What would have happened in the PS1 vs. N64 thread if...

[sc94597]

Played_Out said:

sc94597 said:

Soleron said:

What happened between SNES and N64 that caused third parties to turn away? Why was Sony, a newcomer, accepted so readily in Nintendo's place?

Nintendo had a policy that only 3-5 games could be made by a publisher, and it can't be shovelware. Developers hated this. That was half of the reason. The other half is that nintendo used Carts in the n64 which were more expensive, and small, but had better load times; while sony had discs which were larger and cheaper,but had longer load times. So developers chose sony.

That's something of a fanboy spin on the situation. In actuality, Nintendo leveraged their market position to charge extortionate fees, and the limit to the number of games publishers could produce wasn't intended to prevent "shovelware" but to give Nintendo a firm stranglehold on the market with their first party product. They also put harsh restrictions on the content of games, which had absolutely nothing to do with quality control (see the Mortal Kombat censorship debacle for evidence).

OT: FF7 could have been released on N64 and it still wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference in Europe. Nintendo had already lost a lot of support in the 16-bit era, and the PSX was the first console to be seen as respectable among young adults.

No it was to prevent another market crash, like the one that happended pre-nes.