Perhaps the final retail product would be different but if it wasn't I could see a 6th reason why Nintendo would want to break from the playstation project. Sony's name is all over the system while Nintendos barely exists only to be seen on the underside copyright/trademark info on the underside of the controller.
Sony-Nintendo PlayStation Prototype finally found
- Thread starter DieH@rd
- Start date
A Nintendo designed product, with Nintendo games developed for Sony? Its as if Sony approached Nintendo in an interest to design a console for Sony. If that was the case, personally I believe Nintendo should have seen it positively as Sony would have been promoting Nintendo;s branding instead of going all independently as a competitor.
They wouldn't be promoting Sony's brand as essentially nothing on the console or cardboard box would signify Nintendo like my previous post mentioned. And Sony gets all the royalties for the disc based games. Understandable why Nintendo broke off the deal.
Why should it if it was intended to be a Sony higher end console which Sony decided to partner with Nintendo to make? It looks like Nintendo would be getting the royalties for the cartridge games (and probably some for the hardware too), while Sony would be getting royalties for the CD games as that would have been a Sony developed hardware. The Nintendo logo would be pretty much in every cartridge game and boot up. It is understandable that Nintendo would want a bigger slice from the pie if they believed they could but that doesnt mean that the initial approach was illogical
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Even quicker transition of 3rd party publishers to the cheaper CD based medium, meaning a loss of royalties for Nintendo. All the Super Nintendo consumers would have a nice comfortable way to way to transition off of Nintendo and gain comfort with as Sony as a videogame hardware platform via the Superdisc addon. Undoubtably with the comfort and familiarity and Sony's even earlier transition to the videogame market they would gain ambition to create their own consoles and increase their domination of the market even further.
Sony was very well known in Japan for being ruthless. This Nintendo deal would likely end up being seen in hindsight as as trogan horse as Sony got even more ambitious in the console market.
Nintendo had to release a non CD based console, had to have the no-multiplatform clause for 3rd party titles, and had to release a console a year later to cede the market to playstation. The loss of the 3rd parties was Nintendo's true downfall through the high cartridge prices and inability early on during N64 lifecycle to allow publishers to have multiplats.
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Rikimaru
Veteran
No. afaik Sony controlled all CD side business.
Rurouni
Veteran
First, get into the console business using CD
2nd, take over the world...
This video popped up after the one in the OP. It says that the original deal between Nintendo and Sony gave Sony the royalty rights for all .-based content including the games. It seems later and having bring Philips into the mix as well Nintendo was able to renegotiate the games part, but still Sony would have had quite a bit of power over the Nintendo ecosystem, also technically it probably would have sucked. No surprise that Nintendo didn't want to go through with it. Still they should have made their own CD-based console, instead of the 64.
First of all NEC/Hudson had their competing Hu-Card console and eventual Super-CD-Rom add on earlier than that announced CES Sony/Nintendo deal.
PC-Engine/TurboGrafix16, was picking up steam in Japan and as being marketed in the U.S. or North American region.
Nintendo, like rival Sega actually owned Cartridge factories and contracts.
Sony would easily own CD-Rom factories hence that was at the time impossible by both Nintendo and Sega.
You don't understand the history and culture of Sony...they were not into "kids toys" they were into "high end tech electronics" Nintendo's paranoia is and was unfounded because the "PlayStation" was gonna depend and rely on the Nintendo name but be aimed at high price spending consumers.
Evidence of this is the fact that when NEC/Hudson released their CD-ROM add on, it's cost was alone a fancy shmancy $250.00+ in U.S. retail...probably more in Japan and it could also be used as a portable CD-player.
SegaCD or SegaMegaCD cost $300.00 at retail and it required the Genesis/MegaDrive.
Even when NEC made a combined console it still cost more and was probably sold at a loss...Sega didn't have a combined console until they made a deal with JVC/Victor and that X-Eye/WonderMega initially cost in the same neighborhood as the 3DO and NeoGeo.
If anything Sony was reliant/dependent on the Nintendo brand to sell an add on not to take Nintendo's lunch...unless it cost $700.00++ a pop as credible estimated speculations could be made.
Also again...neither Sega nor Nintendo were gonna own or have immediate CD-Rom fabs... (neither believed in CDs until around 1993 Sega Saturn being planned along the chaos of 32X and 1999 or 2000 when Nintendo finally admited their Dolphin was disc based.
Nintendo's paranoia is unfounded at least from 1988 to 1996 if said console were to be made...Nintendo would still have their dominance of cartridge consoles...
