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.
