DBWI: What if the Sony PlayStation was more successful?

[Pyro]

I was rummaging in my parents' basement for some old stuff of mine when I came across an old catalog from 1995 and saw a name I have not heard in a while: the Sony PlayStation. The system was always a bit of a curiosity to me since I never bought or received one as a gift (as I was a Sega fanboy since the Genesis), and I remember Sony and Sega traded between second and third place until Sega permanently stayed in second place at the end of the 32/64-bit era. I am just wondering how Sony could have been more successful with their console.

There are various reasons why it came short of expectation but the most common ones I hear today are:

-The PlayStation lacked a mascot like Mario or Sonic (though the Saturn did not see a proper Sonic game until Yuji Naka relented on letting STI use the Nights Into Dreams engine for Sonic Xtreme) and a reputable first-party developing house. I suppose Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot may qualify but the majority of the people I talk to think of Crash as an intellectually-stunted copy of Sonic in the vein of Bubsy.

-Sony irritated big name developers like Konami and Capcom by insisting on that they develop only 3D games for their platform. I heard that is the reason why Konami moved development of the acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the Saturn, and why Capcom released Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4 and their fighting games only on the Saturn. I do remember Capcom releasing a 3D game starring an iteration of the Blue Bomber, though I think they ported it to the Ultra 64 later.

-Sega deciding to release the Saturn in September 1995 instead of May like Tom Kalinske wanted. It gave Saturn more launch titles and recognizable names despite the higher price.

-Could that modem peripheral Sega released for the Saturn in 1997 have been another reason? It did help Sega get its foot in the door in online gaming.

 

[asupackman]

I have a playstation three in my apartment right now? I thought it was one of the most popular gaming consoles out there?

 

[asupackman]

Or do you mean the Playstation itself and not its successors?

 

[jkarr]

I have a playstation three in my apartment right now? I thought it was one of the most popular gaming consoles out there?

DBWI is like a what if scenario in reverse...that you live in the what if...universe and are discussing what another universe might be like (our universe)

 

[The Uchronian]

I was rummaging in my parents' basement for some old stuff of mine when I came across an old catalog from 1995 and saw a name I have not heard in a while: the Sony PlayStation. The system was always a bit of a curiosity to me since I never bought or received one as a gift (as I was a Sega fanboy since the Genesis), and I remember Sony and Sega traded between second and third place until Sega permanently stayed in second place at the end of the 32/64-bit era. I am just wondering how Sony could have been more successful with their console.

There are various reasons why it came short of expectation but the most common ones I hear today are:

-The PlayStation lacked a mascot like Mario or Sonic (though the Saturn did not see a proper Sonic game until Yuji Naka relented on letting STI use the Nights Into Dreams engine for Sonic Xtreme) and a reputable first-party developing house. I suppose Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot may qualify but the majority of the people I talk to think of Crash as an intellectually-stunted copy of Sonic in the vein of Bubsy.

-Sony irritated big name developers like Konami and Capcom by insisting on that they develop only 3D games for their platform. I heard that is the reason why Konami moved development of the acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the Saturn, and why Capcom released Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4 and their fighting games only on the Saturn. I do remember Capcom releasing a 3D game starring an iteration of the Blue Bomber, though I think they ported it to the Ultra 64 later.

-Sega deciding to release the Saturn in September 1995 instead of May like Tom Kalinske wanted. It gave Saturn more launch titles and recognizable names despite the higher price.

-Could that modem peripheral Sega released for the Saturn in 1997 have been another reason? It did help Sega get its foot in the door in online gaming.

The Playstation was a darn good console and I was sad to see it flop out in the summer of 2002. The Gran Turismo racing series, in particular, was my favorite: the original, GT2, and Remixed were all fantastic, and I'll miss that.

Sega's GT Racer is definitely a worthy successor, though, IMO. GTRacer 3 had over 1,000 cars and extreme customization options. Fun stuff, man.

 

[tonsofun]

The Playstation was a fine console with lts of potential. I bought one soon after they came out and it still operates great now. I haven't had a single problem with it. I wish all electronics had that lifespan. If only it was more popular then Sony could've used that reliability to their advantage.

 

[Lleibi]

The biggest issue was Japan market, which still was the largest market in those years, and could make or break consoles.

At that time (and even now although much less) the biggest share of that market belonged to the j-RPGs, games like the Lunar's and the Final Fantasy's. And PlayStation had none of those.

In fact, it almost had them: due to the vaporware of the CD for SNES, Square had decided to defect to Sony, and many other RPG developers were about to jump ships as well. At the end, Nintendo decided to compromise and produce a CD addon for its Ultra64 (to be used only in cinematics, Nintendo was adamant about keeping gameplay in cartridges), and allowed Square to release Final Fantasy 7 PlayStation on the condition of creating an extended version (with the infamous 'Aeris resurrection') for Ultra64 once it would get launched. As you know, royalties kept being a sore spot till Square decided to never again sign exclusivity contracts, and only a few developers remained loyal to Nintendo (like Enix).

