Nuvendil said:
LMU Uncle Alfred said:
It may have been an inevitability, but somebody had to start the 3D console era first and then run with it. But more than just the hardware, developers were stepping up their games in other areas as well and consoles and video gaming had started to be looked upon as more mature with the PS1. Developers wanted to try and see how far they could push everything from the looks of it.
Story telling was getting better with FFVI, but past some select moments in FFVI out of the games you mentioned, the writing still needed padding out. There were too many moments that were in a hurry to get to the next scene and rush the narrative along without really having the impact that some of the games on the PS1 had: Xenogears, FF7,9, and Metal Gears Solid come to mind the most. No Sony didn't invent any of that, but neither did Nintendo (besides maybe Earthbound, but that game didn't bring many people interested into it unfortuantely) in the SNES days. That was pretty much just Square. Then Metal Gear Solid was born and brought a new standard of voice acting that had never been heard before. We could actually feel heavy emotion now with voice acting rather than hearing stuff like "Set us up the bomb!" Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3 brought about the survival horror genre and completely redefined horror in video games.
All of this leading up to more cinematic games as the generations went on. They're the AAA games we see now 3 more generations in from the influence the PS1 brought, take them or leave them. As far as I can see, those games are going nowhere. Nintendo still has their market as well, but it's different and usually isn't at the forefront . The Wii was an explosion of a casual trend that died down, but Nintendo did have an idea they might have been able to run with further. We'll have to wait and see how the Switch does in the long run.
|
I guess my point is, you are crediting Sony for what, from what we can tell, was a thing already in motion. Square was already becoming more and more sophisticated in their writing, Konami had already started moving that way with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, etc. Sony was in the right place, at the right time, with the right business strategy. If Sony had stayed out, all this would have happened in some form on the N64 and Saturn. Especially if we assume a direct off shoot of history at the turning point and say Nintendo DID partner with Sony for a disc-based console. But even if it stayed cartridge based, developers would have just worked around it. The industry was already headeding in that direction.
That's what I'm saying, Sony capitalized on what was already being done vs actually causing a revolution like the Xbox (or the 360 in some people's opinions) that initiated the online gaming phenomenon, or the NES which changed the whole way the console business was approached after rebuilding it in the US.
|
