While I love Sony and I've purchased every console they've ever made at least once (sometimes multiple times for myself and as gifts), I love taking every rare opportunity to make fun of their missteps, I'm not going to do that this time.
The PS1 classic never really stood a chance. Unlike 2D consoles, early 3D gaming had aged horrifically. No matter what games were in the library, you'd have a collection of games that were potentially incredible and innovative at the time but are vomit inducing by today's standards. Plus, while there is a but of 90s nostalgia, a lot of people just don't feel the same connection to PS1 games as they do to games from the 8-Bit and 16-Bit era. There was just increasingly more and more distractions at that time. Video games were just part of people's childhood and not the focus.
So why even make a PS1 classic?
Looking at all of the money Nintendo was raking in, it looks like a "no brainer" on paper. Could it have been executed better? Most definitely. You just don't have a lot of people willing to fork out money to play offline games with polygons so low, you can count them. Not when even below mediocre games today absolutely trounce some of the best games from that era.
For the record, I have absolutely no desire for an N64 Classic Mini, either. My fingers ache just thinking about it.
