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"Sony killed gaming"

Back in the day, when we all had our mega drives or our snes,' gaming was a pleasure. Games were new and exciting, you were either a sega man or a nintendo man and in some cases, an amiga fan. THEN ONE DAY..........
BANG!!!!!
Sony entered the scene with their own little console the Playstaion. Due to Sony's massive marketing campaign, they introduced gaming to a whole new audience, the casual gamer.
No longer were people buying games for sheer enjoyment but for the sake of buying games.
A prime example is Nintendo, they produce a game of their own every couple of months and 9/10 times it's good. But because of Sony churning out mediocre games every week, Nintendo have had to rush many of their own games just to compeat with Sony. Sega have paid the price, who knows maybe Nintendo is next and that just leaves Sony and Microsoft, two of the worlds richest companies continuing to make ok games for the sake of making games.
SONY KILLED GAMING

Sony did not kill gaming. They made it a whole lot better. The Playstation turned out to be a brilliant console that had tonnes of great games, with a lot of these great games created by Sony.

The reason that Sony were getting out more games than Nintendo, was because it was easier and quicker to produce games for the PSX for the simple fact that the N64 used cartridges, which was more expensive and harder to put games on.
Yes Nintendo did bring out brilliant games, but so did Sony. Gran Turismo 1and 2 are good examples.

Nintendo are a great company, and the Gamecube looks very promising, but Sony is also a great company. They produced a great console in the Playstation and have another one on the hands in PS2. I am not the only one who feels like this otherwise the Playstation would not be one of the most successful consoles ever.
Sony did not kill gaming, they livened it up.

The_Vottanator wrote:
> Oh and by the way turbonutter, you may not have heard me but I did
> say what GOOD games have been developed by Sony.

C-12
Grind Session
MediEvil
MediEvil 2
Motor Toon Grand Prix 2
Porsche Challenge
Rapid Racer
This is Football
This is Football 2
Total NBA '96
WipEout 3 Special Edition

There you go.

Oh and by the way turbonutter, you may not have heard me but I did say what GOOD games have been developed by Sony.

Yep, sad.

You'll all think I'm sad but, here's a list of all games developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe:

C-12
Chase the Express
Dracula: The Resurrection
ESPN Extreme Games
Grind Session
Legend of Legaia
MediEvil
MediEvil 2
Motor Toon Grand Prix 2
NFL Gameday
Porsche Challenge
Power Source - Prince's Trust Disc
Rapid Racer
Spice World
This is Football
This is Football 2
Total NBA '96
WipEout 3 Special Edition

All developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

In reply to the original post, I disagree. Sony didn't kill gaming, though when I first started vising these forums that was my somewhat resentful view (being an N64 owner). I'd also disagree that Sony saved gaming. Strongly disagree.

Sony made the inevitable happen faster, that's all. right place, right time, right attitude.

So, the major changes:

Gaming now has a much wider audience.
I think this was going to happen anyway. Gaming was predominantly the domain of teenagers, or slighly younger kids. These kids grow up, and the general consensus from everyone I've known, is that you don't grow out of gaming. Inevitably, this means that gaming would have reached a wider audience anyway, though it might have taken a little longer to reach the domain of the twentysomethings. Or maybe not? It has been quite a few years now, hasn't it?

The graphics/gameplay issue.
Graphics in games are always improving. Look at the saturn games (I'm sure you can think of some if you try). They weren't so dissimilar to the PSX ones. As gaming got more popular (see previous paragraph), compaines were always going to try to cash in on it. We were always going to reach the point where games could be sold on graphics, despite shoddy gameplay. More realistic graphics are also more likely to attract the older gamers (or casual gamers, depending on your point of view). This would've made gaming more popular (ties in with above paragraph)

Advertising/media
Sony did make good use of this, didnt they? Nintendo and Sega do advertise, but not much. I haven't a clue why. The thing is, advertising sells. I don't need to explain that. Perhaps there would've been less games advertised without Sony, but I'm not so sure. In any case, it wouldn't remain that way forever. I can't see microsoft releasing the X-box without an advertising campaign on a scale likely to dwarf presidential election campaigns.


