This year marks 30 years since Sony entered the video gaming industry and released the first ever PlayStation. Details about what happened have gradually come out over the years, including how much Nintendo was involved in why Sony began to make video gaming consoles in the first place. There was a point in the SNES era where Nintendo and Sony were in talks of making an add-on for Nintendo’s 16-bit console that would’ve allowed the SNES to play CDs.
However, it ultimately didn’t pan out, with Nintendo backing out of the deal. With Sony abandoned, they’ve eventually decide to make their own console, and the rest is history. That said, a new Eurogamer interview with former PlayStation head Shawn Layden revealed just how close Nintendo and Sony’s collaboration came to happening.
According to Layden, “Nintendo realized cartridges had already maxed out their memory footprints and so we – or rather, Ken Kutaragi – created the compact disc technology to support the SNES. And we were just about ready. I think it was at CES [Computer Entertainment Show] 1993, we were going to announce the partnership. And Nintendo left us standing at the altar, after they did a pivot at the last minute and went with Philips. So there was Ken, proverbially standing at the altar with his optical disc drive in his hands. And, indignant, he went back to the leadership at Sony at the time and said: ‘All I need is an OS and some more connecting tissue for this thing, and we can build our own game machine’.
Yeah, I remember this. It was crappy of Nintendo to abandon Sony’s joint cooperation. Makes me wonder how different the video game landscape would have been had they stayed partners all these years and the PlayStation brand were part of Nintendo platforms.
I imagine it wouldn’t be that much competition, and that it would be just Microsoft, considering Nintendo Sony and Microsoft are still the only big three that has been making console for decades.
Its like they left them in the dark.
SEGA might’ve still been in the console race today if it wasn’t for Sony I think. Sony had a ton of Nintendo and SEGA fans migrate over to the system, and since SEGA was the weakest link they were effectively squeezed out of the competition. If Sony didn’t take away a lot of their playerbase they probably still would’ve been in the competition, and the games on the GameCube might’ve been very different since Miyamoto was taking on a different design philosophy in response to people turning to Playstation. Nintendo probably wouldn’t have taken a huge chance with motion controls either, who knows.
Making the GameCube disks small was probably the most retarded move ever made by Nintendo, The n64 had memory problems with the cartridges against ps1 huge ass disks and shiggie had the audacity to create small ass disks for the next consoles just for preventing piracy
Sega destroyed itself. Poor management destroyed Sega in the console race.
You clearly have no clue. It’s Sony who is in the fault here.
Sony is a total garbage company back than and it’s still is with those layoffs and acquisitions.
How is it Sony’s fault? Nintendo made the decision to screw Sony at the end of the day. People can try to spin this as much as they want.
Sony wanted to control licensing for the discs, but Nintendo refused. They would lose control over their production and had to pay for Sony to make the discs.
Facts
They gonna keep bringing this up every console generation?
Same way Nintendo fans bring up the fact that Nintendo saved gaming in the west? Or how Sega fans swear Sega does what Nintendont…despite sales history and console sales history pointing to Nintendo completely wiping the floor with Sega and sonic…or how rare fans wont shut up about Microsoft buying rare…….yes….sony heads will keep bringing up that nintendo betrayed them.
I suggest watching Moon Channel’s last video on the whole Palworld situation, as he’s a lawyer who provides a different perspective on the Nintendo/Sony thing.
It wasn’t so much Nintendo “betraying” Sony, but Nintendo realizing that they were about to essentially become absorbed by Sony, a much larger company, and would become “their bitch.” In the same way you don’t accept free shit from anyone in prison, otherwise they “own” you, Nintendo realized this is what would’ve happened had they followed through with this.
Not interested. Point was, the narrative online is Nintendo betrayed sony lol which is what we’re discussing. repetitive topics.
…and I’m saying that this narrative doesn’t tell the whole story.
I see you’re one of those who refuses to listen to any alternative point of view and instead does the thing 5 year olds do where they stick their fingers in their ears when they lose the argument: “LALALALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING”
Thank you for this comment; I wanted to comment exactly this but I could not for the life of me remember what video it was I had seen, which talked about this (I thought it was Nintendo Forecast, for some reason).
It is a very important perspective that, unfortunately, almost never enters conversation here in the west.
Its an absolute fact nintendo saved gaming in the west and had to beg toys r us to take a chance on it
Fans occasionally bringing up Nintendo saving gaming isn’t the same weight as Sony printing up a abandoned partnership . ..
what even is this response
I hate Sega stopped making consoles.
