox. Really makes you realize how much PS did for the industry.

PS1 started the "revolution" for mature gaming. Plus it gave freedom to third parties and bought new IPs in the gaming. If it was not for Playstation video gaming would still be for kids and it would be treated as toy (tough its now adult peoples expensive toy).

only so many angry bird mobile phone games you can play without loseing your mind.
Im glad the consols are selling, and the better they do the better for us gamers.

I think without playstation, Nintendo would be bigger than it is now.

Sega saturn would have sold alot better. and sega wouldnt have been so broke.
the PS got lucky and the saturn didnt, thats all. sony didnt do much for this succes, they were there when first nintendo fucked it up and than sega fucked it up.
the games that pushed the PS the hardest would have been made anyway.

In my opinion, even WITH the Playstation 4 success industry will be in a deep crysis soon.

PS got lucky? Saturn was a terrible hardware project, while N64 was simply "average". And claiming that Sony only managed to do an impact because the competitor fucked up is absurd. With PS1, they outsold their competitor combined by 2:1. With PS2, they did it by 3:1. With PS4, they are almost beating then combined. It takes a lot more than luck to reach these kind of dominant results.

The first sentence is simply obvious. The TuboGrafx-16 would have sold much better to if there wasn't an SNES and Genesis on the market. Saturn was beaten not because of bad luck, but because it was more expensive, weaker, didn't had a Sonic game, complicated to develop for, hard to cut manufacturing costs, etc. Add that to the fact that it was almost a mockering of all the people that bought 32X and Sega CD and you get why Sega went down. As much as I am a Sega fan, I know that they simply didn't do anything right for almost 5 years before quiting the console business.

Withouth PlayStation, probabily would have a Nintendo monopoly, or maybe a wor "Nintendo VS XBOX"; as "Nintendo VS Sega"...

But i don't think Sega would still exist, even withouth PlayStation imo.