Nintendo was right to backstab Sony over the PlayStation

Nintendo and Sony used to work together like peanut butter and jelly or in video game terms like the A and B buttons on one side Nintendo all but had the Home console Market locked up with the NES the Nintendo Entertainment System and had legendary games to back them up like Mario and Zelda son whatever will they think of next and Sony was on the other side being a bleeding edge tech company and had a part in developing the compact disc the CD new technology that would help video games evolve into the third dimension it could have been a match made in heaven if not for Nintendo spiking the deal at the last minute it might be hard to believe but Nintendo and Sony almost brought the PlayStation into the world together this strange looking box had a slot for Nintendo cartridges and a disc drive for CDs produced by Sony it was almost The Best of Both Worlds but Nintendo was afraid that it might be the end of theirs their partnership with Sony had the potential to undermine their whole business like many tragic characters before them Nintendo would be the architect of their own Misfortune this story is about how they almost lost everything to Sony an entertainment Juggernaut that would later be crowned the king of consoles real quick side tangent I'm Blown Away by how much the channel has grown in the last couple months thank you all for watching these videos and if you end up enjoying this one please smash that like button and consider subscribing it really means a lot now back to the main event this is how Nintendo stabbed Sony in the back and created their biggest rival and why they had to do it to keep their independence on the Nintendo Entertainment System now you're playing with power at the height of Nintendo's power in the 1980s they were basically Unstoppable it's not an exaggeration to say they single-handedly saved the video game industry after the crash of 1983 where a flood of crappy games destroyed the customer trust in what they were buying and burned retailers left holding on to product they couldn't sell perhaps the most famous example of this was for the Atari a game based on the film ET the Extraterrestrial the game was so bad it became a symbol of the video game recession they just couldn't sell it Atari ultimately had to bury hundreds of thousands of unsold copies in a landfill in New Mexico many of the bad games being made were by third party developers trying to ride the wave until it crashed they made what's called shovelware games made without paying attention to Quality that are shoveled on the platforms at scale to make a quick Buck this is what Nintendo was working against when they entered the market the games they produced in-house like Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda were revolutionary for their time they basically made consoles cool again Nintendo's quality control in this era is one of their biggest selling points which was a lesson learned from the crash they were coming out of Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yami told the newspaper that he believed quote Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games if a third party wanted to work with the big n they would have to play by their rules to get their stamp of approval Nintendo was able to rule with an iron fist or Power Glove if that's your thing developers would have to pay Nintendo to manufacture the game and then pay big royalties for the privilege they would also have to agree to a 2-year exclusivity Clause that prevented them for putting games on competing consoles despite the harsh terms developers were lining up to get their games approved for example Hudson soft known for making the Bomberman series they were used to selling 10,000 copies of their games for home computers but when they broke onto the NES with their game load Runner they sold more than a million copies the NES install base was huge and to third parties working with Nintendo was worth it and because they were the Undisputed biggest player in the console space at the time you could either get in or get out eventually the console Wars would heat up sega's Genesis would bring much needed competition to the landscape and other consoles like the turbog graphic 16 would introduce a brand new technology that would shake the Game World the compact disc CD for short had captured the imaginations of console makers across the world and it's easy to see why it could store 300 times more data than cartridges which opened doors for developers to include videos and higher quality audio in their games they were also a lot cheaper to make which meant game makers would be able to keep more of their earnings as opposed to their arrangement with Nintendo CDs were co-developed by Sony and Philips Electronics we'll come back to Phillips later Sony was starting to dip their toes into the Waters of the video game industry the effort was led by by Ken karagi an engineer at the time who had later become the CEO of Sony but more importantly to us he's the father of the PlayStation he was convinced that video games would be a worthwhile industry after watching his daughter spend hours playing Nintendo's famicom that's what the neses was called in Japan his boss is on the otherand disagreed they thought video games would be a passing fad especially after the recent crash one day Nintendo came knocking on their door they wanted to upgrade the sounds of their next console the Super Nintendo and came to Sony for a specialized sound chip karagi would take the project and keep it a secret from Sony's Executives I get the feeling he was kind of a Maverick type the kind of guy who asks for forgiveness instead of permission he delivered the SP spc700 a sound chip responsible for some of the most iconic Tunes in all of gaming here's a comparison of the Overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda here it is on the [Music] NES and here it is on the Super