Without Playstation, would the industry be in another crisis?

[Bofferbrauer]

Where would we be? Hmmm...

First off, with the Playstation out of the picture, SEGAs Saturn and Dreamcast consoles would have sold alot better, preventing them from having to leave the hardware market.

Considering that the Xbox (in a different form than the final product, but still) was already a project Bill Gates wanted to create sometime since even the announcement of the Playstation, and this really gaining momentum after the adapted WindowsCE OS in the Dreamcast, I'd doubt we owe SONY really much for Microsofts console. So we'd still have 3 players in the market.

Videogame development from third parties wouldn't have changed by a single inch from how it went here in the real world, with one exeption: No Singstar clones. Until mid-2000' the main development focus of western development companies was still the PC (which doesn't change here), and japanese developers would have SEGA instead of SONY as a potential selling plattform. So, really no changes at all here. What could have changed is the distribution between the consoles: I'd doubt a current gen Nintendo console in that timeline would have to do without western third party support and the games would be more evenly distributed (although the Xbox still would take the cake in therms of third party support, owning to its PC ties).

As for first party titles, we'd miss Sonys first party titles of course, but probably also Segas Total War series on PC. On the other Hand Sega would have developed more games to sell their consoles, and considering how many IP lay dormant at Sega I'd say we are actually missing out many more games than they do.

One big, often overlooked change: No PSP/PSV means no real contestant to Nintendos handheld emporium. That is, unless Sega would reenter that market again after the Game Gear and the Nomad, something we simply don't know.

And finally: Without the Playstation, which was and still is THE selling engine of Sonys other products since the turn of the millienium, Sony would most probably have gone bankrupt by now.