The story of Nintendo is marked by the presence of its rival consoles. Over the years, the Big N has always had great competitors that have struggled with technology equal to or superior to theirs… And with catalogs of titles that have had little to envy that of the Japanese company. However, it has rarely been the case that Nintendo has lost.
Con Sega The battle was tough, but the company with the blue hedgehog ended up giving up on console development. But with Sony… The thing was very different. Perhaps some of you did not know it, but Nintendo was key in the development of its biggest competitor: PlayStation.
Ok, I know what some of you are thinking: But how can this be possible, when Nintendo and Sony are like cat and dog? As much as it’s hard for you to believe, there was a time when both companies seemed very close. But like all good things, this had to end at some point.
And curiously, it ended with the development of the greatest competition that Nintendo has had so far. In this article we are going to go over the reasons that led to this, and why this is considered to be Nintendo’s biggest mistake.. So, without further delay… Inside article!
Once upon a time, in the 90s…
During the 90swar was raging between nintendo and sega. Known as the Console Wars, in this there was a key issue: how many bits each console could represent. The more bits, the more interest the company received from the public. And this, whether we like it or not, gave the company enormous superiority. Despite the fact that Nintendo had chosen to take full advantage of the net power of its consoles, Sega did not think so.. The hedgehog company chose to develop multiple accessories with which to give rise to greater power in its consoles. Despite the controversial failure of some of its accessories, this caught the attention of Nintendo.
The big N was increasingly interested in making the technological leap and surpassing the advances made by the competition. It was for these reasons that the company focused its attention on an old contract that they had signed with Sony. This company, focused on the manufacture of televisions and players, had signed with Nintendo for the creation of a new device. With this, the consoles of the Italian plumber’s company could reproduce CD-Romsomething new for the time. Nintendo was interested in this again, but Sony was not meeting the stipulated deadlines.
a double betrayal
for 1991Sony finally hit the key by creating a prototype that, although it was far from what it was originally looking for NintendoYes, it was new. This was known as Nintendo PlayStationand it was a somewhat more powerful console than the Super Nintendo Compatible with your cartridges. This console went beyond what had been seen so far in Nintendodoing use of CD technology, which allowed more storage. However, Nintendo was not satisfied with this prototype: the console became Sony’s, who could take advantage of Nintendo’s catalog while creating their own games.
If the console went ahead, Nintendo would lose a lot of revenue by sharing it with Sony. Perhaps the most sensible solution would have been to modify the contract and generate a new agreement, but Nintendo did not think about it: the contract was cancelled. And to add fuel to the fire, the big N made one of the worst moves in its history. Thus, Nintendo went to Phillips, Sony’s rival, to generate an exclusivity contract… without notifying Sony itself. This betrayal meant that, rather than discarding the PlayStation prototype, work continued on it to shape a console superior to Nintendo. Thus was born PlayStation, the greatest rival in the history of Nintendo.
The rest, as you can imagine, is history. While Sony attracted many developers by using CDs, Nintendo failed miserably in its deal with Phillips. This company created CDi, a lousy console that was unable to present a decent game. Of four titles produced in collaboration with Nintendo, none reached the minimum quality levels. Thus, the Big N not only saw how its agreement gave rise to the worst ranked games in its history, but also to the creation of its greatest rival.
And here is today’s article! Tell us, would you have liked to see a Sony and Nintendo console? We will be reading you!