Nintendo with the new sound chip oh beautiful kari's work built a lot of Goodwill with Nintendo and got the approval of Sony's CEO noria oga which would be essential because without it he probably would have been fired and the PlayStation would never exist with the soundship delivered and Nintendo happy karagi had a more ambitious project for both companies he wanted to get Sony into the video game Market with a console of their own and wanted to use Nintendo as a Launchpad two devices were pied pitched a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo and a separate console released by Sony themselves called the PlayStation featuring a disc drive and a cartridge slot for Nintendo games with the benefit of hindsight this looks incredibly strange a prototype of this was Unearthed and sold at an auction in 2020 according to the site only 200 of these prototypes were made and most of the others were destroyed it's apparently designed to play music CDs and Super Nintendo games at the same time it had separate audio controls for the CD functionality finally I can play Super Metroid while listening to Lincoln Park IED Nintendo was skeptical for a few reasons while CS were mostly better than cartridges in every way there were a few disadvantages on the technical end low times were longer than their cartridge counterparts somewhere in the ballpark of 10 to 15 seconds between game levels Nintendo thought players wouldn't want to wait that long to play a game CS were also easier to Pirate Nintendo was a total control freak about how people play their games and seemed to jump at any chance they get to take Pirates down they're not letting anybody dip into their pot of gold and they also probably didn't want to mess with their cartridge money-making machine that they had going with the NES But ultimately Nintendo has just never been known for pioneering Cutting Edge Tech they have this philosophy that explains why they always seem behind in the tech realm it's called lateral thinking of Wither technology which is basically taking relatively old and cheap Tech and doing something new with it with the intention of inspiring creativity and keeping costs down Nintendo to this day abides by this philosophy their current console the switch is basically an Android tablet that can be plugged into a TV which I think is genius I bought two of them Nintendo may not have been interested in CDs but despite that and probably against their better judgment they eventually caved a karagi Hoshi yuchi reportedly told them when they made the deal all right we don't think it'll be successful but you can do your CD ROM thing this quote came from a translated interview with the former CEO of Sony Music Entertainment shago morama according to him Nintendo agreed partly because karagi was being super pushy and partly because they were reassured that Sony wouldn't be making their own game software they would instead be focusing on Virtual encyclopedias and karaoke stuff and would be leaving all the games to Nintendo however this wasn't written into the contract itself something I learned working on this video was that Japanese contracts are surprisingly short this one was like three pages long they agree on Broad terms but rely on good faith for the rest and after it was signed technically Sony would have the right to do anything they want with their new super dis format it would take Nintendo nearly 3 years to realize they had messed up I've made a huge mistake the console Sony was making had the potential to completely undercut Nintendo's business they had a money printing Factory with their cartridge licensing scheme that Nintendo seal equality to them was equivalent to the seal on a dollar what they didn't realize when they made that deal is that they gave Sony quote the right to control and profit from all CD based software that played on the PlayStation this meant that Sony could work through Nintendo to make relationships with developers and license their own games which flies directly in the face of their control schem that they had with the NES they could also use Nintendo's platform to build their own brand with the customers which would take attention away from the SNES hey plumber boy mustache man your worst nightmare has arrived and eventually Nintendo feared Sony would just be done with them or Worse acquire them like they had other entertainment companies throughout the ' 80s by the end of the decade sonyia made some pretty big Acquisitions buying Columbia Pictures and CBS records they were becoming a force in the broader entertainment landscape their fears may have been realized when Sony started creeping into the the publishing space with her own game software division image soft some notable games from them include Dragon Lair and Hudson Hawk both for the NES feeling like their independence was in Jeopardy Nintendo started to look at Exit options and fortunately for them one of Sony's big rivals was in a jam remember Philips Electronics from before they competed with Sony in the consumer Tech realm think TVs cameras and music players they were trying to make their own CDI machine work in the marketplace the CDI console was marketed as basically a computer for the living room it offered interactive multimedia for the whole family think Museum tours virtual books guitar lessons and eventually video games they didn't initially lead with it being a video game machine though probably because they couldn't compete with the other consoles on price the CDI would retail for $1,000 where the other 16-bit consoles on the market were hanging around 200 looking to make the console more appealing Philips approached Nintendo about you guessed it making a CD add-on for the upcoming Super Nintendo as a way to make a less expensive entry point for customers to get into the CDI ecosystem system and in exchange philps would get to make games starring a few Nintendo characters I imagine Nintendo still wasn't interested in CDs as