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

Soundwave on 25 April 2015
Burek said:
I have always been claiming the same (and now as well in that strongest brand thread). Without PS, gaming would still be a fringe hobby catering only to children and hardcore hobbyists, and we would probably have seen a huge decline by the mid 2000s. Sony significantly expanded the market, brought it to be of mainstream relevance, and Microsoft helped significantly to further expand it to online interactions, thus taking it out of the child's bedroom/hobbyist's basement and bringing it to the living rooms worldwide.


Sega was already doing all of that, even Nintendo was pushing ahead with more focus on teenagers/adults by the mid-90s. 

It was inevitable that that was where gaming was going. 

The kids who had an NES were growing up and in their teens/20s by the mid/late 1990s. 



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foxtail on 25 April 2015
DonFerrari said:
foxtail said:

@bold It's not like Nintendo didn't try to help 3rd party games like Final Fantasy sell. Nintendo's official magazine, Nintendo Power (which had a paid subscription base of over 1.5 million at the time), dedicated a whole issue solely to the original Final Fantasy and was a complete guide to the game.  

Nintendo and Square had fairly close relations back then, Squaresoft (the US subsidiary of Square) had headquarters that were located next to Nintendo of America headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

@italic There were some differences betweeen Sony's shares in Square, and Nintendo's shares in Rare.  Square was a publicly traded company, while Rare was not.  Sony purchased a 18.6% stake in Square (which was prior to the Square merger with Enix [it went down to 8.4% after the Square-Enix merger]), Nintnedo's ownership of Rare was 49%.

The Sony purchase of Square stock happened in late 2001.  Square was looking to recoup some of it's losses from the production of it's expensive CGI movie "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within", which was distributed by Sony/Columbia Pictures.   The Sony investment in Square stock was 14.9 billion yen (~$124 million), the production costs for the movie (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) was 16.4 billion yen (~$137 million). 

If Square never made the movie they wouldn't have needed the investment from Sony.

In 2014 Sony sold all its shares in Square Enix to Nikko Securities Inc for 15.3 billion yen.


So your example of Nintendo having great relationship with 3rd parties is one single case? Have your heard of the draconian laws nintendo had with 3rd parties during the NES and SNES? Like total exclusivity with 0 paycheck, just a if you publish anywhere else you can't publish with us? We determine what and when you can publish, etc?

I mentioned Final Fantasy (and Square) specifically because it was being talked about, but 3rd party games were often the focus of Nintendo Power.

Above are just some examples of familiar 3rd party series (Megaman, Final Fantasy, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Street Fighter) that were highlighted in the Nintendo magazine.

The exclusivity deals as reported before was that third parties were allowed to move their games to other platform afters two years time.  Nintendo did have a rule in the US where publishers could only release 5 games per year on the NES, but that rule didn't apply in Japan.  Any enterprising company could get around that rule like Konami did by creating a shell company, and in the US Konami's was Ultra Games.  This 5 game rule was made at a time when cheap/poorly made games were easy to make on the NES, and they didn't want a repeat of what happened to Atari.  They got rid of that rule some time after with the SNES.



fleischr on 25 April 2015

Honestly, what would have happened:
Someone probably would have got SEGA on the right track. We'd be talking about how awesome Dreamcast 4 has been.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

RubberWhistleHistle on 25 April 2015

i think i would prefer the industry without sony in it to be honest with you. i love the playstation, and to a lesser extent the playstation 2, but at this point, the ps3 and ps4 have been incredibly useless, participating in this competition with microsoft that has done nothing but dragged this industry through the mud. they have absolutely no respect for what gaming is.

if it were just nintendo and sega, the differences that i see are 1) gaming would have stayed niche for longer. at this point, it would be a lot more mainstream. 2) online gaming wouldnt be what it is today (which is probably a good thing, guys. think about it) and 3) games would be more evolved than they are now. 90% of the games that are released would focus on the important aspects of gaming rather than cutscenes and turning them into movies



DonFerrari on 25 April 2015
zorg1000 said:
DonFerrari said:


So your example of Nintendo having great relationship with 3rd parties is one single case? Have your heard of the draconian laws nintendo had with 3rd parties during the NES and SNES? Like total exclusivity with 0 paycheck, just a if you publish anywhere else you can't publish with us? We determine what and when you can publish, etc?

I really don't get this argument, if Nintendo's practices to 3rd parties were so evil than why did they continue releasing games for them? Couldn't they have easily said, "fuck off Nintendo!!!!" and developed their games elsewhere?

SG-1000 by Sega literally released the same day as Famicom in Japan and NES shipped a whopping 200,000 in America at the time of the Sega Master System & Atari 7800 releases. 3rd parties had other options if they felt they were being mistreated, yet they stuck by Nintendo's side and kept making games for them.


