Since they entered the gaming industry with the NES in 1985, Nintendo has been on top with their game development. They redefined video games with revolutionary classic titles like Mario, Metroid, Kirby and Zelda. Noother video game developer (aside from  Sega in the past) even came close to Nintendo's greatness.

Sony debuted in video game industry a decade later with the Playstation. They quietly built the largest first-party development core in the industry, even bigger than Nintendo. As a result, Sony and their games are quickly rising to the top. Can they dethrone Nintendo and become the top video game developer? Here are a couple of reasons why Sony can overtake Nintendo in game development.

New Franchises

Nintendo has been relying on their old franchises for years. You hardly see any new hardcore franchises from them as they would rather reinvent Mario, Metroid, Kirby and Zelda. Sony, on the other hand, is constantly coming up with new franchises for their Playstation platforms with the latest being Resistance, LittleBigPlanet and Uncharted. Although Sony franchises don't have the same critical acclaim as Nintendo's, the gap is quickly closing.

Partnership with Smaller Studios

Sony is better than Nintendo when working with smaller development studios. Their partnership with Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet), helped create one of the best franchises in recent years for Sony. Oddly enough, Nintendo also had a shot with Media Molecule before Sony snatched them up. Other partnerships with small companies like Q-Games (PixelJunk series), Queasy Games (Everyday Shooter) and Thatgamecompany (Flower) gave the Playstation Network downloadable service a distinct advantage against WiiWare.

Online

Sony also has a leg up on Nintendo with online gameplay. In spite of both services being free, the online for Sony is light years ahead of Nintendo. This has more to do with Nintendo and their strictness towards exposing online to children than Sony. With online multiplayer being more prominent than ever before, Sony is easily beating Nintendo in that department.

Visuals

Nintendo took a chance with the Wii by not equipping it with high-definition technology. Although Nintendo's stance resulted in record-breaking sales, their game development has slowed visually as a result. So while Nintendo is stuck developing Nintendo Wii games that look the same as Nintendo Gamecube titles, Sony managed to get the upper hand thanks to the power of the Playstation 3 and their shared technology between the internal studios.

Global Presence

Finally, Sony's development studios span the globe with facilities in Europe, Japan and North America. Aside from Retro Studios in North America, Nintendo mainly relies on their Japanese development studios. With a bigger and more diverse group of developers, Sony can develop a larger range of quality titles. This may be Sony's biggest advantage in catching up to Nintendo as the best video game developer.

Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1524929/why_sony_is_surpassing_nintendo_in.html?singlepage=true&cat=19

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Was randomly linked to the article and two things really stand out for me after I read it.

1. New Franchise: Only new hardcore franchises are counted. That's why Wii Sports, Wii Fit or even Wii Music don't qualify as new franchise.

2. I'm not sure why a console's visual capability and online strategy have anything to do with a studio's ability in game developement. 

Cheers!

I wonder why Microsoft wasn't included in the article.

Nonono.

Sales?

Development cost?

Oh wait, that would paint Sony in a bad light.

Partnership with Smaller Studios

Sony is better than Nintendo when working with smaller development studios. Their partnership with Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet), helped create one of the best franchises in recent years for Sony."

A game modeled after Mario games. But wait! It has "new" characters.

Sony isn't half the developer Nintendo is. Not that they have bad games, but really...

oh boy....

biased articles never cease to amaze me...

and it's clear the author has now idea about game development by presenting those points

With regards to new franchises, I believe that Sony is forced to create new franchises to survive, whereas Nintendo can take their time to create new ones, since they can reuse old ones. How can Nintendo reuse old ones, while Sony can't? Because Sony releases sequels far too soon.

Take, for example, the main platformer for both consoles: Mario and Ratchet. How often do you see a new Ratchet platformer? Pretty much every year. Mario usually only comes out once every generation.

With Ratchet coming out every year, the fans of Ratchet will begin to anticipate it less, and less and become less excited for each new release. At some point, Sony will deem it an unprofitable IP, and retire it, or sell it off (a la Crash). Nintendo doesn't have that problem, as the sequels for most of their series are a few years apart, which ensures that fans of the series are still excited for each and every new entry into the series, whether it be Mario, Zelda or Metroid.

I also don't understand why only "hardcore" franchises only count when looking at new franchises. I also don't see what the other 4 points have to do with game development directly.

It's not just pumping out sequels though. Sony has this weird thing where they spontaneously let their franchises rot and die between generations whether they actually deserve it or not. There still hasn't been a Legend of Dragoon 2 and people have been asking for it for almost 10 years.

/thread

OT: This is a fanboys wet dream. Nintendo doesnt need interaction with other studios. They are the inventors of many types of games like Ratchet, Jak all started from games like mario.

While Sony is "surpassing" Nintendo, Nintendo keeps on printing money while Sony continues to post net lose.

hmmm....