| Burek said: I have always been claiming the same (and now as well in that strongest brand thread). Without PS, gaming would still be a fringe hobby catering only to children and hardcore hobbyists, and we would probably have seen a huge decline by the mid 2000s. Sony significantly expanded the market, brought it to be of mainstream relevance, and Microsoft helped significantly to further expand it to online interactions, thus taking it out of the child's bedroom/hobbyist's basement and bringing it to the living rooms worldwide. |
I wouldn't be so quick to say this. Mortal Kombat, and other games with massive amounts of violence existed long before playstation. I don't think an older audience would have came by as quickly had it not been for playstation, but it was going to be a turning point with all the sports games, violent games, and ever increasing power of technology.
Had there been no Sony, Sega would still be in the console race as they wouldn't have felt pressure to rush the saturn, nor the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast would have seen titles like Fable, Crazy Taxi, etc. And, the Saturn would have been a much bigger hit with the crowd. Sega, with their risk taking (The sega genesis had its own version of PSN) and you could even play against each other online in Japan, if I'm not mistaken, though it lagged.
But, the major factor in my reasoning is that sega had ideas, and took the risks to put them out there. The only thing is they didn't take off because Sony was always in the back of their mind, causing them to rush consoles and not get the exposure they needed.
You speak of a decline, but you have to realise, if you are Nintendo, or Sega, and the entire market is going into a decline, what do you do? Eventually, SOMEONE would have gotten the idea to go after the older crowd, like Sony thought to do.
