How SEGA & Nintendo Created Their Own Worst Enemy

it's one thing to try your hardest and fail but all sympathy i had for you goes out the window when you cause your own downfall which is unfortunately the case for the two video game juggernauts sega and nintendo when they allowed sony a company who had never made their own game console before to beat them in the fifth generation of gaming in the early 90s nintendo and sega were trapped in the greatest war in human history you either had a super nintendo or a genesis mario or sonic zelda or alex kidd or whatever at this point it was a heated one-on-one fight to the death in the home console market but there was one thing that changed everything the compact disc in 1979 japanese and dutch electronics giant sony and phillips respectively worked together to come up with a new method of storing and playing audio this would lead to the development of the compact disc called cd for short alongside the development of the cd was the cd player which would shoot a laser at the cd and the light that reflected off of the disc would give the cd player the information it needed to play the song that was stored on the disk cds caught on extremely fast and were quickly becoming the way to store data by the early 90s so naturally game developers were experimenting with using them to run games the first system to use cd-roms to play games was actually an add-on module for a pre-existing console nippon electric company's pc engine known as the turbo graphics 16 in north america in the west this system was in a very very distant third place to nintendo and sega's consoles but in its native country of japan it performed pretty well to further the success nec released the cd add-on for the pc engine called the cd-rom rom the cd rom rom was released all the way back in 1988 only a year after the release of the base pc engine nec were just as bad if not worse than sega when it came to all the different add-ons and consoles they made to try and stay hip and cool speaking of sega soon they too would join in on the cd craze with their sega cd in 1991 in japan an add-on for their existing sega genesis console of course the last of the big three home console companies had their own cd project in the works too nintendo sought help from sony in making their leap into the world of cds it seems freaking crazy nowadays but and back in the day sony and nintendo were pretty cool at least on the surface sony engineer ken kutaragi actually developed the audio subsystem used by the super nintendo he did this in secret so when the sony bigwigs found out they were pissed though luckily kutaragi found a sympathizer in sony president norio oga who recognized his talents and allowed him to keep his job the nintendo deal ended up working out so everything was fine and it led to nintendo and sony striking up a contract in 1988 to work together on a new cd add-on for the super nintendo as well as a sony console that could play both super nintendo and cd games this new relationship with sony it made sense sony was big in just about every other field of consumer electronics besides video games so getting help from the biggest video game company on the planet made sense and for nintendo they wanted to use cds for their game so getting help from the company who invented the cd yeah i can kind of see how that might make a little bit of sense but like i said everything seemed fine until you look under the hood the cd format that this new super nintendo add-on would use was called superdisk a new proprietary format in typical sony fashion sony would have a console that could play super nintendo games and play new cd games and they would own all the licensing rights to all of the cd content sony was by far the winner of this agreement leaving nintendo with little power and less to gain in this deal nintendo also feared that with sony being the bigger company having influence in movies music and other electronics related fields working with them on a console could give them the experience they needed to make their own independent console and become a dangerous rival to nintendo so behind sony's back nintendo made a more pleasing deal with sony's rival the other company that helped develop the cd philips at the summer consumer electronics show in 1991 sony unveiled their new collaboration console with nintendo the playstation two words not one and the very next day howard lincoln the chairman of nintendo revealed yeah we're working with phillips now apparently sony actually did find out about nintendo's betrayal before their presentation was supposed to go live but it was a bit too little too late in trying to stop the whole thing from happening nintendo didn't just backstab sony they didn't just embarrass them in front of the technological world they left them crying at the altar while they were off playing footsies with the hot dutch girl this was obviously a big no-no nintendo faced a lot of backlash from the japanese business community for betraying a fellow japanese company and nintendo also had a ton of potential legal issues since they were already in a deal with sony oh and if i didn't mention it sony they were pretty pissed off too considering sony was making the super nintendo's audio system they kinda had to be cordial to one another for business reasons but oga and kutaragi were livid and they were not gonna take this disrespect lightly they didn't just want revenge they wanted to completely destroy nintendo for making a fool out of them so early work began on a completely new sony video game console once again many of the sony higher ups were against it sony had little experience in video games and back then games were not nearly as respected as a medium they were seen as toys for children and weren't taken seriously despite all of this backlash oga allowed kutaragi to continue to work on sony's own original video game console which as you all know became the playstation one word ultimately sony won in the end as their playstation console ended up vastly outperforming nintendo's next console the nintendo 64. oh and that deal nintendo had with phillips to make a cd add-on for the super nintendo yeah well it ended up going nowhere this has gone down in history as one of if not nintendo's worst blunder maybe even the worst mistake in gaming history if we're being honest this story isn't exactly obscure i know so you've probably at least heard of it but what less people know about is that sega also had a chance to work with sony on a game console after the humiliation that sony had gone through courtesy of nintendo sony tried to join forces with nintendo's biggest rival saga that same june that the 1991 ces took place just so happened to be the exact same month that a certain blue hedgehog made his debut on sega's home console the genesis thanks to sonic and sega of america's downright disrespectful marketing campaign sega managed to break into the home console market finally giving nintendo a worthy rival in the most iconic console war of all time given sega's recent success sony teaming up with them was honestly a pretty smart move it was a the enemy of my enemy is my friend type of situation sony electronics publishing in sega of america announced a joint venture in may of 1992 where sony would produce games for sega's consoles with a particular emphasis being on their new sega cd platform leading to games like hook sewer shark and the infamous night trap sega and sony had established a good relationship but the honeymoon phase was over it was time for a real sign of commitment a sega and sony joint console but unfortunately this never came to be as for why their deal never ended up going through well honestly i don't know for a long time the story was that sony and sega of america were down for the idea but sega of japan decided not to go through with it possibly out of spite as sega of japan and sega of america for years had tension between each other however there's also information that suggests sega and sony had differing views on how to proceed with the next generation of gaming sega wanted to do 2d and 3d games while sony wanted to primarily focus on 3d another thing i've heard is that the companies just really weren't all that interested in working together that's the thing about history a lot of it is just he said she said people lie people exaggerate and sometimes people just forget keep in mind this entire story takes place nearly 30 years ago but at the end of the day what we do know is just like with nintendo sega's deal with sony didn't come to fruition and so sony went out on their own i know i gave nintendo and sega a hard time at the beginning of this video for not going through with their deals with sony but to be fair hindsight is 20 20. you could easily say at the time it was smart not partnering up with sony like i said sony was a huge company and it's possible nintendo and sega could have gotten swallowed up by working with them going with sony was a gamble as they'd never made a game console before there were a lot of risks looking back it was a mistake but i can't really blame them for it so past me from 10 minutes ago in this video it's one thing to try your hardest and fatal but all sympathy i had for you goes out the window shut up you're stupid i hope you guys enjoyed the video and if you did there's a whole playlist of videos just like this one on the left side of the screen if you want to be notified when i post a new video then click on the subscribe button and the notification bell if you'd be so kind click the like button too before you go as it really helps the channel grow thanks guys put your pride to the side and have a good one

Channel: kiro talks

Views: 76,086

Keywords: Sony, Play Station, PlayStation, CD

Id: woMEn-c3YhM

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022