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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Without Playstation, would the industry be in another crisis?

atomicblue on 20 April 2015

Without Sony? Nah.

Okay, we'd lose a couple of good franchises (Uncharted and TLOU, mostly) but Sony are known more for their strong third-party support than for great games they develop themselves. Most of those developers would just be making games for the Wii U or Xbox One instead. Given how negative the reaction was to XO when it was unveiled, Wii U would probably have got a lot of the good publicity that Sony got.

If Nintendo were gone, on the other hand... they have a huge range of IPs that have been extremely well-regarded and influential over the years. Imagine a world with no Mario or Mario Kart, no Zelda, no Metroid, no Pokémon, no Animal Crossing, no Fire Emblem or Xenoblade or Smash...



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Mnementh on 20 April 2015
gatito said:
At least we can all agree that we're glad Atari screwed up.

I disagree.

"Looking for outside investors, in 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for an estimated $28–32 million"

"Nolan continued to have disagreements with Warner Management over the direction of the company"

"In December of that year during a heated argument between Nolan Bushnell and Manny Gerard, Bushnell was fired."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari

That Bushnell was pushed out of the company was the heart of the problem. Bushnell had formed the gaming market like no one else, even before Atari with the first commercial arcade machine. He understood the heart of gaming development as a form of art that can be used to make profit. Warner only saw the profit and made very wrong decisions. With Bushnell in lead the gaming crash of 1983 probably could have been avoided. I don't agree that we can be glad Atari screwed up, I only agree that we can be glad a Warner-led Atari screwed up.



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naruball on 20 April 2015
Mnementh said:
naruball said:
Always sad to see people unable to have a mature discussion and showing a need to downplay the significance of a console/company simply because they don't like them. At least there are a few who understand the importance of all 3 of them.

The industry would have been much different without any one of the big three. I don't think it'd be in crisis without ps, but overall sales would have probably been down massively. Just because apple or Amazon could have stepped in, doesn't mean they would have done well.

Apple even was there and failed, no way they could have provided a proper replacement for PS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

Forgot about that. Good point.



walsufnir on 20 April 2015
generic-user-1 said:
Sega saturn would have sold alot better. and sega wouldnt have been so broke.
the PS got lucky and the saturn didnt, thats all. sony didnt do much for this succes, they were there when first nintendo fucked it up and than sega fucked it up.
the games that pushed the PS the hardest would have been made anyway.


At least in Germany, Sony did a lot for their success. They stomped the competition with ads on TV and magazines and were very successful to give the PS brand an image of cool and mature gaming and this image still lives on until today.



Azzanation on 20 April 2015

Of course not, Gaming would always be relevant and there are plently out there that game not on a PS system. In fact PS only make up alittle of the market. Dont forget you have PC gamers, Nintendo gamers, Xbox gamers, Portable gamers, Tablet gamers, Phone gamers, Arcade gamers etc.

To single out PS making gaming what it is today is far from the truth. Nintendo saved gaming back in the Video game crisis of the 80s/90s, ever since then, gaming has never fallen to that level. Infact gaming has grown more on PC then any other platform.

PS contribute but so does Xbox and mark my words this generation both X1 and PS4 will end up on the same level of sales as did the 360 and PS3. If you want to compare sales then Nintendo have sold more consoles in there history including there unstoppable portable devices.

All 4 contribute to each other. Without Xbox and PS going toe to toe with each other then expect another PS3 launch with overly expensive hardware, without PC expect no push for better hardware and without Nintendo there would be no push for quality games and franchises.



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zorg1000 on 20 April 2015
Aeolus451 said:
d21lewis said:
Gaming was getting bigger and bigger with every generation. That's why Playstation became a thing in the first place. They just wanted a piece of the pie. They were the winner in an era where 3D gaming was finally able to be done decently.

Some of the franchises that "wouldn't exist without Playstation" were multi-plat (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider) so I'm not sure how that would work.


Resident Evil started out on playstation and sold very well. It was later ported to other consoles after it sold well. If playstation wasn't around for the game to be released on and find success with, the series would of never became a series. Nintendo wouldn't touch a game like that then. I doubt the game would of be no where near as successful on a sega console. Sega was dying as a console maker regardless if playstation entered the market or not. 

It's the same story with Silent Hill and other games. 

Why wouldn't Nintendo touch Resident Evil back then? Mortal Kombat, Doom, Killer Instinct, Turok are all M rated games Nintendo allowed on SNES/N64 in the mid-90s.



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naruball on 20 April 2015
Azzanation said:

All 4 contribute to each other. Without Xbox and PS going toe to toe with each other then expect another PS3 launch with overly expensive hardware, without PC expect no push for better hardware and without Nintendo there would be no push for quality games and franchises.

I get that games like The Last of Us, Uncharted, Infamous, Bloodborne, Journey, Little Big Planet, God of War, Forza, Halo, and Gears may not be your cup of tea. But how anyone can deny that they are quality titles is truly beyond me.



Aeolus451 on 20 April 2015
zorg1000 said:
Aeolus451 said:


Resident Evil started out on playstation and sold very well. It was later ported to other consoles after it sold well. If playstation wasn't around for the game to be released on and find success with, the series would of never became a series. Nintendo wouldn't touch a game like that then. I doubt the game would of be no where near as successful on a sega console. Sega was dying as a console maker regardless if playstation entered the market or not. 

It's the same story with Silent Hill and other games. 

Why wouldn't Nintendo touch Resident Evil back then? Mortal Kombat, Doom, Killer Instinct, Turok are all M rated games Nintendo allowed on SNES/N64 in the mid-90s.


Resident Evil was released on playstation and shortly after was ported to Sega Saturn and pc. Why didn't nintendo get a port? Hmm. That's interesting.

2 years later Resident Evil 2 was released on playstation and a year later it was ported to nintendo 64. Nintendo didn't seem that interested in a third party mature themed game until it sold well on other consoles. 



generic-user-1 on 20 April 2015
walsufnir said:
generic-user-1 said:
Sega saturn would have sold alot better. and sega wouldnt have been so broke.
the PS got lucky and the saturn didnt, thats all. sony didnt do much for this succes, they were there when first nintendo fucked it up and than sega fucked it up.
the games that pushed the PS the hardest would have been made anyway.


At least in Germany, Sony did a lot for their success. They stomped the competition with ads on TV and magazines and were very successful to give the PS brand an image of cool and mature gaming and this image still lives on until today.


PR is now considered doing much? they went for the casuals and made gaming "cool". thats something bad not good.



Train wreck on 20 April 2015

"That's my point here. If you removed PlayStation, the third party games would still exist on other platforms and the growth that was achieved by the PS1 would have been achieved by other console manufacturers. And the software that was put out by third parties wouldn't have really changed because the seeds for what was made in the fifth generation were already planted during the middle of the fourth generation."

And what company would that have been? Toyota? Canon?  Lets list all the big conglomerates who failed to make a gaming console that expanded gaming before Sony and the playstation:

Asia:

Panasonic (formally Matsushita Electric), Sanyo, LG with the 3DO, released...1 year before the Playstation

NEC

US:

All American manufactures dropped out with the video game crash of the 80s and Atari was on its last legs as a console manufacturer

Europe:

Phillips with the CD-i

Sony was one of the only ones left and the one with the best chance as they pretty much mirrored Nintendo since the mid 80s.  They understand the videogame console market better than all the above.