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Soundwave on 14 April 2017
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RolStoppable said:
Soundwave said:

1. Nintendo would've destroyed Sony in Japan with FF7 and DQ7 (which actually was originally announced for N64! Yamauchi himself announced this at Shoshinkai 1995). Remember Sony wasn't even able to beat the Sega Saturn in Japan until Final Fantasy VII showed up. They would've been beaten like a red headed step child, likely all the way down into third place in Japan (yes remove the RPG exclusives and break Konami/Capcom exclusivity and they tumble below the Sega Saturn in Japan IMO). 

2. No, but look at that chart, it's hard to deny FF7 coincidentally releases right before PS sales explode. Before that it's sales were I mean lets be real, in 1996 it went through several months where it sold along the lines of the Wii U. Yes, even with Resident Evil and Tomb Raider and WipeOut. Worse than Wii U. It took *two* full years for the Playstation to really start selling worth a lick even in the US. 

3. Sony could money-hat, but if the N64 had actual support it's market adoption, which was already red hot from its record breaking first year would have only accelerated. And which company would then want to limit themselves exclusively to the smaller Playstation audience? Maybe Namco because they apparently hated Nintendo back then, but Capcom, Konami? Nope and nope. Even the Tomb Raider people probably eventually would've told Sony to go pound sand. Exclusivity deals don't happen generally speaking if you don't have the overwhelming userbase advantage to go with it, and Sony does not get said advantage if the N64 has a steady flow of games due to the CD format. 

1. + 3. You really don't see the issue, right? The Saturn was beating the PS1 in Japan, yet only the PS1 got Final Fantasy VII. I've already mentioned that Microsoft managed to buy up JRPGs and Xbox had been doing significantly worse than the PS1 in Japan.

2. Correlation does not mean causation. Final Fantasy VII is the most notable game released at the time, but the immediately ensuing hardware sales comfortably beat the sales of Final Fantasy VII. There was a lot more to this sales increase than Final Fantasy VII.

Playstation was a paper tiger up until late 1997.

Nintendo would've ripped them apart if they had a decent flow of games. N64 was actually demolishing the PSX early on head to head. It's only when the droughts hit the N64 that the tide turned for Sony, otherwise they were eating Nintendo knuckle sandwhiches right and left. 

Hell I think they would have beat Sony WW even with FF taken away (but Dragon Quest would remain), it simply would've been closer. 

Put Final Fantasy on the N64 and it's just a joke. Mario 64, GoldenEye, Zelda: OoT, AND Final Fantasy VII on top of basically all the other third party games being multi-plat?

What the fuck realistically would Sony do? Release a Spyro game? Ohhhh, I'm sure that would've scared Nintendo. 

Nintendo had all the cards. You realize at the time they even outbid Sony for the Star Wars movie franchise? And this is the days before the shitty prequels when Star Wars was like an untouchable thing. They had Kobe Bryant, Ken Griffey Jr., an exclusive DOOM game (when DOOM was the biggest PC franchise), a Starcraft game, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, James Bond, working with DMA Design (the Grand Theft Auto team). They had Rareware of course which is like basically what Naughty Dog is today but they made more games, etc. etc. too. Sony wasn't the only one signing deals. I remember this from way back then and I'm glad this story came out recently, but Nintendo was even actively in discussions for rights to the Harry Potter franchise (as in period) in the late 90s too before it really took off. 

They had some phenomenonal deals then.