[mkjonesuk]

I was in my mid-teens and a big gamer when Sony entered the ring with the PlayStation and I still cannot to this day get over the fact that they actually did it and became the dominant force in gaming.

I remember thinking it was just another fad like the Minidisc and because they had no clear mascot like Mario or Sonic it was bound to fail.

Next thing I knew the Saturn was a joke and everyone I knew had a PlayStation. The ads were EVERYWHERE and people I knew who had never even owned a games console were buying the PS1.

When the PS2 was announced I was also blindly convinced the Dreamcast would compete but the PS2 just DOMINATED. Literally everyone I knew had one (not me sadly) it was a stunning thing to behold. When games like GTA3 hit I knew Sega were done for.

I personally only connected with the Sony handheld unit owning a PSP and I also eventually got a Vita. Other than UMD they were (still are) awesome little devices to play with.

[mdasen]

I can believe Sony did it. The PlayStation hit a lot of the right buttons at the right time.

Sega was dead by the time the Saturn landed. Sega burnt too many fans when they launched the Sega CD and 32X just to abandon them nearly immediately. Parents didn't want to hear that Sega was launching yet another system. Sega launched 3 consoles in 2.5 years in North America. Sega burnt all their goodwill.

Video games can be an industry of momentum and trust. If you keep launching and abandoning products, you lost the trust and momentum. Developers don't want to commit to a system you'll abandon. Gamers don't want to buy a system you're going to abandon. Sega had shown that it would abandon systems at the first hiccup - and try to get you to buy junk.

Sega's Saturn was also a weird system. It decided to use quadrilaterals instead of triangles and was complex which makes it harder to use effectively.

Nintendo's N64 would be launching a year after the PlayStation. While the N64 might have had more 3D capabilities, many of the games on the system didn't look as good and the 3D gameplay wasn't as compelling as the PlayStation's.

Not only that, PlayStation games were so much cheaper! At $50/game, it was just a ton more affordable than the $70 that N64 games were going for. By the time that the N64 came out, the PlayStation had a huge library of excellent games that were cheap. You even started to see older games for $25.

Sony's brand at the time was like gold. Everyone wanted anything with the Sony label on it. It can be hard to remember what a dominant force Sony was in consumer electronics. They were like Apple back then. When people heard that Sony was coming out with a video game system, everyone would think that it would be the best just based on the brand. Parents would hear the Sony name and think quality and reliability. Especially if they had been burned by Sega, the PlayStation from Sony seemed like buying the best product that would last.

Nintendo still did well. They have their niche. Sega had destroyed their reputation while Sony was the most admired electronics company out there. The PlayStation offered people a non-Nintendo system that they didn't feel would be abandoned and by the time the N64 came out it was established with an amazing game library that the N64 couldn't match.

[space_ghost]

My parents bought a PS1 shortly after they were available. We very much enjoyed it, but I _distinctly_ remember each time my friend brought over his N64 and copy of Goldeneye. The PS1 may have been the superior console, but Goldeneye was the superior game.

[mdasen]

Oh, Goldeneye was amazing. I think that the N64 just didn't have as many great games as the PS1. But Goldeneye was such a truly amazing game.

I wouldn't even totally argue that the PS1 was the superior console. It came out first and the fact that it used CDs meant cheaper, larger games. That gave it big advantages. The N64 did tend to have more immersive worlds. Mario 64 was a totally different game from Crash Bandicoot. Crash was great, but didn't have the open-world feeling of Mario 64.

They were very different feeling consoles. I think that's where Nintendo has carved its niche: making something different. Sega was still trying to make the same system and they were no match for Sony. Nintendo has kept trying to do things a tad different from the Wii and motion control to the Switch and its portability. I think Nintendo knows that it succeeds when it can find something unique and different and fails when it produces the same thing others can make.

But the PS1's game library was just so extensive and cheap.

[wahnfrieden]

PS1 was easier to pirate games than n64

[plussed_reader]

Cd burning was still fairly spendy at that point. I split up ocarina onto twenty 3.5" floppies to bring ultraHLE to a beefier video card setup.

Totally worth it but still sprite issue...

[pipes]

Similar experience, I nearly bought a ps1 but they were sold out everywhere. Then I went to a friend's house and played goldeneye. It was on a completely different level to anything I'd ever played before. Bought an n64 instead. Wave race and 1080 still haven't been matched by anything. Those and GoldenEye are my 3 fav games.

