Nintendo keeps its deal with Sony

In the early 1990's Nintendo had a deal with Sony that the original Playstation was to be a CD add-on to the Super Nintendo but it fell throagh. So what-if it went throgh?
 
Nintendo, or more specifically Nintendo of America was very much a company of control freaks at this point who put such restrictions on third party developers it made you wince.

CD/Laserdisc systems had all crashed and burned up until Nintendo decided to work with Sony and even then they were terrified that their profits would be all but wiped out by piracy. Nintendo didn't take off as a company until the arrival of Donkey Kong when they fought a massive lawsuit with Universal over the rights to the main character and successfully navigated its way through the North American video game crash of 1983 where it established itself with the Famicom.

The deal that Sony and Nintendo struck back in 1988 would have actually screwed Nintendo over royally (where do they get the lawyers to read these things anyway?) by giving Sony a great deal of power so at a news conference, Nintendo announced its alignment with Phillips instead.

The POD therefore, should be Hiroshi Yamauchi not realising the glaring error in the contract between the two.

If Sony and Nintendo remain united, it would probably herald a short lived spell in the console market for Sony. In 1992, Playstation was almost ready to be released and there was still time for the two companies to kiss and make up, with a possible deal on the table in OTL. However, the SNES was clearly near the end of its life span as Donkey Kong Country was another two years away and the games were beginning to look a little faded. It is questionable whether the launch of a CD peripheral would boost sales or revive a flagging interest in the 16-Bit era - look at the failures of the CD32, the Mega-CD, the 32X and the 64DD. PC and Amiga games were going beyond two and three disks per game but the pay-off just wasn't there yet.

With the nasty contract in place, Nintendo wouldn't release its key characters onto the CD unless it could get better protection for them so only original characters and games would be made for the Nintendo Playstation. It is doubtful that Sony would buy Psygnosis which might mean that Grand Theft Auto would never be released for consoles given Nintendo's family friendly policies. It could be picked up by the Sega Saturn but that console had nightmares of its own, not least it's infamous control pad.

Sony could go on to found its own console but it would arrive too late to make any sort of a difference. Nintendo would continue to rule the console markets although the iron willed Hiroshi Yamauchi who won't leave the company until 2002 will continue to tightly control things. The exit of Sony could lead to one of several possibilities:

The Atari Jaguar could gain more of a fanbase.
The Nintendo 64 might have been a disk-based machine.
The 3DO might have sold decently

A more interesting what if would be what if Commodore could have solved its supply problems in 1993 and the Amiga CD32 was allowed to be distributed properly in the USA - Nintendo and Sega would have much more of a fight on their hands for control of the console market and might have lost.
 
Oh dear butterflies, how I love you so.


Quite a few things may be impacted. The SNES CD goes forward, let's say, because of a decent contract in the first place. It fails because of horrible FMV games and people don't like add-ons.

This likely influences Sega not to build either Sega CD or 32X, and instead to focus on games and the upcoming Jupiter/Saturn (Jupiter cartridge, Saturn OTL CD system). Will it give them a better Fifth Gen system? Probably. Christmas 1994? Maybe. However without Sony pressuring them with the Playstation I imagine spring 1995 in Japan, Christmas 1995 in North America.

The Amiga CD32 is still doomed, as Commodore is not changed by SNES CD.

3DO is likely to still launch early and suck out loud because of the high price. Conversely butterflies from the SNES CD convince Trip to delay to Christmas 1994, for a more sensible $399 price and focus on making it a game console.. Doomed in Japan of course, but could be pretty big in North America/Europe.

The Atari Jaguar is probably still doomed. It would be nice for videogame history's sake if Atari joined the 3DO group and thus 3DO could brand their stuff under the Atari name. Is it likely? Perhaps the failure of SNES CD pushes Atari into deciding it needs partners in hardware and software. They try and improve the Lynx to gain more future Atari console software developers and meet up with the 3DO group. Having the name Atari on the 3DO console is certainly worth something (especially if Lynx improves into a tie with Game Gear). Perhaps the 3DO simply buys Atari's console divisions and Atari (instead of 3DO) becomes the umbrella organization?

Sony has been burned on this whole thing. I wager they either develop the ATL Playstation, or (like Panasonic) join up with 3DO. You can go either way, certainly. We can't have four consoles survive and I'm partial to a North American based console earlier than the Xbox, so Sony joins 3DO group and expands software development.


