i'll stick with Mr t on the one. it's all plosable, but i don't think it would've made a diff. at all.it might have resulted in Sony having a smaller market share but in the end Sony was just positioned to win 

Really don't like playing the "what if" games for things like this.  Problem being, none of us know what would have happened if a scenario had been slightly different.  Like in the Halo topic, maybe if Halo didn't exist the Xbox wouldn't have taken off.  Who really knows.  Maybe if things with the PS1 had been slightly different, they may not have been as successful.  I really don't know nor do I care because it isn't what happened.  Now if you want to talk about how would I have felt if no PS1 existed or how would it have affected the industry had it not been successful, then those are things I can talk about.  But ones that try to flip scenarios around for that kinda thing, no thank you.

Would history had been the same if history had been different?

Well to be honest I think PSOne was most successful due to the use of CD's which were far cheaper then Carts. Nintendo64 put Nintendo in a similiar position to what PS3 suffered early on, too much power at too high of a cost.

However if Nintendo had not dropped their deal with Sony I think Sony would not have entered the industry at all and there would be no PlayStation 2, 3 and PSP. Nintendo screwed up.

What changes could Sega , Commodore , Atari and Nintendo have made to beat Sony?

Sega - Could have planned the Saturn's launch alot better giving developers more time to develope software and given the hardware a cheaper retail price. Sega could have also had their Sonic game ready for market earlier rather then cancelling it. I think Sonic's prescense on the Saturn could have shifted millions of units. In other words Sega needed software which they lacked both first and second party. The big names like Sonic were missing a key reason Sony crushed them so bad.

Nintendo - Nintendo had the potential to blow PSOne out of the water graphically. However their past dealings with third parties hurt third party support and Nintendo did nothing to remedy the situation. Also cartridges were far too expensive. If Nintendo had done something to reduce the retail cost of carts down to 60$ and in turn increased third party software numbers they could have crushed Sony.

Commodore - I couldn't see Commodore giving Sony a run for its money. The Amiga was great and had decent support but it wasn't a console so to say. If Commodore had produced a console it may have done alright but Sony , Nintendo and Sega would have chewed them up and spit them out before they even had a chance to compete.

Atari - I noticed you forgot Atari. Atari also released the Jaguar. I think the reason Jaguar didn't pose much of a threat to anyone was the lack of Atari first party titles. I mean the most notable title was Alien V.S Preditor which itself was a monumental game that would be remembered and have implications even today. If Atari had created some solid software maybe a few new IP's to compete with Mario , Sonic , Spyro and Crash they could have made a place for themselves in the market and inturn turned up the heat on Sony.

In the end Nintendo and Sega are the only two that could have dethroned Sony had they acted differently. I think it came down to hardware/software costs and third party support both factors again Nintendo and Sega. Had both companies put more effort into remedeying the situation things would have gone way differently for Sony!

The Amiga CD32 WAS a standalone games console. It was developed with the intention of Commodore reflecting it's success in the home computer market with the videogame console market. However, Commodore never had the funds to fully market it properly, and Commodore didn't last as long as the demand for this system.

I tell ya one thing, if Commodore hadn't screwed up and died, I wouldn't be a Playstation fan. Was Commodore that really got me into gaming, and my nostalgic favourites are all Commodore.

Revisionist history. I think if Nintendo went CD with the Nintendo 64, then they would have eaten into Sony to an extent where Sony and Nintendo sold both on parity. Looking at the numbers:

PS1 - 102 million consoles sold

N64 - 35 million consoles sold

Saturn - 9 million consoles sold

3DO - 2 million consoles sold

Jaguar - 250,000 consoles sold

Amiga - 100,000 consoles sold

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(fifth_generation)

I think the numbers for PS1 and the N64 would be more on par with the PS1 winning the generation by a 60/40 split of the total. Sony selling  60 percent of the total and Nintendo selling 40 percent of the total. The others and Sega would have been shellacked out of their rubber rafts from Sony and Nintendo's battleship cannons rendering their split of the total sold negligible at best.

What would have been the consequences for Nintendo using CD technology from the N64 on?

1. The GameCube would have sold more due to being a multi-media device.

2. The GameCube would have had DVD playback capability, which was a factor in the PS2 selling so much.

3. Sony, more than likely, would have left the market midway to late through the 6th generation.

From the N64 on, I believe Nintendo screwed the pooch by creating systems with funky cartridges and mini discs. Nintendo in it's arrogance, did not see consoles selling so much due to their multi-media nature.

Hell, for it's time the PS2 was the cheapest entry level DVD player and that is a big reason why it sold so much from the get go.

Sony didn't have a clue when they first kicked off the PS1 brand.  They had their horrendous "Polygon Man" add campaign and a bunch of games like Warhawk and Twisted Metal that were decent but weren't really endearing themselves with the public.  People were more than happy to wait for the N64 (Nintendo even had the ad saying that it was worth waiting for "if you want the best").  Initially, it seemed like the one year lead that Nintendo gave Sony and Sega didn't mean a thing.  But then Nintendo's delays in getting good games to market, the expensive nature of cartridges, and the fact that third parties were flocking to the PS1 made Sony the place to be when it came to quality gaming. 

^^This was Sony's first PS1 mascot.  The weight of the PS1's success was on his non existent shoulders!

The PS1 was far from a hardware powerhouse.  Sega burned its fans time and time again, turning people against the Saturn before it had even launched.  Nintendo was overconfident, thinking that people would still rely on them and their reputation, and released a system with an outdated medium (cartridges) and high prices despite innovations like the Rumble Pak and Analog Stick.  Sony just sat back as third parties decided that "they weren't going to take it anymore" and released mega-hit after mega-hit on the PS1.  As the saying goes, "Pride comes before the fall."  Nintendo was too proud.

I owned well over 100 PS1 games.  I remember listing  all of the games that Sony had made that I owned.  If memory serves me, all I had from Sony was Crash Bandicoot 3, Omega Boost, Wild Arms (I think that was from Sony), Battle Arena Toshinden (again, not quite sure if Sony made it), and Gran Turismo.  Third parties made the PS1 king of the mountain.

-In my opinion.

Nintendo lost my business when SE jumped ship to Sony.

It was a toss up between FF and Zelda, More FF releases typically per console = bye nintendo

And that hideous friggin N64 controller, ugh

Yes they do nintendo only works in the video game business.Sony on the other had if they managed to die out still produces tv's, computer,  movie players etc etc.