13 replies to this topic

[Lupaie]

In an alternate universe Nintendo and Sega are still battling it out with their newest consoles. You ask "Playstation and Xbox?"...I say: "Never heard of them".

I was thinking if there was to pinpoint one moment in time where Nintendo could change their whole future. And I think I clearly found 1 moment.

We have to go back in time to 1991. Sony was (under license for Nintendo) working on a CDROM drive addon (called Playstation) for SNES. But at the very last minute Nintendo pulled the plug and partnered up with Philips. Not only is this the very moment that kickstarted the birth of Playstation, by this failure Nintendo hold on to the cardridge format. This one and only dicision in time resulted in the next points:

- Sony started Playstation
- Sega lost against Playstation
- Lots of cool Playstation games used computer generated films and animations. Tekken, Final Fantasy, Need for Speed and many more choose for PlayStation because of the coolness the the system stood for...and going for Disc medium was one of the selling points.
- Microsoft started with its Xbox brand to compete against Sony. No playstation...No Xbox.

Sure, before Nintendo there was something else, and if not Sony then another party would have entered the race. Yet I still think this 1 decision, ending the partnership with Sony, is Nintendo's biggest mistake ever.

Even today, Nintendo is viewed as a kiddy system. It became that way by the N64. Before that the SNES was really cool. But not going for disc lost a lot of partners and a lot of coolness.

[Nollog]

I'd agree the n64 was the start of their "decline", but there's 9001 other factors to it also.

[Alex Wolfers]

I'd agree the n64 was the start of their "decline", but there's 9001 other factors to it also.

How come before the Wii U has a chance to bring out their E3 IPs everyone immediatly assumes the Wii U is a loss? BTW the N64 was gold IMO.

[Nollog]

How come before the Wii U has a chance to bring out their E3 IPs everyone immediatly assumes the Wii U is a loss? BTW the N64 was gold IMO.

Wii U isn't a loss. It's not making them money right now but they'll reduce manufacture cost probably in time for Christmas.
If you mean those "wii u is not next gen!!!" articles, they're wrong, it is the next gen of consoles, what they mean to say is the wii u isn't as powerful as the leaked, rumoured, unconfirmed specs for the competitors to it.
But it will be cheaper, and make Nintendo more money than the other manufacturers.

As for n64, no it wasn't.
It's a memorable console because it was in your youth and it was a good console with good games.
It was the start of the decline, as the playstation tore it apart toward the end of the liftcycle, and lead into the ps2 (and gamecube).

[Alex Wolfers]

Wii U isn't a loss. It's not making them money right now but they'll reduce manufacture cost probably in time for Christmas.
If you mean those "wii u is not next gen!!!" articles, they're wrong, it is the next gen of consoles, what they mean to say is the wii u isn't as powerful as the leaked, rumoured, unconfirmed specs for the competitors to it.
But it will be cheaper, and make Nintendo more money than the other manufacturers.

As for n64, no it wasn't.
It's a memorable console because it was in your youth and it was a good console with good games.
It was the start of the decline, as the playstation tore it apart toward the end of the liftcycle, and lead into the ps2 (and gamecube).

If anything aged it was the PSX.

[Lupaie]

There were a good bunch rpg's, fighting games and racegames I missed by not owning a PSX. I loved my N64 to death, but just like now I was wishing it had more support. Then, Namco, Square, Enix and Capcom did not even support it as much as they do now.

[Keviin]

Well.. I prefer cartridges in fact.

[Nollog]

If anything aged it was the PSX.

I was referring to volume of games and sales.

[Chaos]

Cool story bro. :3

[Alex Wolfers]

I was referring to volume of games and sales.

The only reason the PSX sold more was because it had a way longer shelf life.

[Alph]

I agree with you! I was thinking about this earlier!

[routerbad]

Microsoft partnered with Sega to create the Dreamcast, which was powered by WindowsCE and utilized early revision of DirectX. By the time Sega dropped out of the hardware business they were already working on a successor with Microsoft. Microsoft was left with all of the hardware and decided to build their own entertainment division to handle that side of the business. They already had 1st party game studios and acquired some others to beef up exclusive offerings. Original XBOX still had many design cues from dreamcast and still ran on a watered down WinCE kernel.

So Microsoft already had all of the tech at their disposal once Sega backed out to compete with Sony, and with the right exclusives had a competitive product.

[SoldMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

I miss the good old simple days, where you didn't have to have account's coming out of your ears to play games

[Auzzie Wingman]

The only reason the PSX sold more was because it had a way longer shelf life.

That is hardly the only reason. A vast majority of people enjoyed the games that Playstation exclusively received.

Otherwise, Final Fantasy 7 wouldn't have received the fandom it never deserved.