Because the other platforms weren't viable... if they released for another company they couldn't release for Nintendo, so they would lose the lot bigger enviroment.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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DonFerrari on 25 April 2015
foxtail said:
DonFerrari said:


So your example of Nintendo having great relationship with 3rd parties is one single case? Have your heard of the draconian laws nintendo had with 3rd parties during the NES and SNES? Like total exclusivity with 0 paycheck, just a if you publish anywhere else you can't publish with us? We determine what and when you can publish, etc?

I mentioned Final Fantasy (and Square) specifically because it was being talked about, but 3rd party games were often the focus of Nintendo Power.

Above are just some examples of familiar 3rd party series (Megaman, Final Fantasy, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Street Fighter) that were highlighted in the Nintendo magazine.

The exclusivity deals as reported before was that third parties were allowed to move their games to other platform afters two years time.  Nintendo did have a rule in the US where publishers could only release 5 games per year on the NES, but that rule didn't apply in Japan.  Any enterprising company could get around that rule like Konami did by creating a shell company, and in the US Konami's was Ultra Games.  This 5 game rule was made at a time when cheap/poorly made games were easy to make on the NES, and they didn't want a repeat of what happened to Atari.  They got rid of that rule some time after with the SNES.

And was that a good 3rd partie relationship?? Nintendo still don't know how to properly foster their relationship with 3rd parties.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari on 25 April 2015
RubberWhistleHistle said:
i think i would prefer the industry without sony in it to be honest with you. i love the playstation, and to a lesser extent the playstation 2, but at this point, the ps3 and ps4 have been incredibly useless, participating in this competition with microsoft that has done nothing but dragged this industry through the mud. they have absolutely no respect for what gaming is.

if it were just nintendo and sega, the differences that i see are 1) gaming would have stayed niche for longer. at this point, it would be a lot more mainstream. 2) online gaming wouldnt be what it is today (which is probably a good thing, guys. think about it) and 3) games would be more evolved than they are now. 90% of the games that are released would focus on the important aspects of gaming rather than cutscenes and turning them into movies


We all know you would.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Materia-Blade on 25 April 2015
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Materia-Blade said:

Isn't that exactly what sony and ms do?


 They've never done anything short of paying for exclusivity. What Nintendo did was strong arm people into putting tech in their hardware preventing third party from venturing out and going multiplat. It was a scare tactic. Atari thought it was Nintendo trying to create a monopoly but it was really just Nintendo using strong arm tactics to hold down and force third party games to be exclusive. Its amazing how much people rationalize this stuff and no, MS and Sony have never done this.

"They've never done anything short of paying for exclusivity"

So very wrong. Paying for other systems not to get games is the first that comes to mind.



Materia-Blade on 25 April 2015
DonFerrari said:
foxtail said:

I mentioned Final Fantasy (and Square) specifically because it was being talked about, but 3rd party games were often the focus of Nintendo Power.

Above are just some examples of familiar 3rd party series (Megaman, Final Fantasy, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Street Fighter) that were highlighted in the Nintendo magazine.

The exclusivity deals as reported before was that third parties were allowed to move their games to other platform afters two years time.  Nintendo did have a rule in the US where publishers could only release 5 games per year on the NES, but that rule didn't apply in Japan.  Any enterprising company could get around that rule like Konami did by creating a shell company, and in the US Konami's was Ultra Games.  This 5 game rule was made at a time when cheap/poorly made games were easy to make on the NES, and they didn't want a repeat of what happened to Atari.  They got rid of that rule some time after with the SNES.

And was that a good 3rd partie relationship?? Nintendo still don't know how to properly foster their relationship with 3rd parties.

They totally do, but nintendo's will alone isn't enough because of everything that happens behind the curtains.



RubberWhistleHistle on 25 April 2015
DonFerrari said:
RubberWhistleHistle said:
i think i would prefer the industry without sony in it to be honest with you. i love the playstation, and to a lesser extent the playstation 2, but at this point, the ps3 and ps4 have been incredibly useless, participating in this competition with microsoft that has done nothing but dragged this industry through the mud. they have absolutely no respect for what gaming is.

if it were just nintendo and sega, the differences that i see are 1) gaming would have stayed niche for longer. at this point, it would be a lot more mainstream. 2) online gaming wouldnt be what it is today (which is probably a good thing, guys. think about it) and 3) games would be more evolved than they are now. 90% of the games that are released would focus on the important aspects of gaming rather than cutscenes and turning them into movies


We all know you would.

Is all you read the first sentence? lol