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For anyone interested, the history of the original PlayStation is pretty interesting (all the different collaborations Sony was attempting with Nintendo and Seg

For anyone interested, the history of the original PlayStation is pretty interesting (all the different collaborations Sony was attempting with Nintendo and Sega before going it alone - mostly getting rejected by Nintendo and Sega). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation

agumonkey 7y ago
One can imagine how things would be if Sony didn't end up being a standalone player in this field. The gaming industry saw the birth of companies like nvidia, and now GPUs are tools.
- abhorrence 7y ago
  I believe they always intended to eventually be standalone. They wanted to use the collaborations to get the Sony name associated with games.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Did you read about this somewhere ?
    - jonny_eh 7y ago
      https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-into-the-partnership-that-never-came-to-be/ https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-int...
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        Ok, properly amazing
gryson 7y ago
For more recently uncovered information about a possible deal between Sony and Sega, read: https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-into-the-partnership-that-never-came-to-be/ https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-int... That article also gives insight into why Kutaragi/Sony wanted to partner with Nintendo. A quote by Kutaragi: “I wanted to start up a business that would become a new major income source for the company in the future… [Sony executives] thought it would take too long to start a new business from scratch with venture capital. So the only way to initiate change was from the outside. We could join forces with the best-performing company in the field. We would sell them our technology, establish a track record, and use that as the springboard to future success. That was my reasoning.” Also, from historian Reiji Asakura: “Nintendo was concerned that its business would eventually be taken over by Sony if Sony continued to drive product development. Although Nintendo was dominant in the game-machine market, the company was fully aware that Sony had a superior research-and-development operation and thus had the potential to outstrip its competitors in the area of technological advancement.” References are in the linked article.
- nck4222 7y ago
  Those quotes are interesting. Seems like the prevailing opinion is that Nintendo made a mistake cancelling this deal with Sony because it opened up the door for Sony to become it's largest competitor. In reality it seems like it was Sony's intention all along to use this as a stepping stone to competing with Nintendo directly anyway.
  - gryson 7y ago
    Yes. The same is said about the Sega-Sony deal, which Sega is often criticized for not following up on. The accounts of former executives make it clear, however, that it was too risky to work with Sony due to their ultimate motives. Sony wanted to dominate the market from the beginning, and they wanted to use established companies as an entry point. Also, the contract between Nintendo and Sony was signed in 1989, and Sony would have received all royalties from CD-ROM sales. This was at a time when it was still not clear that CD-ROMs would soon dominate the market. However, that had changed by 1991 when the Nintendo Play Station was revealed. Then-president of Sony, Norio Ohga, said the following in his autobiography: “What we learned later was that Yamauchi’s son-in-law, then the head of Nintendo’s U.S. operations, had apparently nixed the deal. The son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, had witnessed firsthand the stunning growth in U.S. sales of CD-ROM drives and disks. Arakawa knew that Sony had built a strong position in CD-ROM products. And he apparently feared that Sony would get the better of Nintendo in a collaboration.”
johns 7y ago
Console Wars[0] was a good book about this. Mostly centers around Sega, but the development of the PlayStation is a major topic covered as well. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700 https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generat...
Pigo 7y ago
It's more of a modern issue, but I recently discovered that a lot of triple A console games are demo'd (at trade shows and in promo videos) on a pc. They then cut down video quality and content to port them to the console game you can actually buy. There's video of a pc hidden under a desk, and a console controller modified to work with it. It may be old news to a lot of people, but that blew my mind. I don't see how that is acceptable. I guess that hardware for these consoles is still a struggle.
- bena 7y ago
  It's likely not a PC, but a development console.
  - JonathonW 7y ago
    Also, the current-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony are pretty much PC hardware-- somewhat customized APU (both the PS4 and Xbox One are based around combined CPU + GPU designs from AMD), but still derived from designs that are available as commodity PC hardware. Nintendo's the only one that's really gone a different direction; the Switch is ARM-based and built around the Nvidia Tegra X1 (same chipset as the Nvidia Shield). Software-wise, they're (reportedly) running a derivative of the OS from the Nintendo 3DS.
    - bena 7y ago
      Yeah, the real winner of the console war this round was AMD.