So, if there had actually been a final break up between Nintendo and Square, i can easily think that the Final Fantasy saga could become Sony's weapon against Nintendo's Dragon Quest and Sega's Lunar. Although i can't see that Final Fantasy 7 could beat Lunar: Eternal Eclipse...

 

[Mr. Magi]

One of the biggest flaws Sony had was it never did get a particularly notable game of its own. I actually had a neighbor who owned a Playstation, and he really didn't have any games that I didn't have on the Ultra.

I suppose Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot may qualify but the majority of the people I talk to think of Crash as an intellectually-stunted copy of Sonic in the vein of Bubsy.

Another one that might count is Syphon Filter, since it did pretty well in Europe at the very least.

I heard that is the reason why Konami moved development of the acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the Saturn, and why Capcom released Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4 and their fighting games only on the Saturn. I do remember Capcom releasing a 3D game starring an iteration of the Blue Bomber, though I think they ported it to the Ultra 64 later.

Legends? I didn't really like it all that much. It was too different from the other games. Why they split the Mega Man franchise during the fifth and sixth generations I'll never understand.

Sega deciding to release the Saturn in September 1995 instead of May like Tom Kalinske wanted. It gave Saturn more launch titles and recognizable names despite the higher price.

That definitely helped. I think that another big factor was how they handled and designed the Dreamcast, plus how Nintendo botched their launch of their console for the 6th generation. After all, it was the console to get that cycle (which I did).

Could that modem peripheral Sega released for the Saturn in 1997 have been another reason? It did help Sega get its foot in the door in online gaming.

I don't think that did all that much to kill the PlayStation. Although it definitely did help with sales down the road.

At that time (and even now although much less) the biggest share of that market belonged to the j-RPGs, games like the Lunar's and the Final Fantasy's. And PlayStation had none of those.

Actually they did have at least one exclusive RPG according to the game library. It was called Legend of Dragoon. Not sure if it was good, but I imagine that a lack of recognition on a flailing console didn't help its case.

In fact, it almost had them: due to the vaporware of the CD for SNES, Square had decided to defect to Sony, and many other RPG developers were about to jump ships as well. At the end, Nintendo decided to compromise and produce a CD addon for its Ultra64 (to be used only in cinematics, Nintendo was adamant about keeping gameplay in cartridges), and allowed Square to release Final Fantasy 7 PlayStation on the condition of creating an extended version (with the infamous 'Aeris resurrection') for Ultra64 once it would get launched. As you know, royalties kept being a sore spot till Square decided to never again sign exclusivity contracts, and only a few developers remained loyal to Nintendo (like Enix).

Don't remind me of FFVII: EV. It's so painful that even Square ignored it when they made the second Anthologies pack; they just booted the PlayStation version hilariously and packaged it with Tactics.

Hey, I just realized something: If the PlayStation did better, wouldn't that mean that Atari might've died out as a console maker? I mean, they came ridiculously close to doing so already (a lot of it their fault) OTL, so it wouldn't shock me.

 

[Ascendant Warrior]

Would the Microsoft X-Box line have been so popular/Wide Spread...

as we all know, Microsoft released It's X-Box in 2001 to compete with the 'big two'...now the X-Box 720 is soon to be released, and a worthy competitor for the Nentendo WiiU and Sega Dreamcast 3

My question is, would Microsoft have tested the waters had Sony been a major player at that time?

I think Microsoft made a good move when they released the X-Box, giving the gaming Company it's own Mascot(Master Chief), and saying it would release 2D and 3D games to the varios develoupers...

 

[volantredx]

The issue that held the Play Station back for me was the loading times. Sega had some good practice with the Sega CD to learn how to encode discs better but a buddy of min had a Play Station back in the day and it took forever for first gen games to load. I hear this got better as time went on but it was a big reason when it came time to upgrade from my old SNES I went with the Ultra 64.

 

[JMT]

I had a PlayStation when I was a kid... it crapped out on me in about 2 years, and I borrowed an N64 from my cousins (who had a DreamCast) until the Xbox came out.

 

[Mr. Magi]

Would the Microsoft X-Box line have been so popular/Wide Spread...

as we all know, Microsoft released It's X-Box in 2001 to compete with the 'big two'...now the X-Box 720 is soon to be released, and a worthy competitor for the Nentendo WiiU and Sega Dreamcast 3

My question is, would Microsoft have tested the waters had Sony been a major player at that time?

I think Microsoft made a good move when they released the X-Box, giving the gaming Company it's own Mascot(Master Chief), and saying it would release 2D and 3D games to the varios develoupers...

OOC: Why on earth would Microsoft, Bungie, and the naming convention for the non-axed consoles be totally butterfly immune in this world?

The issue that held the Play Station back for me was the loading times. Sega had some good practice with the Sega CD to learn how to encode discs better but a buddy of min had a Play Station back in the day and it took forever for first gen games to load. I hear this got better as time went on but it was a big reason when it came time to upgrade from my old SNES I went with the Ultra 64.

I think SEGA also learned how to distribute their product better while they were messing with the Genesis. I think they learned how a lack of good third-party support can be bad for business.