Without Sony, I think there is a good chance the Saturn would have had a very similar role. Slightly less successful, but essentially very similar games. For every Tekken, there was a Virtua Fighter, for every Ridge Racer, there was Daytona. Fighting and racing games appealing to mass audience, that's what the PSX was flooded with, right?

So choose an argument. Either everything that Sony did would have been done by the Saturn (on a smaller scale, perhaps), or else it would have been inevitable with the progression of gaming. Pick one, I'm sure one of them is right ;)

Well it would be fact that Sega would still be making consoles if sony hadnt entered the market. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well the saturn was dissapointing and basically the DC needed to be an improvement to compete with the psx. Compertition brings prices down and quality up.

That is all far and true but how do you or anyone know what gaming would be like if Sony had stayed out of the console market!

Ant wrote:
> Sony actually saved gaming.

Nintendo and Sega were huge
> companies, and the only competition they had were eachother. It was
> a 2-horse race, and neither won that race, and as time went on, I
> think the lack of competition would of brough the quality of games
> down, finally leading to the complete destruction of the gaming
> world.

Then, alomg came Sony. Already known for their electrical
> prowess with Hi-Fi Systems, CD Players, Televisions and many more
> items, they entered the gaming world with the Sony
> PlayStation.

Suddenly, gaming was the top hobbie around the
> world, and millions of pounds were being spent on consoles, games
> and accesories every month. The PlayStation was a huge hit, and
> suddenly Nintendo and Sega had to pick up their act, which they did.
> Nintendo brought out the N64, another fine console. Not their best,
> but a success none the less. Sega bought out the Dreamcast, hoping
> to overcome the failure of the Saturn. And they did. With some top
> games like Soul Caliber, Crazy Taxi and Shenmue, the DC became a
> very popular console. And although Sega have now stopped it's
> production, it is still selling very well.

Now we have the PS2,
> which is bringing gaming to huge heights. Nintendo have responded
> with the GBA and the GameCube, both of which are going to be
> awesome. Sega are now creating games for other consoles, and it'll
> be very interesting to see what they have planned
> console-wise.

So, in other words, Sony have helped to make gaming
> a huge success all over the world, which has led to Nintendo and
> Sega improving their efforts, which has lead to better games
> overall.

The future of gaming is better than ever in my opinion,
> and Sony are a huge factor in it's success.

Thanks for reading,
> Ant.

I would also like to add to this that the PSX produced many awesome games such as MGS, GT1 and GT2, Final Fantasy, the Tekkens, SmackDown 1 and 2, Formula 1 '97 (brought F1 games to new heights) and many many more. That is mostly directed to the comment about 'every good game Sony bring out, 10 bad ones also get released', which I feel is.......well.....to be brutally honest, total and utter tripe. {:)

Sony - helped change gaming to let it become a more acceptable passtime for teenagers and adults than it was. Notice the word helped, as this was a gradual process of the games industry growing up anyway. This had the effect of creating a mass consumer base for consoles, increasing demand, but not neccessarily profits. It also meant that the old customer base was gone, replaced by a whole new set of consumers, thereby meaning Sega and Nintendo were selling to a whole new audience.

Sony did well at what they set out to do, bring gaming to the same people they sold their other electrical equipment to, but at the same time they created a problem, consoles needed to be priced right to enable enough of them to leave the shelves and create the user base Sony needed. This meant that consoles were sold at a loss, and Sega realised they would have to follow suit in a competetive market. The problem here is that the stakes were much higher than before, especially with software sales making up the profits of the company and Sega felt this pressure when their third parties started leaving after complaining about the hardware problems.

Sega and Nintendo gave us games consoles that meant we could play arcade classics at home on a tv with a simple set up and cartridge port for instant access, rather than the computer tapes of the time. This new market wasn't entirely strange to them, but it involved a different set of variables and competition from a new source with more money and a bigger name in the electronics marketplace (making new third party companies more comfortable) and also its own entertainment division, dealing in motion pictures and music, so they had the basis for advertising already there and video/music sources for their games.