agumonkey 7y ago

One can imagine how things would be if Sony didn't end up being a standalone player in this field. The gaming industry saw the birth of companies like nvidia, and now GPUs are tools.

abhorrence 7y ago
I believe they always intended to eventually be standalone. They wanted to use the collaborations to get the Sony name associated with games.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Did you read about this somewhere ?
  - jonny_eh 7y ago
    https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-into-the-partnership-that-never-came-to-be/ https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-int...
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Ok, properly amazing

gryson 7y ago

For more recently uncovered information about a possible deal between Sony and Sega, read: https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-into-the-partnership-that-never-came-to-be/ https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-int... That article also gives insight into why Kutaragi/Sony wanted to partner with Nintendo. A quote by Kutaragi: “I wanted to start up a business that would become a new major income source for the company in the future… [Sony executives] thought it would take too long to start a new business from scratch with venture capital. So the only way to initiate change was from the outside. We could join forces with the best-performing company in the field. We would sell them our technology, establish a track record, and use that as the springboard to future success. That was my reasoning.” Also, from historian Reiji Asakura: “Nintendo was concerned that its business would eventually be taken over by Sony if Sony continued to drive product development. Although Nintendo was dominant in the game-machine market, the company was fully aware that Sony had a superior research-and-development operation and thus had the potential to outstrip its competitors in the area of technological advancement.” References are in the linked article.

nck4222 7y ago
Those quotes are interesting. Seems like the prevailing opinion is that Nintendo made a mistake cancelling this deal with Sony because it opened up the door for Sony to become it's largest competitor. In reality it seems like it was Sony's intention all along to use this as a stepping stone to competing with Nintendo directly anyway.
- gryson 7y ago
  Yes. The same is said about the Sega-Sony deal, which Sega is often criticized for not following up on. The accounts of former executives make it clear, however, that it was too risky to work with Sony due to their ultimate motives. Sony wanted to dominate the market from the beginning, and they wanted to use established companies as an entry point. Also, the contract between Nintendo and Sony was signed in 1989, and Sony would have received all royalties from CD-ROM sales. This was at a time when it was still not clear that CD-ROMs would soon dominate the market. However, that had changed by 1991 when the Nintendo Play Station was revealed. Then-president of Sony, Norio Ohga, said the following in his autobiography: “What we learned later was that Yamauchi’s son-in-law, then the head of Nintendo’s U.S. operations, had apparently nixed the deal. The son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, had witnessed firsthand the stunning growth in U.S. sales of CD-ROM drives and disks. Arakawa knew that Sony had built a strong position in CD-ROM products. And he apparently feared that Sony would get the better of Nintendo in a collaboration.”

johns 7y ago

Console Wars[0] was a good book about this. Mostly centers around Sega, but the development of the PlayStation is a major topic covered as well. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700 https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generat...

Pigo 7y ago

It's more of a modern issue, but I recently discovered that a lot of triple A console games are demo'd (at trade shows and in promo videos) on a pc. They then cut down video quality and content to port them to the console game you can actually buy. There's video of a pc hidden under a desk, and a console controller modified to work with it. It may be old news to a lot of people, but that blew my mind. I don't see how that is acceptable. I guess that hardware for these consoles is still a struggle.

bena 7y ago
It's likely not a PC, but a development console.
- JonathonW 7y ago
  Also, the current-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony are pretty much PC hardware-- somewhat customized APU (both the PS4 and Xbox One are based around combined CPU + GPU designs from AMD), but still derived from designs that are available as commodity PC hardware. Nintendo's the only one that's really gone a different direction; the Switch is ARM-based and built around the Nvidia Tegra X1 (same chipset as the Nvidia Shield). Software-wise, they're (reportedly) running a derivative of the OS from the Nintendo 3DS.
  - bena 7y ago
    Yeah, the real winner of the console war this round was AMD.