[giantrobot]

Sony also made the right choice in the PS1 design by basically asking developers what they wanted WRT to hardware. Developers didn't want the wacky-ass designs of the Saturn or Jaguar. They didn't want to have to orchestrate multiple CPUs or a bunch of proprietary peripheral chips to get optimal performance. Developers wanted a sane hardware design and good developer tools.

[mdasen]

Totally! Too often console makers went with wacky things that developers didn't know how to get performance out of. Though that sanity was short-lived for Sony. The PlayStation 2 was a complex design that was a pain for developers.

As much of a success as the PS2 was, it probably left the door open for Microsoft. The Xbox had a normal x86 processor and normal Nvidia GPU (and the GameCube had a normal PowerPC/ATI GPU combo). The PS2 was a huge success, but I think a lot of it was built off the momentum of the PS1, the fact that it was backward compatible, and its DVD player. If the PS2 had been Sony's first console, they probably would have lost. Developers would have considered it a pain to develop for and Microsoft would have had a more powerful Xbox with an easier development platform.

I think the PS2 does show that developers will accommodate (if hate) wacky-ass designs if there's momentum. However, Sega had killed their momentum with the Sega CD and 32X with both developers and gamers so the Saturn's wacky design was the final nail in the coffin. Atari had been out of the console game for nearly a decade when they launched the Jaguar so they also did't have the momentum.

The PS2 was a bit pushed by momentum. Developers knew that gamers would buy it because Sony's brand in gaming was amazing at the time and it offered a DVD player so they put up with it.

[MegaDeKay]

> If the PS2 had been Sony's first console, they probably would have lost

I disagree. The PS2 had a year head start, a solid early lineup, and a built-in DVD player (this was huge). The XBox also had little traction in Japan, not just from a consumer perspective but a developer perspective as well. It certainly would have been a closer race had the two consoles released at the same time though.

[giantrobot]

What the GP is saying is if the PS2, with its weird architecture, was Sony's first console it may not have been successful. By the release of the PS2 the PS1 had a number of successful second and third party franchises. Third party devs were willing to invest in making PS2 games because they had five years of profits on the PS1 and a good relationship with Sony.

It took several years for third party devs to get maximum performance out of the PS2. Not that early PS2 games were bad but there's a marked difference between the early games and ones made after devs figured out how to better use the PS2's SIMD units and take better advantage of the GPU.

If Sony didn't have six years of history with the PS1 I don't think they could have gotten the level of third party support the PS2 actually had. Devs would have looked at the PS2 and had no confidence Sony would execute on dev support.

[MegaDeKay]

"It took several years for third party devs to get maximum performance out of the PS2"

Yes, but the same could be said for almost any console ever made.

[agumonkey]

Yeah Sony caught the vacuum just right. Big players mistakes and delays gave the PSX a boulevard to run int.

I found the console pretty lame, no special design, but a few cult games and you settle yourself culturally.

[Grazester]

Well this about sums up Sega's situation.

[nitrofire69]

PS2 also being a DVD player sealed the deal. For a while there it was one of the cheaper options for a DVD player, and if you bought a PS2 to play DVDs, might as well buy some games too.

[tokai]

That and being easy to pirate the games.

[Macha]

From what I remember, the OG Xbox had way more piracy in my circles than the PS2.

The PS1 on the other hand, I think everyone I knew had theirs chipped by the end.

[zerocrates]

Though it was really easy to pirate on the Dreamcast.

[Grazester]

Someone took a hard look at the numbers and determined that even with piracy there was no uptick in units sold which means people were just not interested in the Dreamcasts unfortunately and it was piracy that killed it.

But then again people who knows Segas history wouldn't draw this conclusion anyway. The Dreamcasts didn't have a chance with Segas past and Sony Playstation 2 hype and money

[Grazester]

It wasn't piracy that killed it*

Major typo correction since I can't edit that post now.

[asciimov]

By the time it was really easy to pirate Dreamcast, the consoles were being clearanced out for $99.

[nekoashide]

People in the scene thought the DMCA was a joke back in 2000, then they ended up behind bars.

[Smoosh]

Yes, that was very much a factor for me. DVD players were still very expensive. A PS2 gave you games and DVDs for around the same price or less.

