Fei-Hung said:
Would have to disagree here. Sony's success against Sega and Nintendo came from 3 things: 1) Arcades and Namco: arcades were massively relevant and Namco and Sony formed the perfect partnership to offer that arcade experience at home with Tekken, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis and Soul Calibur. 2) Price: it was cheaper than the Saturn 3) CD: although people have this story of Sony money hatting for FF7, it's been reiterated over and over the CD is what sold Square on making the game on the PS1. 4) peripherals: dance mats, light guns, memory card to take your save with you 5) a metric shit ton of games and often much cheaper than the competition. This still goes today as Nintendo barely drops the prices of their games or systems. Edit: I said 3 things and listed 5 🤦ðŸ½â™‚ï¸ |
What was organic with the PS1 without relying on taking what was made successful by its competitors? Sony's success was admitted with their very own documentary of the PS1 in Playstation Museum. They mentioned that they could not complete with Nintendo and Sega's well-established IPs so they needed to round up 3rd party developers. These developers didn't just switch from the market leader console to a console unknown if it would sell well for nothing. Sony had to convince them.
Square's CEO at the time said the reason Square and Nintendo's relationship fell apart was due to the fact Sony offered Square a deal they knew Nintendo could not match and knew if they accepted it, Nintendo would be mad. Nintendo told square if you sign with Sony dont come back. Hence no FF games on Nintendo systems for generations.
CDs and 3D tech at the time weren't on majority of devs radar. Many had zero experience with 3D tech and CDs loading times weren't attractive. It took Segas Virtual Fighter to help Sony convince devs to switch to PS1.
Sony literally did everything they can to round up 3rd party developers to support the console. It wasn't organic.
