That was actually Sony. In the USA the marketing was focused on the PlayStation as the cutting-edge 3D successor to old-hat 2D games, so SCEA did not license th

That was actually Sony. In the USA the marketing was focused on the PlayStation as the cutting-edge 3D successor to old-hat 2D games, so SCEA did not license the development of sprite-based games for PlayStation, which means we missed out on some great sprite games that never got localized. There were exceptions, of course; big-name publishers could publish sprite games for tentpole franchises, so we still got Street Fighter, SotN, Mega Man 8, etc. Rules only apply when the rulemaker can afford to enforce them. That's still true today, as we found out when it came out that Google waived the app store fees for Spotify.