LMU Uncle Alfred said:
Nuvendil said:
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.
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We have no idea what could have been in the future you're thinking of. There's too many possibilities.
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No, we can't be sure. But there's no signs that these developers were going to walk out on their only revenue stream. And they follow install bases, especially back then. And pre-FFVII, the N64 was on a dominant run. So if the PS1 hadn't been there, it's a pretty logical conclusion to reach that devs would have gone with the N64 or the Saturn, depending on the game.
We can't predict with absolute certainty, but we can figure out probabilities decently well. And I say it is highly probable most of the developments in game design that happened on the PS1 would have come to pass elsewhere as devs were already heading thatw ay and the market was still plenty lucrative.