a medium but a partnership with Phillips would be useful in turning the screws to Sony both companies had a history with each other there were reportedly some Shenanigans from back when they were working on the CD together they were establishing the technical standards like how large the disc would be and how much audio content it could hold Legend has it the reason why discs are the size of they are today 120 mm or 4.7 in for us Americans is because that was the minimum size they needed to fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony on the disc which was 74 minutes long the problem was both companies had previously agreed to an hour-long disc so they were working with the Assumption of the disc being slightly smaller the desire for the larger disc allegedly came from the wife of then Sony chairman noria oga now it's entirely possible that she was a legitimate fan of classical music her husband was a classically trained musician after all and just couldn't live with herself if the CD couldn't hold Beethoven's most famous Symphony but it's also possible that Sony new Phillips already had a factory in place that could mass-produce that smaller disc size and Sony seemingly didn't want them to have that kind of Competitive Edge when they were ready to go to market the disc we got is at slightly larger size so we can see Sony got their way in the end was Sony being petty or was it just good business why not both let me know what you think in the comments below both companies were also working on the CDI format for a while but after some personal turmoil and a difference in Vision they would break their Alliance and they weren't on great terms with each other after that Nintendo had to have known working with Phillips would be a poison pill for Sony their goal with the Phillips deal give Nintendo back it strangle hold on software and gracefully Sony the Stag is set at the consumers Electronic Show in 1991 Sony was getting ready to introduce the PlayStation to the world and let everyone know they were working closely with Nintendo on the project but to their shock they were hearing talk of another company encroaching on their Turf somebody at Nintendo talked to the media head of Sony's press conference announcing their deal with Phillips to make games on the CDs together this came out of nowhere for Sony CEO noria oga was calling the leaders of both companies to try and stop Nintendo's press conference but neither company would budge feeling disheartened Sony would stick to the plan and they took the stage the next day and announced their PlayStation as scheduled which made that cartridge slot disc drive combo just a little more awkward it was probably a bitter moment for kudari to be working on this project for years only to have Nintendo undercut them in such a public manner the next day the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was officially announced to the world as well as his deal with Phillips for the Future CD drive this whole situation must have been very confusing for the public CDs for the PlayStation weren't going to be compatible with the Phillips device and vice versa Nintendo lost a lot of Thunder that weekend with the drama they stirred with Sony largely overshadowing the great games they had for their new machine like Super Mario World and f-zero but was it worth it in my opinion Nintendo didn't just dodge a bullet they dodged the missile they were right thinking Sony was going to broadly license games with third parties and on a long enough timeline probably would have gotten big enough to make a move to acquire Nintendo outright Nintendo kept its independence but at a great cost Sony decided to go solo after announcing the PlayStation kicking that cartridge slot to the curb and focusing entirely on the CD they would launch their console in 1994 and it would become one of the bestselling consoles of all time many of the third parties Nintendo work closely with on the NES and Super Nintendo would jump ship and move to PlayStation largely due to the advantages of the CD format one of the biggest losses was losing squaresoft as a developer they made the final fantasy series they were some of the best role playing games on Nintendo consoles but when it came time to make Final Fantasy 7 squar fying cartridges were too limiting for the story they wanted to tell it would take Nintendo another decade to finally Embrace full-size discs with the Wii generation only to come full circle and go back to cartridges for the switch I guess that's just their style though as for their deal with Phillips the CD add-on for the Super Nintendo never came to pass it would be teased a couple times in subsequent years but ultimately ended up being vaporware I get the feeling Nintendo was okay with this it was a means to an end for them and mission accomplished they got out of their deal with Sony Phillips did get to make a few games starring Nintendo characters one of the rare times when Nintendo characters can be found on a non- Nintendo console I don't want to be too harsh on these games because I've never played them myself but they look terrible Hotel Mario and three of the worst reviewed Zelda games of all time the popularity of these characters wasn't enough to save the CD die which died as a platform in 1996 for their part Nintendo pretends these games never existed and I don't blame them dear audience now I turn it over to you do you think Nintendo made the right call screwing over Sony or do you kind of wish that the two formed a mega gaming company and took over the world let me know what you think in the comments below and until next time thank you for watching

Channel: Medium_X

Views: 208,789

Keywords: nintendo, sony, playstation, super nintendo, snes, betrayal, ces, video games, retro, cartridge, cd, philips, cd-i, zelda, mario, nes, ken kutaragi, norio ohga, Console wars, Sega, Turbografx

Id: zOaKJ7ZOvSs

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2024