If Nintendo is to believed in having made Sony PlayStation a "monster" then it's foolish to believe that...
The Panasonic/Sanyo deal and price with 3DO and later Sega fumbling customers with 32X and Saturn as well as surprise North America launch is what really helped make PlayStation a Sony manifesto trademark...otherwise it was going to be in that high end electronics price range where at most (how much did the Phillips CD-I cost?) The gaming consumer was gonna be shelling out the big bucks to have the Sony trademark.
Exactly...if we look at the JVC/Victor WonderMega/X-Eye...that thing boasted lots of fancy gadget like utilities and was packed with edutainment...Yet it relied on the Sega brand to also play those cartridges.
If anyone was figuring out how to properly use CD-Roms for games it was NEC/Hudson...at least in Japan...Sega went all interactive movies...
All of these companies gave Sony plenty of homework to do as they basically did the risks that Sony as a partner if kept with Nintendo would have predictably done.
Credit has to be give to Sony for using billboards in the mid-late 90s featuring PlayStation as a present a woman can "gift" to her significant male friend, at least in North America where the stigma of "kid's toys" was being dealt with and note that 3DO did have ads and commercials naming game consoles as "kids stuff"
All through the 90s Sega jumped the gun while other companies looked conservative. If Sega had properly canned the 32X, made Saturn not just a new hardware but Cartridge/CD based and properly marketed their console in North America then there would have been less reason why consumers would have shifted to PlayStation in droves...
Saturn as it was did great in Japan initially. And Nintendo 64 did have many games selling in the millions at least in North America so the only solution is for Sega not to have jumped ahead on Dreamcast...leave it as arcade hardware then base their console on Naomi2/Hikaru hardware
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I guess the Walkman never happened.
The terms in the original deal were terrible for Nintendo and great for Sony. This add on would have in every sense of the word eat Nintendo's lunch, how much is another question. The fact that it needed Nintendo platform and brand to exists makes it very similar to a tapeworm, eating all the disc based revenue. Later on when the deal was renegotiated to a sane level, Sony didn't like it so much and dropped the whole thing and in fact made a better choice by doing so.
If the Walkman happened and Nintendo as a company was well aware of it, why draw out a contract and potential competitor.
You are confusing two different industries.
Portable music players be them Cassettes, radio, CD based and even today with how smartphones hate taken up the music playing duties is completely different from a videogames industry.
It's been stated many times in interviews that Sony as a conglomerate didn't really have much interest in the videogames industry other than the notion of "high end electronics" which amazingly seems to have never happened to some.
Electronics stores had special sections for the "high end" stuff...which boasted check list techno-babble that usually required a sales rep to help the already willing consumer swipe their card.
Even if Nintendo was "right" to be paranoid after they themselves instigated the contract by actually accepting it, it would, in the real world, have taken the entire decade of the 1990s to be spent before Sony would have "awakened" as a rival...
Instead Nintendo awakened Sony, NEC/Hudson was basically showing cheaper priced versions of what "then Sony" would have done and Sega/JVC/Victor and 3DO showed what not to do (further awakening Sony) all before you could say "September 1995"
It's not a wrong thing but had Sony gotten in early with Nintendo or alone = "high end multimedia edutainment electronics" and probably at an eventual loss of interest or perpetual confusion for Sony as they would have simply followed NEC and Panasonic/Sanyo and both Nintendo and Sega consoles by the end on the 1999 year would have been cartridge based.
Note that NEC/Hudson's PC-FX went down the path and away from videogames into "interactive fmv games" even when their previous efforts showed otherwise.
It's more than likely that going into the 2000s the cartridge format would still have been in use as crazy as that sounds and stuff like DVD and later Blu-Ray players would have remained $1,000.00 dollar high end electronics for all the years up to now in such an alternate universe history.
Walkman was a hit sure but Discman and later resurrected Walkman as a disc player and later mp3/audio formats player just wasn't.
You make the terms sound so terrible yet you omit to admit that Sony was and has always been about making tech filled electronics that show their cost at the register, thus Nintendo (I sound like a broken record) would have had a whole decade of zero worry from Sony
The gaming consumer who was raised on the earlier consoles would have been slow to very slow to adopt into a "high end console filled with tech out the ass" just look at PlayStation 3 (which really is, like the PS2 a throwback to Sony high end electronics ideology) for the first three/four sales years. Cutting out stuff like the EE/GS, premium media slots, etc wasn't a "corporate error" but a reaction to consumers not responding as expected when even PS2 was not really expected to sell the way it initially did.
