Sony made gaming cool.

[enditall727]

RolStoppable said:

History is written by the winners, that's what it comes down to. Those stories are then repeated over and over again until they become accepted as the truth. The biggest irony is that those people who praise the PS1 for making gaming fit for adults usually happened to be kids at the time. Sony happened to be at the right place at the right time, took advantage of Nintendo's and Sega's miscues, and topped it off by selling hardware at a loss and moneyhatting third parties. Two generations later another company would do major damage to Sony by using Sony's playbook.

It's usually ignored that gaming news in the mainstream media was generally negative during the days of PlayStation dominance. You had games like Grand Theft Auto in the news and you can figure what that was about. Sony's marketing and gaming magazines/websites made it seem like gaming had been fully accepted by the mainstream, but if that had truly been the case, then video games wouldn't have been repeatedly used as scapegoats for school shootings and the like. The medium movies doesn't get that treatment, because the mainstream knows what it is about and thus any such news would be laughed at. But video games were still largely reported as being for kids, teenagers or young adults who hadn't reached proper adulthood yet. Grand Theft Auto and the like are not mature games.

Let's look at a post with warped perception:

pokoko said:

First, Sony brought to market a system that was disc-based from the very start. That was an enormous leap forward. You only need to look at Final Fantasy VII to see that. Should Sony get credit for FF VII? Probably not, but we're talking about perception.

Second, in contrast to Nintendo, Sony supported and promoted third-party content. They put it front-and-center and used it to appeal to people who were getting weary of Mario and the limited amount of content you could get from cartridges. This is something we still see today, with Sony running ads for third-party games while Nintendo only advertises their own stuff. Even if Nintendo and Sony had all the same games, the image they seek to create has been different. In all honesty, that's something I fault Nintendo for as much as I credit Sony.

Yes, that's just perception, but it played a huge role with the fourth and fifth generations.

Sony, with the PS2, also decided to stop making consoles look like toys and they added in and promoted media features. Those were smart decisions on their part. That went a long way toward breaking the perception that gaming was only for children.

First, Sony's marketing has indeed done wonders.

Second, Nintendo bundled Street Fighter II with the SNES and promoted it. It was one of the biggest games of its time. We can still see Nintendo promoting third party content today, like the global success of Level 5's Professor Layton series shows, as well as some other games like Monster Hunter. On top of that, Nintendo has often and regularly worked with third parties to bring games to America and/or Europe, the latest example being the upcoming Bravely Default, but it already started on the NES with titles like Dragon Quest.

Third, is the perception of gaming really going to improve by adding non-gaming to video game systems? It's rather the opposite. Adding the ability to watch DVDs is more like confirming that gaming is still for children, as it is nothing more than an attempt to add something of value for the parents (or the wife). I don't think anybody ever watched a movie on their console and then thought that gaming has come a long way.

Then again, the belief that gaming was seen as only for children is a myth built by the marketing teams of Nintendo's competitors. Whether it was Sega, Sony, Microsoft or someone else, the focus of their marketing was always that they are the console for grown-ups which is something that obviously resonates well with people who have yet to grow up. An actual adult wouldn't let any company dictate to them what is mature and what is not.

@ Bolded

 

like me minus the praising part lol

 

I was a kid back then when ps1 came out but i damn sure liked playing games at an early age. I just remember seeing all the adults around me who played PS1