jarrod said:
Eh, Miyamoto always justifies what his boss claims, because it's his job
Yamauchi defined N64 as the cart-driven system and Miyamoto just tried to justify it.To be exactly, Nintendo was not initially pursuing CD-ROM. Rather, Sony's persistent, annoying offer of their own CD-ROM technology moved Nintendo for a brief time.
According to these series of articles in a Japanese IT business, not gaming, webzine which details from the early days of the Nintendo-Sony relationship to the birth of PS/PS2, Sony's game business started when Ken Kutaragi approached Nintendo in April, 1986 (Family Computer/Famicom was released in 1983, and NES in 1985). This story is very interesting for me, so I put a rough translation/transcription of it here.
In July 1987 Nintendo and Sony had a brainstorming camp in Shizuoka to discuss about a next-gen Famicom. At the table Kutaragi proposed the adoptation of CD-ROM but Nintendo rejected saying ROM cartridge was their prefered way. Then, in the following years Sony proposed PCM sound chip for Super Famicom/SNES and Nintendo accepted it. From there on, their co-project started as "Play Station Project".
In April 1989, Kutaragi proposed CD-ROM again to Nintendo, and Nintendo rejected it again, but in October Kutaragi started the design of an SNES CD system by himself.
Then, finally, in Jan 1990 Nintendo accepted CD-ROM. Sony president Norio Oga and Nintendo's Yamauchi signed the agreement of the development of "the next generation Famicom with CD-ROM". Sony made a design sample in May, and in October Sony engineers including Kutaragi and game developers from EPIC Sony formed the prototype of Sony Computer Entertainment. Meanwhile, Nintendo released Super Famicom in November 1990.
At June 1st in 1991, at the CES in Chicago, Sony unveiled the SNES-compatible CD-ROM gaming machine. However, at the very next day at the show, possiblly fearing the growing presence of Sony, Nintendo stabbed Sony in the back by announcing the alliance with Philips. Sony already knew the betrayal in May, but had believed Nintendo might change its mind by looking Sony executing the contract to the end.
Sony had negotiations with Nintendo for 1 year rather than jumping on drastic countermeasures such as stopping the supply of the sound chip in SNES. But eventually, at the Sony executive conference at 1992/06/24, Sony made the final decision about their game business. Here, this business magazine praises the decision of the Sony president Norio Oga, who chose to restart its own gaming business rather than surrender to Nintendo by making an SNES-compatible machine or complete withdrawal from the game business.
In Nov. 1993 Sony Computer Entertainment was founded by Sony and Sony Music paying each half of the capital stock, and in Dec 1994 Playstation was released.
From there on this article briefly touchs the Playstation hardware and reviews SCE's business model against Nintendo's one but I omit it. One interesting episode is disclosed there for the idea of the Playstation hardware: Sony's origin in the game business was when in 1984 Kutaragi saw a 3D-CG processing system for TV stations called "Geometory Engine" in the Sony lab he worked at, and thought it must be interesting if Famicom had this 3D hardware. So the PlayStation is the synthesis of what Sony had in the digital technology, this Geometory Engine and CD-ROM.