Know what i find comical, is how everyone on this public forum gets all huffy and bent outta shape if others mention Sony or Playstation “because this is a Nintendo forum” but it’s ok for them to mention it and for the website to publish articles that specifically mention Sony and or Playstation.
Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re still whining about this sissy.
It’s been over a year, get over yourself loser.
Nikki get over yourself.
Even tho its a broken record now. The article itself actually relates to the potential collaboration between both companies.
Conveniently leaving out the fact that Sony tried to screw Nintendo over in the first place. 🤷♂️
Don’t worry guys, I predict that the next console made by Nintendo will be the PlayStation Switch and it will play ps5 and switch games, the first triple A exclusive will be CFG Land (Banananza Mode DLC included)
It was a crappy thing to leave them hanging, but what most people haven’t looked into is why.
The reason Nintendo dropped Sony was because Sony wanted the software publishing rights (something Kutaragi probably wasn’t even aware of at the time). Which Nintendo was never going to hand over, and rightfully so, after all they already were in that industry and a powerhouse at that. It seemed Sony was trying to jump on to Nintendo’s success and instead of being fair partners, they wanted to take the lion’s share.
Also someone mentioned GameCube’s small discs being a bad idea in the comments, but it led to fast load times and made piracy much more difficult in the early 2000’s. Just look at how much PS1 and PS2 games were pirated.
I mentioned it, and you can look at how much better was privacy prevention and load times all you want, but one of the biggest reasons of the GameCube’s failure was the lack of big third party games thanks to those fucking discs. The difference in size from 1.5 gb to 4.7 was HUGE in the early 2000, sure you can look at how much better resident evil 4 was better on the GameCube but the problem still stands that it needed 2 discs instead of one, and that it’s an enormous additional cost in development and in manifacturing to the point that many studios didn’t bother to release their games on GameCube. The GameCube is my favorite console of all time for their exclusives (SUPER MONKEY MAN ESPECIALLY) but imagine what could have been if we had stuff like silent hill on there.
That’s only part of it, because… for one thing, most games at the time were not THAT big in file size and could indeed fit on the 1.5GB GameCube discs. Also, this wouldn’t explain why the Xbox came in a VERY distant second to the PS2 despite them not using smaller sized discs.
The main reason why the PS2 dominated while the Xbox and GameCube severely lagged behind is because all three consoles were way too similar to one another. Most people couldn’t afford to buy multiple consoles, so they had to choose one. The original PlayStation had dominated the prior generation, so Sony already had an advantage of already being popular. In addition, the PS2 had the majority of the games, so the one gaming console most wanted to choose was the PS2 for that obvious reason.
In addition to that, DVD players were becoming increasingly popular at this time. The PS2… doubled as a DVD player, the GameCube did not; it was purely a gaming machine. You weren’t just choosing between one gaming machine over another, you were choosing between a gaming machine that ALSO served as a DVD player over one that was simply a gaming machine. It’s like how the 3DS sales fell by over 50% from the DS during the 2010s due to the rise in smartphones. With smartphones, you were getting a phone, multimedia pocket computer, AND a gaming handheld (albeit a limited one, but that didn’t matter to most people), whereas with the 3DS, you were JUST getting a gaming handheld. People like the idea of consolidating their devices, and that put dedicated handhelds at a severe disadvantage.
Super shitty of Nintendo, but don’t let Sony play Victim. They wanted to keep 100 percent of all royalties for anything that touched that console. Even Nintendos IP. Who in their right mind would sign that. Plus that agreement was all verbal, it’s not like they backed out from a contractual agreement.
I remember watching Play Value’s video on Sony vs. Nintendo a long time ago.
They pretty much worded this the exact same way.
Nintendo stabbed Sony in the back because they figured out Sony was planning to stab them in the back first by basically taking over their IPs via royalty agreements. This is the main reason why the two are bitter enemies today.
This whole comment thread is the reason why you won’t find true Sony/Playstation representative on any Smash Bros game. Ever.
Not really what the fuck are you talking about
In the end it’s all big fat gaming companies tossing sht at each other and wee little btchy gamers pointlessly taking the pain to themselves… as always.
Propaganda. Even one of Sony’s other execs admitted this.
https://kotaku.com/the-weird-history-of-the-super-nes-cd-rom-nintendos-mo-1828860861
Sony nearly pulled a Daniel Plainview on Nintendo. (And this is a Chris Kohler article that happened to be written for Kotaku. He knows his stuff.)
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