Without Playstation, would the industry be in another crisis?

[DonFerrari]

Mandalore76 said:

DonFerrari said:
This thread became a "Sony can do no right" any other company would have done better. That certainly explain why all other big companies failed before.

And the "Nintendo can do no wrong" like if Sony wasn't around Nintendo would do things different and would be Friends with 3rd parties. Its been 20 years and they still haven't learned how to do it even with Sony and Ms showing it.

And the "Sega would thrive"... Stop blaming others for the failures. This is like saying if Bill Gates wasn't billionaire I could be. Sega was screwing up already during Genesis with the add-ons and Sony can't be responsible for the bad decisions they made. I love Sega and would love they staying around but they burned themselves.

No, I don't think that's the case at all.  The basis of the thread is "Sony is the only company that could have kept the video game industry alive" which is what myself and many of the other posters are disputing (see Zorg1000's breakdown of growth in NA by generation).  Everyone is pointing out how Microsoft wouldn't be in the market without Sony entering first.  Well, why is Sony in the market?  Because Nintendo asked them to develop the PlayStation in the first place, which would have been their 1st disk based platform.  Nintendo torpedoed their own deal, and Sony rather than scrap the whole project when they already had a ready to go console, released it anyway.  You are playing a "What If?" game, and as I have stated before, in a "What If?" game, you can't say "this is the ONLY way it could have happened".  That's incomprehensibly narrow-minded.  Nobody is blaming Sony for Sega's failure.  But can you really say for 100% fact that Sony's arrival into the market (direct result of Nintendo, much like Germany delivering Lenin on a train to Russia to topple the tsar turned out to create a larger nemesis for them later) was a contributing factor in Sega's demise?  Why can't you accept "What If?" scenarios in that spectrum where Sega doesn't feel a need to rush the Sega Saturn to market, and doesn't have a $100 cheaper also disk-based system to compete with?  Look at Sony's early advertising campaign with Crash Bandicoot.  It's directly ripped from Sega's attack ads against Nintendo that were helping Sega gain marketshare during the Genesis' ("Genesis does what Nintendon't") lifetime.  Of course Sega led to it's own downfall the same way Atari led to it's own demise.  Only, Atari collapsed the entire industry, but a Sega collapse regardless of Sony being present or not wouldn't have had that effect. 

You can't pose a "What If?" question and refuse to accept scenarios that you don't like.  I can't say for a fact that Sega, or a Nintendo disk-based console in the absence of Sony in the market would have thrived to level of the PlayStation brand anymore than you can say for a fact that no company except for Sony could have done that.  It's all answers to a fictional question.  All the answers will be fictional.  And that means, there can't only be 1 correct answer.

By the way, your analogy at the end is ridiculous.  It would be more like saying if Bill Gates didn't exist, NO ONE else could have created a Microsoft-type company.  For example, Guglielmo Marconi is credited by many to have invented radio.  But, he used 17 of Nikola Tesla's patents to do so.  So without Marconi (who was backed by Thomas Edison in America), Tesla was already making huge strides in this field (in fact, he was ready to transmit a signal across a 50 mile span 6 years before Marconi transmitted his trans-atlantic signal if not for the fire that consumed his laboratory in 1895).  It all goes to my point that you can't say, with the 100% certainty that you guys are claiming, this person/corporation did this and he/she/they are the only ones who ever could have possibly done so. 

A what if scenario where just because Sony isn't there Nintendo wouldn't screw up third parties (which they were since nes and still do) doesn't make sense. Or that sega wouldn't made the mistakes they were already doing before since Genesis.

 

And for other manufacturers a lot released system and failed and others had show no interest. So to suppose someone else would is a little hard but possible. You can say that if Nintendo didn't save gaming Sony wouldn't enter and I would agree (funny is that Nintendo fan will forever say they saved as if no one else would). If Planck, Einstein, newton and all other didn't exist would we reach what we have today? Quite possible since nature is the same and others would observe it, but it would probably take more time. Same for this case, if Sony didn't do it then maybe someone would but also would take longer because otherwise they would had appeared even before Sony and independent to it.

 

So if Nintendo didn't exist we would get similar and possibly better games than what they do since without their competition more companies would try those genres right? Or just what Nintendo do is exclusive capacity of them?