sc94597 said: Soleron said:  What happened between SNES and N64 that caused third parties to turn away? Why was Sony, a newcomer, accepted so readily in Nintendo's place? Nintendo had a policy that only 3-5 games could be made by a publisher, and it can't be shovelware. Developers hated this. That was half of the reason. The other half is that nintendo used Carts in the n64 which were more expensive, and small, but had better load times; while sony had discs which were larger and cheaper,but had longer load times. So developers chose sony.

That's something of a fanboy spin on the situation. In actuality, Nintendo leveraged their market position to charge extortionate fees, and the limit to the number of games publishers could produce wasn't intended to prevent "shovelware" but to give Nintendo a firm stranglehold on the market with their first party product. They also put harsh restrictions on the content of games, which had absolutely nothing to do with quality control (see the Mortal Kombat censorship debacle for evidence).

OT: FF7 could have been released on N64 and it still wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference in Europe. Nintendo had already lost a lot of support in the 16-bit era, and the PSX was the first console to be seen as respectable among young adults.

hmm, The reason i picked a Sony 1 in those days was because of the $20 Greatest Hits games. FFVII vs OoT wouldn't have had an impact on me, to me value priced games are more of a reason than anything to get a system.

I think the PS1 would have still come out on top, but it would have been far closer than it was. N64 would have seen an increase in sales over what it ended up with, but there's no way it could fight its lack of third party games.

Played_Out said: sc94597 said: Soleron said:  What happened between SNES and N64 that caused third parties to turn away? Why was Sony, a newcomer, accepted so readily in Nintendo's place? Nintendo had a policy that only 3-5 games could be made by a publisher, and it can't be shovelware. Developers hated this. That was half of the reason. The other half is that nintendo used Carts in the n64 which were more expensive, and small, but had better load times; while sony had discs which were larger and cheaper,but had longer load times. So developers chose sony. That's something of a fanboy spin on the situation. In actuality, Nintendo leveraged their market position to charge extortionate fees, and the limit to the number of games publishers could produce wasn't intended to prevent "shovelware" but to give Nintendo a firm stranglehold on the market with their first party product. They also put harsh restrictions on the content of games, which had absolutely nothing to do with quality control (see the Mortal Kombat censorship debacle for evidence). OT: FF7 could have been released on N64 and it still wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference in Europe. Nintendo had already lost a lot of support in the 16-bit era, and the PSX was the first console to be seen as respectable among young adults.

Incorrect.  In fact, the very reason for the gaming crash of the late 70's-early 80's WAS the fact that developers were putting out too much shovelware CRAP on the Atari in an attempt to make a buck.  For every decent game that came out for the system, there were 10 direct copies with different sprites and names.  Innovation was dead--greed killed it.

Which is why, when the NES came out, Nintendo had their seal of quality, and only allowed a publisher to make three games a year.  If you wanted a piece of the action, you had to spend some time and make a GOOD game!  Granted, there was shovelware on the NES and SNES, but nowhere near the amount the Atari had.  Aside from Nintendo's games, this rule is the reason the two systems were (and are!) so damn popular.

However, once the industry began to pick up again, even when Nintendo lifted the policy, for some reason devs decided to spite them and go with the new guy.  In fact, FFVII was originally intended for the N64.

 

Played_Out said: sc94597 said: Soleron said: What happened between SNES and N64 that caused third parties to turn away? Why was Sony, a newcomer, accepted so readily in Nintendo's place? Nintendo had a policy that only 3-5 games could be made by a publisher, and it can't be shovelware. Developers hated this. That was half of the reason. The other half is that nintendo used Carts in the n64 which were more expensive, and small, but had better load times; while sony had discs which were larger and cheaper,but had longer load times. So developers chose sony. That's something of a fanboy spin on the situation. In actuality, Nintendo leveraged their market position to charge extortionate fees, and the limit to the number of games publishers could produce wasn't intended to prevent "shovelware" but to give Nintendo a firm stranglehold on the market with their first party product. They also put harsh restrictions on the content of games, which had absolutely nothing to do with quality control (see the Mortal Kombat censorship debacle for evidence). OT: FF7 could have been released on N64 and it still wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference in Europe. Nintendo had already lost a lot of support in the 16-bit era, and the PSX was the first console to be seen as respectable among young adults.

No it was to prevent another market crash, like the one that happended pre-nes.

 

Ah the good ol days of Playstation dominance at its finest.

But i actually think Playstation still would have dominated as FF7 was the biggest game for PS1 in all regions especially Japan.

The Playstation also had way more third party support than N64.

Zelda was not as big in Japan compared to Final Fantasy (and still isn't). I doubt it would've done much difference.

Sega Saturn would've won!

If OOT would have come out earlier, before FF7, maybe N64 could have eventually reached 40M sold, but i don't think it would have had effect on PSX sales. It would have got few 3rd party games more but that's just about it. I don't think that time there were "many" N64 or Saturn owners that didn't have PSX, since it was the only one that had 3rd party support and without games drought.

Soleron said:   What happened between SNES and N64 that caused third parties to turn away? Why was Sony, a newcomer, accepted so readily in Nintendo's place?

Basically nothing happened between SNES and N64, but there were various reasons for Sony having success, such as: -Cost of developing/publishing, as in hard to master hardware, opposed to easy PSX, expensive cartriges (around 5$ a piece), opposed to cheap CD (around 0,10$ a piece). -Nintendos quality standards, they wanted only the top devs to develope for N64 to prevent all shovelware, opposed to lack of standards on PSX. -The 64MB cartriges weren't big enough for the new trend games, which usually had quite much of videos, which take space, opposed to 600MB CD:s (although, N64 supported high data compression). -Marketing, Sony really pushed PSX marketing. At that time, Playstation ads were literally everywhere, movies, bus stops, TV... -Late release opposed to early PSX release, which helped Sony to gain enough gap to gain momentum that N64 couldn't pass. At the start, Sony didn't need to compete anyone but Sega, which just had fucked up its fans and quite a few publishers. -Cost of games at retail, the high cost for publishing, caused N64 to be 20-30% more expensive at retail than the PSX games. -"hardcore" vs "casual", when N64 was targeted solely for the "hardcore", PSX got the "casual" audience.

I think it would have had no effect on the media. Zelda was good, but had nothing that had not been seen before in gaming. It just put all the elements together, and did them all very well. This leads to a great game, but not much of a media event.

FFVII had cutscenes of a quality that had never been seen before. They looked great on TV, and were a media god sent. While the cutscenes had nothing to do with the real game, at the time, they were amazing.

That's what made it the media giant it was. Not the game itself.