Playstation is nothing more than an interchangeable part of the industry, a name. If PS didn't exist, then something else that's equivalent would have.

wow

light truly blinds.

the industry is what games are made for it so you can thank developers for all of this.

Without PS there would be another competitor instead, there is always going to be another if someone doesn't step in, this isn't some kind of "without them nothing would exist = god" type situation, no without them MS would have still entered but at a different time and most likely aiemd at Nintendo/ the other competitor/Sega.

People give way too much credit to Sony and it's not surprising who's giving too much credit, Nintendo and Sega hardly get any credit at all let alone those before them and I know for a fact someone is going to argue on why no one else deserves all the cred, I'm not up for that type of discussion btw so leave that by the door.

Maybe Microsoft would've acquired Sega in the late 90's, and to compete against Nintendo (and maintain Sega's "cool kids" phase) they start online gaming earlier. Disk based gaming would've been a real problem. Nintendo makes a "hardcore" console to answer MicroSega's online gaming thing. Japanese developers (SquareSoft, Capcom, Konami, etc) go with Nintendo; Western devs (Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc) go with Sega.

This is my view. Nintendo VS Sega would've kept a fierce fight as it was before Sony entered, and since MS is such a big company and gaming was changing, they see a way to enter helping the "struggling" Sega (specially since both were pioneers for online gaming).

We jad very few mature games and it wasnt embraced like it was on the Playstation days cause most devs didnt think there was much comercial potential in there.

Anyway, this discussion is fruitless. All I see on this thread is Nintendo fans downplaying Sony's contribution because they believe only Ninty can do something to change the industry. All 3 companies had specific big impacts and changed the landscape in different areas. But it seems like everyone prefers what fits their agenda.

Saturn couldn't do it. They launched 4 months earlier on the US and flopped hard. The PS1 surpassed its 4-month install base in the first few weeks. The PS1 tech was much better than the Saturn one. Saturn used 2 processors in an obtuse configuration that made it hell to develop for. It was weaker and demanded a lot of effort to simply reach parity with the PS1.

Sega wouldn't be on top. They fucked up the Sega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast in a sequence. Sega post-93 wasn't able to take one single good decision. Sega killed Sega and they were amazingly good at it.

The game industry isn't in a crisis. What's your base to affirm that? PS4 and X1 sold 30M combined consoles in a single year. A lot of new IPs are posting massive sales numbers. Indies now have easy publishing. The biggest issue with PS360 was dev costs allienating the smaller publishers. The improved digital distribution for smaller games actually solved it. You talk about bleeding money while 2K, Activision, EA and other are actually doing great. For each publisher that has issues, we have some publishers that became huge recently, like Warner and Bethesda.

uhh im not so sure if this thread is gonna end well (ive only seen the first page so who knows it maybe very bad now).

all i can say is that without Playstation i may have stopped gaming in my teen days, since i used to play Nintendo games when i was a kid but i got bored of them after a while, and i wasnt interested in some of the other Nintendo games to begin with, so assuming that without Playstation the Xbox wouldnt have been a thing then yeah i may have stopped gaming, (thats the only thing that i can say for sure).

actually no, i may still be playing some RTS games that i used to play on PC from time to time like Homeworld 2, Ryse of Nations, Empire Earth etc

No would be in better conditions

No. There would just be no sony pony's. Another company would have filled the shoes they are in.

Pretty much this. Its ridiculous. And to the people saying that "oh Sony just got lucky" it kills your credibility and makes it hard to take you seriously.