[p1necone]

I know people that bought a PS3 on launch for the same reason. They didn't play any games, but it was a cheap Blu-Ray player.

[grepfru_it]

The load times bro, I could not get on the CD based bandwagon. I played Sewer Shark on the Sega CD and the load times where miserable. I even thought the resolution was abysmal (compared to my PC at the time). No way it would win, I thought. By christmas of 97 I had a PS1 and spent all day playing Tomb Raider. The hardware was beyond any other console and the design was slick and new. And while Sony won, and my Saturn sat in the corner collecting dust, the N64 was the only system that came out when my friends came over. Nothing could compete with 4 player mario kart or starfox. Sega was dead before the dreamcast even came out.

[MisterTea]

> I played Sewer Shark on the Sega CD

six - six - niner - six ugh, that game kinda sucked. Never hit that million pounds of tube steak high score.

What a weird time for gaming. FMV games were something that looked like the future to a little kid but once you played them they were awful. The video padded out boring interactive game play like shooting the rats in Sewer Shark or the shooting galleries of Ground Zero: Texas. I remember Night Trap being highly controversial at the time for sexual an violence themes and I only knew one kid who had it and his mother threw the game out so I never got to play it.

[autoexec]

> FMV games were something that looked like the future to a little kid but once you played them they were awful.

I still have a certain amount of love for the genre and I'm secretly hoping they make a comeback someday without many of the limitations they had at the time.

Phantasmagoria was a gem if you've never tried it. Night Trap is just awkward to play, and didn't deserve the moral panic, but at least those kids can emulate it now. You'd be better off just watching it on youtube though.

[throwway120385]

Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive were really goofy but kinda fun adventure games.

[autoexec]

Both on GOG too! I'll have to check them out

[dreadlordbone]

Obduction is a newer Myst-Like with some of the old FMV trimmings

[jbm]

> FMV games were something that looked like the future to a little kid but once you played them they were awful.

I still think Wing Commander 3 was an amazing game, to this day. (The 10 minute waits to launch a mission on my Pentium was ridiculous though)

[Lammy]

> The ads were EVERYWHERE and people I knew who had never even owned a games console were buying the PS1.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/06/the-sucking-or...

“When we saw the first commercials for the Playstation — glitzy, MTV style affairs that spoke to the sort of people we weren't — we began to worry. They were selling our heritage to the same fucking guys who used to beat us up in P.E.!”

[rovolo]

> Our heritage

Wow, that's quite the historical artifact. I can't get back into the headspace where people like PA thought they "owned" the concept of video games.

[sublinear]

I'm so glad this phoney baloney marketing concept called "nerd culture" finally died during the covid years. It was the basis for a lot of silly crap on the internet that should long be dead by now.

[sublinear]

From the article:

> "equity has been damaged by 32x and Sega CD," and that Sony has "effectively leveraged their considerable equity from consumer electronics."

The second part is exactly it.

Sony was, and still is, in the best position to license 3rd party games for their consoles because of their extensive partnerships across several industries.

Even today Nintendo is left to survive off their own 1st party games.

I don't agree the 32x or Sega CD were ever the problem. Sure they lost money on those products, but they still had a very strong brand. I think they knew at the time that wasn't going to be enough to continue in this space and they just weren't going to beat Sony on 3rd party and Nintendo on 1st party on their home consoles which is why they started cutting costs. Today they are very far from a failed business and made a good call.

[giantrobot]

The SegaCD and 32x were most assuredly problems for Sega. They were both problematic with third party developers because their low sales made for a small addressable market. The 32x especially burned third party devs because the Saturn was announced right as the 32x was released.

If you were mid-development of a 32x game in November of 1994 you just found out a lot of the money you'd spend had been wasted. You'll either be releasing a game in a few months on a system with no future (32x) or have to spend extra money to port and release it on the Saturn.

The Saturn never got the sort of third party support that the PlayStation did. Square and Konami released system-selling games with Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid. That was in addition to second party games like Gran Tourismo which was a system seller as well.

[sublinear]

> The SegaCD and 32x were most assuredly problems for Sega.

Yeah for Sega of America. Sega HQ back in Japan saw the writing on the wall when Sony started working on the PlayStation. Sony has always been massive compared to Sega or Nintendo at any point in time. Even Microsoft has had a tough time competing. This was not the hill Sega wanted to die on even if it meant not making consoles anymore. They're still worth billions, just not tens or hundreds of billions. They made the right choice to move on. The fact that fully grown adults still cling to childhood memories of what could have been instead of recognizing clear business decisions for what they were is a testament to their once genius marketing.