Nintendo has been burnt on a) hardware expansion, b) third party software (I imagine that they had maybe 1-2 games for the SNES CD, except that there were likely only a dozen games for in total), c) the CD format.

Interestingly Zip drives came out in 1994, and had quite a resemblance to the N64DD. Rewritable magnetic media.

So let's say Nintendo designs the Ultra Nintendo around the Zip drive instead of cartridges or CDs for a Christmas 1995 launch. Perhaps they were working on the cartridge based model, but saw the Zip drive and redesigned.

This will make it more expensive because it's launching earlier, but using in-a-plastic-case Zip disks lets them take advantage of pretty reasonable economies of scale by late 1995 and Zip disks start out holding 100MB (versus 4-64MB on carts, and 650MB for CDs) and will scale up to 750MB. Obviously people like Squaresoft won't be as pissed at them as in OTL, and might like the fact that their games can be rewritable.

Perhaps it lines up like this:

Atari/3DO Jaguar (OTL improved 3DO) launches Christmas 1994 for $399.

Sega Saturn (OTL way improved Saturn) launches Spring 1995 in Japan for $399 & Christmas 1995 in North America/Europe for $349.

Ultra Nintendo (different from OTL N64) launches Christmas 1995 in Japan, and Spring 1996 in North America/Europe for $299.


Obviously Atari/3DO benefits from being first on the scene, but at a higher cost. It's a year later than IOTL and as such should be just fine on the hardware front against the Saturn/Ultra. Interestingly multiple partners manufacture it, namely Sony/Panasonic in Japan, and other people in other markets (bigger partners in the ATL). Being early likely means a dogfight with Genesis/SNES and a struggle to get good games. Odds are by the time the Saturn comes out they finally have decent ones. Maybe the ATL Tempest 2000 & Aliens Vs. Predators, among others.

The Saturn benefits from much better hardware design and Sega has far better relationships with developers without the CD/32X garbage. Plus 6 months in Japan means it comes to the States with a couple decent games and having weak games in Japan wouldn't hurt it too much as it would only face SNES. Hopefully they have Sonic for the US launch, but it likely won't be true Sonic 3D—more like Sonic in 3D on rails.

The Ultra Nintendo has the best hardware, of course, probably better designed if slower than OTL but will end up with better looking games (OTL N64 had some hardware design problems that limited overall graphics). Plus Mario is a force to be reckoned with, and will usher in real 3D gaming. Furthermore less third party defectors (OTL: cartridge, Playstation dominance) means better games overall.


A true 3-way war? One can only dream.
 
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No Sega CD, and thus no Sonic CD, and you call this an improvement? :eek:

Sonic CD will either be Sonic 4, or the work will be turned into Sonic Saturn (with a corresponding jump in graphics).


Actually this may or may not be an improvement. We may not get the Wii, for instance, which would be a crying shame. We lose the Xbox/Xbox 360 to 3DO successors (potentially) which is fine, because Microsoft has blown oh 6 billion dollars or so on that so far. 3DO will likely fill the same niche as Xbox, but with more success in Japan.

Sony is saved from the debacle of the Playstation 3 (which has wiped out all the money they ever made off of PS2, and quite a bit from the PS). Furthermore without the PS2 the sixth generation console war should be a much better place minus the utter dominance of the PS2's shadow. (better looking games, too, without the PS2's hard to program for-ness)

Sega is just as friendly as Sony ever was to third parties, and Nintendo should be much more in the frame of mind regarding third parties that they were for Gamecube/Wii—with the caveat that they'll be getting the first/second string games they generally didn't in the N64/Gamecube/early Wii era.

So… Arguably a similar line-up of games for the fifth generation (PS titles move to Sega/Nintendo/3DO) with better graphics (as the Saturn/Ultra/3DO are all better designed than the OTL Saturn/N64/PS) and everybody is in good shape for the sixth generation—no early Dreamcast, no late Xbox/Gamecube.


Except for the Wii (which Nintendo may still do, albeit in a comparably powerful box to whoever else is in the seventh generation) I'd argue that this is better for Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, and of course Atari & 3DO.

Oh, and the consumers. Neither Sega, Nintendo, nor 3DO has the financial resources to build any console beyond the $399 price limit (all still trying for $299, of course) and still lose money on it. Thus the ATL sixth generation consoles are going to look similar (but marginally better designed to OTL—Gamecube was more powerful and cheaper to make than the PS2, for instance, IOTL), but the seventh generation ones? Nowhere near the PS3/Xbox 360. Perhaps they all go to Wii style for the seventh generation.
 
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