d21lewis on 12 July 2014
| JWeinCom said: There is a word for the claim that Sony invented the industry. That word is false. It's simply not true in any way shape or form. You can't even really claim Nintendo invented the industry. You can arguably give the credit to Atari for making the first popular multi cartridge machine or Fairchild for making the first multi cartridge machine. There really isn't any way to say Sony made the market. At best a poor choice of words, at worst just plain silly. The analysis here is laughably biased. Firstly it completely discounts any company that is not Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony. Sega for instance had a lot to do with changing the demographics or gaming. Games like Doom also had a lot to do with expanding the market, and that would spillover to console gaming largely with the advent of Halo. It ridiculously discounts Microsofts success as nothing more than taking advantage of Sony's stumble and not crediting them with excellent marketing and some key titles. It also discounts the Wii's role in expanding the market, which undoubtedly spilled over to the 360 and PS3. I don't mean to discredit what Sony did, but all the same, you can't write off any success Ninty and Microsoft had as either a slip up on Sony's part or a straight fluke. This is an analysis that only carries some sort of weight because Sony is doing well in a young generation which will inevitably see the pendulum swing closer to equilibrium between XBox and Playstation with the Wii U as a wildcard, but its claims are specious. |
The problem we have these days is that "History is written by the winners". We have these young guys that didn't actually experience what was going on at the time thinking that they know what they're talking about. It's like me trying to tell someone about World War II after reading about it in a text book to someone that actually fought in the battles. It just doesn't work. I'll give Sony credit for creating a platform (not even the format which was used by many consoles before the PS1) and letting 3rd parties have a lot of freedoms. I'll leave it at that.
