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"Did Sony REALLY revolutionise gaming?"

You all know the legend, of that I am sure, but what good are legends if they are not to be retold?

Anyway, it goes a little something like this...

Back in the early 90's gaming was for kids, and geeks. Gaming was something that wasn't seen as being an acceptable hobby by most of the older population, and gamers would be ridiculed for there preference of video football to the real thing.

Until Sony came along in the mid-90's with their Playstation, that apparently brought gaming to the masses, made it more socially acceptable, and created the 'casual gamer'.

But is the legend actually true?

It seems to me that Sony were just in the right place at the right time.

Arcades really started in the 70's, with the home consoles coming coming towards the end of the decade, with the Atari 2600 being vastly popular in the late 70's and early 80's.

Now if you had an Atari 2600 when you were young, say between 5 and 10, then when the Playstation was released in the UK in 1995, you would have been in your late teens or early twenties.

If your gaming history begins with the NES, again, you would have been in your teens by the time that the Playstation was released.

And early Playstation games such as Tekken and WipEout were sure to appeal to gamers that may have felt that they had outgrown gaming on the Nintendo or Sega consoles, had outgrown Sonic and Mario.

The games available on the Playstation were not the games that would necessarily appeal to those that were happy with their Sega's or Nintendo's but those that wanted something different from the trademark characters, and childish games.

But weren't there these kind of games available on the existing systems?

Splatterhouse had been in the arcades for several years. A game in which a chunky guy wearing a hockey mask attacked various beats with a meat cleaver, in a scrolling platformer. This game was available on the Megadrive.

Mortal Kombat, and it's sequel had both been released, into the arcades, and onto the Megadrive and SNES.

So there was no shortage of these more mature titles, that apparently the PSX made popular.

And the thought that Sony made gaming more popular?

Sales figures for consoles and games had been rising for years, it was just a case of the Playstation release coinciding with this, rather than being a cause of this.

So why is it generally thought that Sony is responsible for these things?

Well with the 'more mature' titles thing, it was something that Sony wanted to be noted for. The console did not want to be comparitable to the SNES, or the Saturn, or the soon to be released N64, so it made a point of it's more mature titles. Nintendo wanted to keep a clean, family console image, so it's Donkey Kong games were more noted that the Killer Instinct ones.

What the Playstation did do, however, was offer the developer a better deal, so the console had tremendous support, and a huge amount of games released fr it.

So yes, in one respect Sony did revolutionise gaming. Developers have gotten a beeter deal from console games ever since the playstation came along, but the popularity of the industry was not down to the Playstation, but down to gamers growing up, and having more disposable income, and more adult titles being released was again down to gamers growing up, and wanting something more that cuddly bunnies on fluffy pink clouds! But hey, what's wrong with cuddly bunnies?

Everything your taling about is related to image - a "mature" and cool console. While there was an element of right time, right place, Sony did a truck load of good work too. Who else could have sold their console to the Ibiza Generation and stuck pods in the clubs people wanted to be seen in? Who else was comming up with the inspired marketing? Nintendoids remember the "Play like a girl" Zelda ad and cringe. "PlayStation" has swapped "Nintendo" for the name sinomonous with home console gaming and that takes skill rather then coinsidence. The PS2's Third Place campaign is rubbish compared to the original PSX ones - not only have they changed the meaning of the phrase durring the consoles life, but they have totally failed to live up to it.

Back to your original question though - there has been a minor revolution in the games themselves, but the way the games are sold and perceived has drastically altered. That is almost entirely down to Sony's work.

I think what got sony started at first was the games. I bought mine to play the likes of wipeout, destruction derby, ridge racer. Games are what sell consoles and the playstation offered a good choice of games at the launch. After that it just got more popular and more and more good games came along.

Grrr...

I agree, Sony was just in the right place and at the right time. I have Killer Instinct on the SNES and this was a Gore feast, I loved it. Nintendo and Sega had mature games so how come Sony made them so popular?

Death to thy Sony! ;-)

Only kidding guys, please don't hurt me.

*GM notices a crowd of 100 Sony fans gather around him, all looking rather angry with weapons at hand*

Arggghhhhhhh

I was miffed at the success of the PSX. My console for the 16 bit era was the Megadrive, and I kept that for quite a while.

3D0, Jaguar, CD32 group arrived. All floundered.
The Saturn arrived. Not much effect.
The PSX arrived. I expected the same thing. Electronics company releasing a console which was bound to fail, so I'll get the Ultra 64 then.

But it didn't fail, and I couldn't for the life of me work out why. Why should it have done so much better then the others? The games were similar.

What Sony really brought to the games industry, was advertising.

Turbonutter wrote:
> Ridge 1 was better than Ridge Rev, Ridge 5 was better than both of
> them, Ridge 4 was better than all of them but Rage Racer kicked all
> their butts.

So true.

Ridge 1 was better than Ridge Rev, Ridge 5 was better than both of them, Ridge 4 was better than all of them but Rage Racer kicked all their butts.

Rage Racer was cool but I realyl hated Ridge Racerm, the 1st game ever released for the PSX. And to think I actualyl wasted a good tenner on it another tenner on the sequel!

I made a picture of a flaming wheel on mine. You could get logos and instructions off the Internet.

Rage Racer clearly rocked.

Why can't we have those picture editing features in other games? My cars had the trademark "FM's Coming To Get Ya!" banner on the bonnet, which looked really cool on the replays...