Nintendo is a very strict ship...we could argue Sega was more open but they were not gonna be uncontested winners because they stepped out of the Nintendo (then comfort zones)
Neo Geo sold for more than the generation to certain consumers...neither Sega/Nintendo had anything to worry about...or lose sleep. Time reveals how cost was a huge factor.
Update#
Seems like a glitch ate my reply months ago.
Nintendo stood to lose billions from loss of 3rd party royalties and 3rd party cartridge manufacturing, as 3rd party devs moved to a more capable machine with cheaper medium costs.
Additionally If Nintendo were to release their next gen system which likely would continue to use cartridge to support the cartridge end of their business, they would be competing with this thing that woujld be taking 3rd party royalties. IF Nintendo did release their future console with a CD drive they would still be competing against this thing that was cheaper pricepoint, most defintely with better development tools as that was a Sony strong point from the very beginning of the ps1, and a large preexisting install base and library of games, taking 3rd party royalties.
Additionally consumers who already might have this device or who are planning to jump to a next generation may chose to forgo the $200-300 expense of the new Nintendo system as the Nintendo-playstation addon was cutting edge technology at the time.
http://kotaku.com/the-specs-of-a-nintendo-console-that-never-was-1522494626
This opens the door for Sony to even sooner start eating into nintendo's revenue, and make even faster inroads into the console industry, Nintendo's turf, and makes an even easier pathway for Sony to dominate, and would inevitably lead to a Sony standalone console once they got a taste of software royalties.
Ken Kutaragi has real world networth of $6 Billion USD from playstations success. Lets say the SNES-playstation CD did happen, and Kutaragi aquired tens of millions, and sony hundreds of milions in profit from the products success, you think perhaps once 1995-1996 came along and Nitnedo decide they dont want to repartner with Sony for their next, that they would just give up on all those profits and leave the console industry?
Seems like a glitch ate my reply months ago.
Nintendo stood to lose billions from loss of 3rd party royalties and 3rd party cartridge manufacturing, as 3rd party devs moved to a more capable machine with cheaper medium costs.
Additionally If Nintendo were to release their next gen system which likely would continue to use cartridge to support the cartridge end of their business, they would be competing with this thing that woujld be taking 3rd party royalties. IF Nintendo did release their future console with a CD drive they would still be competing against this thing that was cheaper pricepoint, most defintely with better development tools as that was a Sony strong point from the very beginning of the ps1, and a large preexisting install base and library of games, taking 3rd party royalties.
Additionally consumers who already might have this device or who are planning to jump to a next generation may chose to forgo the $200-300 expense of the new Nintendo system as the Nintendo-playstation addon was cutting edge technology at the time.
http://kotaku.com/the-specs-of-a-nintendo-console-that-never-was-1522494626
This opens the door for Sony to even sooner start eating into nintendo's revenue, and make even faster inroads into the console industry, Nintendo's turf, and makes an even easier pathway for Sony to dominate, and would inevitably lead to a Sony standalone console once they got a taste of software royalties.
Ken Kutaragi has real world networth of $6 Billion USD from playstations success. Lets say the SNES-playstation CD did happen, and Kutaragi aquired tens of millions, and sony hundreds of milions in profit from the products success, you think perhaps once 1995-1996 came along and Nitnedo decide they dont want to repartner with Sony for their next, that they would just give up on all those profits and leave the console industry?
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This guy took the time to research each chip in the system. On the motherboard there are no additional chipset which would improve visuals, it is essentially an SNES with a CD drive and the associated hardware needed to run games off of the drive, hardly anything more. However there is a Bios ROM cartridge that perhaps needed to be inserted while playing any disk that does come with additional WRAM chips which triple the SNES system memory from 128KB to 384KB.
http://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/132730812143/here-are-my-research-about-the-snes-playstation
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I recall as well all the rumours with regards to additional HW, I'd imagine most of it was wishful journalism, an article I read in period could have been Super Play or CVG magazine mentioned that Namco's Starblade was under conversion for this system, supposedly touted as arcade perfect. Maybe other bios cartridges were at an experimental stage with additional co-processors such as the Super FX chip or Super FX2? I guess we will never really know.
It is pretty amazing to see it running at all considering its age and rarity.
It had a raytracing chip and an AI processor. They always have a raytracing chip and an AI processor...