 

[volantredx]

Would the Microsoft X-Box line have been so popular/Wide Spread...

as we all know, Microsoft released It's X-Box in 2001 to compete with the 'big two'...now the X-Box 720 is soon to be released, and a worthy competitor for the Nentendo WiiU and Sega Dreamcast 3

My question is, would Microsoft have tested the waters had Sony been a major player at that time?

I think Microsoft made a good move when they released the X-Box, giving the gaming Company it's own Mascot(Master Chief), and saying it would release 2D and 3D games to the varios develoupers...

Given the development time that went into the X-box it would have likely been a success. They may have tried to keep the original plan with the X-box being more like a cheap prefab computer then a game console (I don't think the tech was there so it may have take way longer).

The X-box though does prove a point retroactively by proving that the console market can support three big players so the failure of the Play Station is all on the console and not the small market.

 

[wargamer6]

Didn't these suffer from overheating issues? I seem to remember getting one for Christmas when I was a kid, only to have it start smoking a month later.

 

[volantredx]

Didn't these suffer from overheating issues? I seem to remember getting one for Christmas when I was a kid, only to have it start smoking a month later.

They could, the laser was set near the processor. The fan wasn't always up to cooling the thing. I've never looked into how common this was though. Anyone have the failure rate?

 

[Anime Ninja]

The X-box is nothing more then a laptop that does not have a screen, 5 machines in the last 10 years, none of them backwards capable. I wonder what Microsoft will call their next machine, they so far have X-Box, XBOX180, X-box 360, X-Box "540" aka New X-box, and their new one, the X-box 720. I think the only reason they called it the 720 is because the media started calling it that. I think that at launch they will toss in some sort of 8 in it it as it is running Windows8.

When I was in Japan, I did see Sony's new machine. It is sweet. Blu-ray, their new 8 core cell processor, and tons of memory. If it was not just a demo unit I would love to buy it. It was full graphics rendering on the fly. I am sure that it would cost an arm and a leg. I really would love to have seen what they could have done with their machines it the first one did not fail.

Remember that one of the plans for second Play Station was to have a built in DVD player, if they had got that out in 1999 like they planed, do you think that the DVD revolution might have taken off that year and not 2004.

 

[Jefferson Lee Roosevelt]

they could have achieved more, if they had tried harder

remember that playstastion game, silent hill i think it was called, with absolutely horrible graphics and whose plot had no sense whatsoever? come on, who in his right mind would have released such a game?

i mean, i wasn't that shocked when sony almost went bankrupt!

 

[Anime Ninja]

After the issues that Sony had and their restructure I see them as a stronger company. After all who does not have a Walkman MP3 player or a Xperia smart phone? I know some people say that the Apple smart phone is better, but if you look at the sales of it, the iPhone only really sells in the USA, last quarter it was 3rd in sales.

After their restructure in 1999 they went back to their core, high quality consumer electronics.

 

[Mr. Magi]

The X-box is nothing more then a laptop that does not have a screen, 5 machines in the last 10 years, none of them backwards capable.

Which is honestly why it's usually ranked third behind SEGA and Nintendo in terms of libraries and sales. I'm honestly shocked that they didn't just die out because of that.

I wonder what Microsoft will call their next machine, they so far have X-Box, XBOX180, X-box 360, X-Box "540" aka New X-box, and their new one, the X-box 720. I think the only reason they called it the 720 is because the media started calling it that. I think that at launch they will toss in some sort of 8 in it it as it is running Windows8.

This just gives me some more questions. How would using Windows 8 even work? Doesn't it require a touch screen to really work? Finally, why is the Xbox doing so well when other companies, like Panasonic, Fujitsu, and even Atari have made better consoles?

Remember that one of the plans for second Play Station was to have a built in DVD player, if they had got that out in 1999 like they planed, do you think that the DVD revolution might have taken off that year and not 2004.

I don't know. HD VHS did come out around that time, and it was a cheaper and about as effective alternative for DVDs. Unless the PlayStation sold ridiculously well, I somewhat doubt the effect would be that significant.

remember that playstastion game, silent hill i think it was called, with absolutely horrible graphics and whose plot had no sense whatsoever? come on, who in his right mind would have released such a game?

It didn't help that it was a pretty bad clone of Deep Fear from what I've seen of it.

 

[Anime Ninja]

Which is honestly why it's usually ranked third behind SEGA and Nintendo in terms of libraries and sales. I'm honestly shocked that they didn't just die out because of that.
This just gives me some more questions. How would using Windows 8 even work? Doesn't it require a touch screen to really work? Finally, why is the Xbox doing so well when other companies, like Panasonic, Fujitsu, and even Atari have made better consoles?

I think it is all the ads and promos that Microsoft plays to try and sell it. You can't go a day with out the X-box being tossed in for free if you upgrade your cable or cell phone. Of course to be able to play any of the good games you have to toss down almost a hundred dollars a year for the Microsoft Game Network (MGN). I am very surprised that they have not cancelled it. For the touch screen I heard that they might be use Konnect Glove that they showed off at 2011 E3. It was designed to make your TV like a virtual touch screen.