Would Sony have survived the 5th generation.....

[Joelcool7]

Well to be honest I think PSOne was most successful due to the use of CD's which were far cheaper then Carts. Nintendo64 put Nintendo in a similiar position to what PS3 suffered early on, too much power at too high of a cost.

However if Nintendo had not dropped their deal with Sony I think Sony would not have entered the industry at all and there would be no PlayStation 2, 3 and PSP. Nintendo screwed up.

What changes could Sega , Commodore , Atari and Nintendo have made to beat Sony?

Sega - Could have planned the Saturn's launch alot better giving developers more time to develope software and given the hardware a cheaper retail price. Sega could have also had their Sonic game ready for market earlier rather then cancelling it. I think Sonic's prescense on the Saturn could have shifted millions of units. In other words Sega needed software which they lacked both first and second party. The big names like Sonic were missing a key reason Sony crushed them so bad.

Nintendo - Nintendo had the potential to blow PSOne out of the water graphically. However their past dealings with third parties hurt third party support and Nintendo did nothing to remedy the situation. Also cartridges were far too expensive. If Nintendo had done something to reduce the retail cost of carts down to 60$ and in turn increased third party software numbers they could have crushed Sony.

Commodore - I couldn't see Commodore giving Sony a run for its money. The Amiga was great and had decent support but it wasn't a console so to say. If Commodore had produced a console it may have done alright but Sony , Nintendo and Sega would have chewed them up and spit them out before they even had a chance to compete.

Atari - I noticed you forgot Atari. Atari also released the Jaguar. I think the reason Jaguar didn't pose much of a threat to anyone was the lack of Atari first party titles. I mean the most notable title was Alien V.S Preditor which itself was a monumental game that would be remembered and have implications even today. If Atari had created some solid software maybe a few new IP's to compete with Mario , Sonic , Spyro and Crash they could have made a place for themselves in the market and inturn turned up the heat on Sony.

 

In the end Nintendo and Sega are the only two that could have dethroned Sony had they acted differently. I think it came down to hardware/software costs and third party support both factors again Nintendo and Sega. Had both companies put more effort into remedeying the situation things would have gone way differently for Sony!