Both then and now Sony owns tons of intellectual property, can do whatever it dreams up hardware-wise, sell that hardware at very competitive prices, and has deep connections with just about every major publisher in the entertainment business. Just like how Sega pulled out of consoles, Sony made a similarly smart move by not bothering with its own streaming service. I don't believe they own their little experiment called Crackle anymore. Why bother when you still own the rights to a ton of stuff? Rights that they probably can't even sell if they tried because it would be illegal under anti-monopoly law. That's a better position than even Disney is currently in.

[hakfoo]

To me, the argument is sort of backwards.

Sony is only as good as their third-party licenses. I'm can't think of a signature exclusive title for the Playstation franchise with a brand value anywhere near that of Halo, Sonic, Mario, or Zelda. I guess Horizon maybe, and the various JRPG franchises that tend to skip Xbox, but you hardly see them running a huge media blitz for the next Dragon Quest (at least in the US)

OTOH, Nintendo always has solid cards to play. They know they can bring out a Zelda or Mario game and a significant percentage of their buyers will grab it day 1.

Without a killer, propriatery IP, they're not only vulnerable to a weak patch of new titles, but they're also at risk of losing the "port war" -- if you can get the same games on PS and Xbox, or PS and PC, you'll get whichever one is better experience, cheaper, etc.

[Narishma]

Are you kidding? Sony has a ton of major first party IPs. Uncharted, The Last of US, God of War, Gran Turismo, MLB, Ratchet & Clank are just a few that come to mind.

[isk517]

The Vita was a great handheld, my only two complaints about it is they went with a expansive Sony memory format instead of SD card, and they did not include the ability to output to TV like the PSP Go had. Incidentally I was not surprised at the success Nintendo had when they released their own take on the Vita with those two issues fixed.

[grogenaut]

Nintendo happened to release one of the best games of all time at the launch of the switch. That had a huge amount to do with it.

[isk517]

It did without a doubt, but that same game was also available for the Wii U, which was easier to find and costed significantly less than the Switch. Having a killer app helped generate interest, but people actually liking the gimmick is ultimately why the Switch succeeded.

[p3rls]

Dreamcast was just too ahead of for its time is what I tell myself

[lizardking]

It was! The graphical leap from the PS1 to the Dreamcast still appears to me to be the starkest of the 3d era. And it had online connectivity, out of the box, from day one. Very impressive for the (very late) 1990's.

[pipes]

I bought a DC on launch day, and still have one (my original died). I honestly think ridge Racer 5 looked like something the DC couldn't do. Even more so gran turismo 3, which still looks great. That said the DC is contender for my favourite console of all time, the PS2 isn't. Oh and the DC still looks great on modern displays, the PS2 looks pretty awful (I'm play on an oled through an ossc).

[TSUTiger]

9.9.99

[giantrobot]

The Dreamcast as a console was fine. The Dreamcast as a console made by Sega was problematic. Sega had been burning bridges with third party developers for a majority of the decade by the time the Dreamcast was released. There was nobody left to make software for it.

[michaelbrave]

If I remember right I think a lot of the original X-box was repurposed sega tech and microsoft made a deal with sega to do that.

[WorldMaker]

My understanding is that Microsoft built a lot of tech in the Dreamcast in the first place, didn't even need to ask Sega to reuse a lot of it. (I've heard it suggested that the Dreamcast can be considered the first Xbox because of how deeply Microsoft was involved from very early in its development.)

[TSUTiger]

PS1: $299

PS2: Backwards-compatibility and built-in DVD player for less than a standalone DVD player at the time.

[m463]

What I thought was amusing was when the wii came out. All the publicity was about the playstation 3 and xbox 360, and the wii didn't get much notice because it didn't have the amazing system specs.

But it was fun with the accelerometer controller and less pixels and mips didn't get in the way of that.

[johncessna]

Squaresoft moving their IP to the ps1 had a large part to do with it as well.

[pipes]

GTA 3 was going to come to the Dreamcast first at one point. Or at least I'm sure I read that somewhere.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

Max Payne was supposed to be on Dreamcast too