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SvennoJ on 14 July 2025
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RolStoppable said:
zorg1000 said:

I really think the whole “PlayStation made gaming cool for older gamers” is overplayed. That’s just a side effect of 80s kids becoming teens/young adults & graphics becoming more realistic in the mid-late 90s.

For example, let’s say you were born in 1980 and got an NES with Super Mario Bros in 1986, then got a Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. That kid is now 16-18 when games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy & Metal Gear Solid released on PS1. Kids who play games become teens & adults who play games.

As for graphics playing a part, a bunch of games in the late 80s wouldn’t have been viewed as kids games if graphics weren’t so primitive, some examples are Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Castlevania, Splatterhouse, Metal Gear, Altered Beast, etc.

In 92/93 we started to see games like Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, Wolfenstein & Doom make waves for their depictions of violence, not because games all of a sudden became violent but because advancements in technology made the violence more realistic.

PlayStation became the “cool” console for teens & adults but they didn’t create that market, the industry was already trending in that direction and would have continued to with or without PS, what Sony did do was capitalize on the mistakes that Sega & Nintendo were making with their hardware in that time period and became the go-to console for those games.

It is indeed overplayed. There's a reason why Nintendo fans tend to be older than PS fans.

Additionally, if the PS1 and PS2 had made gaming truly mainstream, there would have never been so much outrage about the Wii drawing in adults.

That's now, not at the time Playstation launched.

A key factor for Nintendo's older audience is nostalgia.Games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom evoke strong feelings of nostalgia for many players, helping to retain their loyalty

You don't have Nostalgia at age 16-20...

N64 (32m) sold far less than SNES (49m), GC less again (22m).
Compared to PS1 101m and PS2 160m.

What outrage are you talking about? The Wii was groundbreaking in that it opened gaming to the entire family, to enjoy together. That's how Wii Sports became so successful, everyone from 4 to 90 wanted to try it. And indeed nostalgia started to play a part as well by the time the Wii released.