This is my salute to Sony as a Nintendofan.

I am a huge Nintendofan that has played games for over 20 years. I´m in full belief that the best games ever to be made are from Nintendo (Super Metroid, Zelda-A Link to the Past, Super Mario Galaxy etc.). It made me miserable the way Nintendo was outplayed by Sony during the N64/PS1, GC/PS2 years. Sony easily and clearly won those generations and Nintendo were scorned by both media and players alike. Many even thought that Nintendo would stop making consoles and go thirdparty !

Here´s a couple of things that I in retrorespect feel Sony did good. Why they were good for me as a Nintendofan:

1. Sony has kept pressure on Nintendo and forced them to be at thier very best and most inventive. Without Sony Nintendo most likely would not have made the DS/Wii, both of which are the companys biggest sellers among their portables/consoles in history. Sony has forced Nintendo to think in new ways and in the process Nintendo has greatly expanded the market for videogames. It seems that there is a lot more different types of people playing videogames today than in previous generations and this can only be good for videogaming as a whole. Today we have a much wider spectra of players ranging from kids/teenagers/mums/dads/grandmas etc. which results in bigger sales and more profit for companies. This can benefit both Nintendo and Sony.

2. Sony has also pushed the boundaries regarding the technical aspects. They have always been at the forefront in this area compared to Nintendo which have always been more traditional here (which suits me fine). Without Sony perhaps Nintendo would not have chosen online for certain games (they are still not prioritating this but anyway, Mario Kart Wii is lovely for instance). Perhaps the Virtual Console, Wiiware and DSiware would not excist without Sony, who knows? The backwards compability was introduced with the PS2 I believe? I loved that. Wii is the first homeconsole from Nintendo to feature this.

3. Sony has pressured Nintendo to keep down the prices on hardware and software. I remember oh so well back in the 80´s and early 90´s when the games for NES and SNES in Sweden where I live actually were more expensive than the games of today!! More competition between companies are good for custumers!

So this is my salute to Sony, a company I do not really like at all and I have probably written more positives here than in my entire earlier posts put together =).

Thank you Sony for pushing Nintendo to do better and be the best they can. Thank you Sony, without you Nintendogames would perhaps be way more expensive. Thank you Sony, without you I do not think I´d have the Wii and DS today. My two favorite consoles together with SNES/NES

Here´s to future consolewars between Nintendo and Sony and their fanboys! Long live the consolewars

That's good I guess. Great post there.

Haxxiy @

Thanks! I think we should do more salutethreads. It´s too much nagging these days =)
Next up I want to see a Sonyfan do a serious salute to Nintendo!

So you must also be grateful to Yamauchi, who caused Sony's birth :)
In the end you must be grateful to Nintendo anyway.

I understand what you mean, even if Sony's idea was not to change Nintendo this is what it caused.

I´m always grateful to Nintendo

From a gaming industry perspective, I truly have no issue with Sony, minus for thinking that it was ok to charge $500-$600 for the PS3 at launch, but they got theirs for that arrogant move.

My gripe with Sony goes much further back in time, when they bastardized the music industry, setting up a system where a musician royalty became even less the the meager amounts from the 50s. THey mastered the perfect trap for any musician dumb enough to believe their promises. Anyway, this is not about that, so I won't dertail the post.

If there is one thing that Sony DIRECTLY did, it was to push Nintendo home consoles away from cartridge based systems to disc based systems. Afterall, if NIntendo wasn't so arrogant, there wouldn't have been a PS1, as Sony was working with Nintendo at the time to make a cd based console. With the PS1, Nintendo realized their mistake and went to discs for the GameCube.

Yes this is true, and it´s one of the things I should have written regarding that Sony is at the forefront when it comes to pushing the technical aspects of things (even though I love the old cartridges).

That's a positive way of looking at it. Sony has helped by thinking of gaming in a broader way.

Microsoft has done it by being very competitive to Sony. There are plenty of great things all the companies have done for the consumers. I don't think competition is necessarily always good, I think that's a fallacy. I mean look at Guitar Hero vs Rock Band, and the N64 dumping all those classic gamers by going in 3D with super inaccessible gameplay. Or the SNES including four buttons at once, and shunning a handful of people who used to play videogames.

Competition is sometimes good, but not always. There needs to be a good balance of good consumer service and not needing to be super competitive.

Well the nightmare would be if the competition gets too rough and the favorite company of yours goes out of business. I shudder at the thought of Nintendo going thirdparty (not that there is any risk for that at the moment or in the near future).

I´m also a traditionalist that loves retrogaming and I agree that competition is not always the best thing if it leads to the dissapearence of nichemarkets. 2d in consolegaming was almost dead for many years just because 3d was seen as the new way to go. Nobody thought that games in 2d would sell on homeconsoles anymore. Thankfully it seems we´re going full circle and that the market today is enriched with games in both 2d and 3d.