Sony's effect on gaming

[Zeus]

A pretty good article

http://retro.ign.com/articles/956/956990p1.html

[kali o.]

I thought it was a pretty shitty article - most of it is incredibly weak, specifically the portion on tone/mature content (which was actually more an effect of culturally relevant content by western devs). If Sony's influence had any impact there, it would only be in the sense that the increased market opened opportunities that attracted western devs.

Isn't this more of a Gamethought thing? /shrug

[Mental]

But, kali, you hate indiscriminately and with abandon, usually. Are you sure you can claim any sort of journalistic or critical viewpoint on this?

I personally think they have a point about FFVII, myself. I wonder what that game would have looked like if it had been forced to show up on Nintendo's systems...

[Julius Seeker]

The article does assume a little too much. Resident Evil wasn't made possible by Sony, as it came out a little later for Saturn and PC as well. It was much more important to Sony that they got Resident Evil than it was to Capcom released it on PSX. If Saturn had Resident Evil first, instead; there might have been a different story. In addition, the trend taking videogames to the mainstream began during the 8-bit era.

North American developers are hardly the ones that made videogames go mainstream. They were catering almost exclusively to nerd oriented audiences back then; and aside from EA and a fewothers, continue to do so. The games that brought videogames to the mainstream were mostly out of Japan.

[SineSwiper]

North American developers are hardly the ones that made videogames go mainstream. They were catering almost exclusively to nerd oriented audiences back then; and aside from EA and a fewothers, continue to do so. The games that brought videogames to the mainstream were mostly out of Japan.

Bah, that's bullshit, Seeker. The console developers will all Japanese, and the Japanese don't give a shit about Americans. Period. The only thing that they want from the US is our money. We're just stupid gaijins to them.

Isn't it funny that as soon as the XBox and XBox 360 came to light, the first consoles made by an American company, that we saw a influx of American games coming to the console market? And shortly after that, we saw a real influx of American GAMERS entering the market.

Granted, games like FF7 and Katamari helped out, but don't discount all of the Halo and Gears of War fans that brought out the rest of the gamers.

[Zeus]

Kali - yeah, didn't realize it 'ti now that I had put this in DS. My mistake.

But the article does make a few good points. First off, it really was Sony that pushed Sega for the early Saturn release and in the awesome re-thinking of the DC (that system was ahead of its time) and even got them on the path to leaving hardware. They took what Sega was trying to do (counter the Nintendo Disney-like kiddy image) and took to a whole new level. They recognized that the average gamer was over 20 years at that time and didn't want Mario-clones or Sonic-clones. They used FMV on a whole new level, to make it more of an interactive movie experience that just wasn't there before the PSX. They got Capcom thinking about RE-type games (and DMC) and gave Square the opportunity to realize their vision for FF7.

They showed Microshaft that there was a huge market to enter and they did bringing with them a lot of Western developers from the PC age which they may not have done with M$ there. And if you look at the biggest games of last year in the US, most of them were developed by ex-PC guys (exclusively PC 'til the Xbox). And if you listen to a lot of the big Jap developers, the Western guys are far ahead of them now. With Sega and Nintendo being Japan-centric, gaming wouldn't have developed like it did not for a while.

They really were the catalyst that moved the industry away from the children and back to the adults. I'm 33 years old and I'm an average gamer age. If Sony had never come along, it would have taken a lot longer to move to the older ages and probably not been as effective.

[Julius Seeker]

A couple of facts: Almost all of the top 50 games on PS were Japanese; the handful that didn't included Tony Hawk, Harry Potter, Tomb Raider, and Driver. Second; the majority of top N64 games were non-Japanese developed.

Resident Evil had scenes censored by Sony on the PSX. The game was made for Saturn and PC as well; and would have come out on those platforms regardless. Sony wasn't the company that experimented with FMV, others did it, Blizzard or Borderbund were actually the first one I recall who had good FMV. Square and Capcom were the ones who pushed it on PSX, rather than Sony.

The article doesn't pretend to be giving factual outcomes. It even says it is just speculation for fun. No one can really predict this without a lot more research.

[Don]

I think the question asked is about as useful as saying what if Columbus didn't discover America and expecting us to come up with a reasonable answer. It's pretty clear whoever was answering the question was not qualified to answer the question posed so it's just a bunch of totally random and unsupported guesses.

[Zeus]

A couple of facts: Almost all of the top 50 games on PS were Japanese; the handful that didn't included Tony Hawk, Harry Potter, Tomb Raider, and Driver. Second; the majority of top N64 games were non-Japanese developed.

Resident Evil had scenes censored by Sony on the PSX. The game was made for Saturn and PC as well; and would have come out on those platforms regardless. Sony wasn't the company that experimented with FMV, others did it, Blizzard or Borderbund were actually the first one I recall who had good FMV. Square and Capcom were the ones who pushed it on PSX, rather than Sony.

The article doesn't pretend to be giving factual outcomes. It even says it is just speculation for fun. No one can really predict this without a lot more research.

Removing the restrictions for the Japanese was one of the big things Sony did. It freed them up to do a lot more than as if they were stuck on a Nintendo system. FF7 would never have been if Square didn't have the backing from Sony and the power to achieve what they were thinking of doing.

The reason so many N64 games were non-Jap (aside from Nintendo's games, of course) was because so many jumped over to Sony. Nintendo ruled with an iron fist when it did and Sony, not having any internal development on their own, became very friendly with the third parties and made it so worth their while to jump ship.

Sony changed the mentality of the industry. RE wouldn't have really been thought of or accepted without Sony coming out and saying "this system is for the older gamer". So even though it was done for all the systems, it likely wouldn't have gotten off the ground 'til later without Sony.

Sony wasn't the pioneer of FMV but they were undoubtably the ones who took it to the mainstream by offering a system that could handle it well, much better than the systems before it. Sony did't pioneer jack (other than media formats), they just expanded the market. Kinda like Apple with the iPoD.

This article is basing a "what if" on history. The history is still factual