padib said: Alby_da_Wolf said: LOL, Ninty's giant crow ended up pecking at Ninty's arse itself. Ninty only did good to Square and got utterly shafted. To be honest not something to cheer, esp. that Nintendo's existence was almost jeopardised. The company that allowed console gaming to exist, don't forget that Sony basically stole the market from Nintendo, which mainly Nintendo had built, it paints another picture. You probably wouldn't be a Sony gamer had Nintendo not been a true raven.

You must be really young if you don't remember that there were far more console makers before Ninty conquered a near monopolistic market domination for almost ten years, interrupted just by the first Playstation. Sure, Ninty rose on the ashes of competitors burned by a big crisis, but from then on it actively prevented most of them to rise again and new competitors to rise for years, only Sega could barely compete for long period. Sure Sony just interrupted the monopoly, but it did nothing to increase plurality, MS could enter the market just by the brute force of its money and the force of its brand in PC market, while the new trimurti of console gaming merrily crushed poor Sega, the only survivor left, besides Ninty itself, of console golden age.
BTW, I'm not a Sony gamer, I'm a PC and Android one, the last console I owned was the Intellivision. I was on the brink of buying a PSV, because I tried it and it was the first portable of which I ever felt really comfortable with the form factor and control layout, but its commercial decline and the rise of cheap tablets made me change my mind. OTOH both my sister and some of my ex-gf's had a GameBoy, but I never liked it enough to buy one. Tried DS, I liked it more than GB, but still not enough, then 3DS came and I really didn't like its 3D screen. PSP, I liked some games, but unlike PSV, and despite having a control layout just a little different, it gave me hand cramps after playing for a while, so I didn't buy it either.

Yes and that's the thing. If you were a business who would you trust? A company that established a good relationship with you over quite a period of time or another one from a related but dfferent industry that pushed to enter the same market. It was a risky move by Square, no doubt, but in the end it seemed to pay off. However, perhaps it had been possible to not fuck up Nintendo's relationship at the same time. Other companies had parallel relations with Sega for example, so maybe Square would have been able to do as well. It's impossible to tell nowadays, I guess. But turning FF into a Playstation exclusive was definitely risky and backstabbed Nintendo who seemed pretty surprised by this move. What possible reason could have been there for Square to turn to a newby in the playground and go all in with all games from that moment on. One big reason was obviously the money and another the creative freedom. I'm sure both would have been negotiable with Nintendo as well, however.

It's an interesting story and it ultimately lead to the competitive situation we're in today.

salt and trolling basicly

Yes, I'm pretty sure Sony pushed the marketing of FFVII to unknown hights and took a major part of the costs. This in turn made the game reach a much bigger audience. Square was able to create the game they envisioned, unbound by storage capacities and with a nice cash boost by Sony. Sony happily made this game their flagship title for the Playstation because they knew what kind of big deal it was. Win win.

I think Nintendo was indeed very strict with third parties, and we all already know why they were that way and how that created the gaming market that we know today. I think they were not ready to let third parties go a little loose at that point. They probably should have trusted them more. Or at least some of them. And this distrust may have been a reason why many third parties turned their backs. However, I find it pretty tasteless and salty by Square to actively convince other third parties to stop developing games for Nintendo. I feel like this is kicking your opponent when he's already down.

At the end of the day I think it was a combination of several reasons. Nintendo, Square and Sony all played a part in this story, so putting the blame into one's shoes like some of the people in this thread are trying to is just too simple. But at the end of the day all of this lead to several new developments: Nintendo's relationship with third parties is nowadays better than ever, Square is desperately trying to reignite Final Fantasy's magic and doesn't understand what made it big anymore, Nintendo publishes most of Square's Wii, DS, 3DS and Switch games, and Sony became a major player in the gaming industry.

You missed out on some of the best gaming experiences if you think the golden age of gaming started with the N64/PS1.

It was a golden age as a still vastly unexplored world, full of opportunities, with many console companies naïvely thinking they could have thrived.
Some consoles, like Intellivision and ColecoVision, had better HW, particularly their standard controllers, than competitors, but their managements weren't good enough and they eventually lost the war, while, Atari, the first leader, fell badly from its throne.
I tend to prefer games from '97 to around 2005, and some newer ones too, and I expect even better things in the future, I can see and I appreciate progress in game development (most of all I appreciated when the switch to 32bit and even better 64bit allowed to have really vast and detailed gaming worlds), but golden age isn't necessarily the best of all time, it's more an age when there were still fewer, and less refined, actual things than future opportunities, but everything looked possible, sooner or later.
That early simple gaming style isn't my favourite anymore, but I sometimes still miss it a bit.
BTW the Mario franchise, probably still the most successful ever, was born in that golden age, but Ninty was the first to lose part of that early innocence and turn it into a rarely failing and lethally focused gaming business instinct.
As for Sony and Ninty, I like what they do and I like and acknowledge their contribution to gaming, but I can also see how their overwhelming domination eventually crushed the remaining competition, and MS can be the right thing for many gamers (still far fewer than those that play on PC and just happen to use a MS OS because it's the most widespread there), but it isn't a proper replacement for what got lost in the console world.

I guess you are confusing better deal with cheaper. That is a big mistake. Both companies and customers look for the better deal, and each consider value in a different way. Just look for any premium product.

Why would anyone call pre-NES of golden era? We have only improved since them.

EDIT: I see why you say that, but don't really agree.

just like the 1600s were the golden age, its relative to the state of that time

It's funny, back in the days when it was announced that FF VII will not be released for N64 but instead exclusively go to PS I didn't saw it as a big deal. I knew that the FF-series is big in Japan and has some fans in the US but weren't even published in good old Europe. Just because of that fact I thought the FF-series can't be that big - otherwise, why would you miss the European market? Especially as it wasn't absolutely necessary to translate it - back in those days we were still used in Europe to have English in-game texts (but a translated description in the package - oh man how I miss those). I guess Nintendo saw it likewise and didn't see it as that big of a loss. They thought, FF VII would sell about as much as FF VI, with Sony's marketing power pushing it maybe all little more but no that much more. So, like myself, Nintendo didn't see a danger in losing FF VII.

As far as I know the mindset of old Nintendo, I think even after it was clear that FF VII is a massive hit, Nintendo just shrugged its shoulders and thought we can do our own big RPG IP or let someone else do it for us and we will have publishing rights. It think up to now, Nintendo think of themselves as the best gamer makers, period! No matter which genre - we can counter! That's really much their mindset. Nevertheless, I don't think that games like Mario Kart, Smash Bros, the divers Mario Sports games, Mario Party, etc. are meant as a counter to any other existing IP out there as Nintendo embraces the blue ocean strategy and are more focused on themselves than on what others do. Still, I think Nintendo wants to proof themselves and the gamers that they are the "masters of all genres". Splatoon (online-shooter) and Arms (innovative online-fighting game) are just their newest foray into new genres (they were not known for).