Specs are not relevant in this. Nintendo was outright hostile towards thirdparties for a long time.
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Nintendo’s bigger mistake: sticking to carts for the N64 vs betraying Sony?
- Thread starter AztecComplex
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Specs are not relevant in this. Nintendo was outright hostile towards thirdparties for a long time.
I think the Sony thing was just the first in a series of bumps that lead to hard times for Nintendo (further intensified by poor third part relations etc). At the end of the day, it's just two companies doing shitty things to each other the way companies do.
I think people fall into a trap of thinking that if the Nintendo/Sony collaboration had worked out, we would live in some glorious timeline where the Switch and PS4 were part of the same family of devices. God of War on the go; BotW at 1080p60? Yes please! But in reality, I think the hard times Nintendo went through lead them to becoming the pillar of quality and creativity that they are today. Sony's anger over the whole deal led them to applying their media might to change the role of consoles (as a multimedia device aimed at older groups), and to bring is big cinema-style blockbusters. We live in the better timeline I'm sure.
A Sony + Nintendo joined at the hip sounds like it would lead to a stagnant, underdeveloped market to me.
I think people fall into a trap of thinking that if the Nintendo/Sony collaboration had worked out, we would live in some glorious timeline where the Switch and PS4 were part of the same family of devices. God of War on the go; BotW at 1080p60? Yes please! But in reality, I think the hard times Nintendo went through lead them to becoming the pillar of quality and creativity that they are today. Sony's anger over the whole deal led them to applying their media might to change the role of consoles (as a multimedia device aimed at older groups), and to bring is big cinema-style blockbusters. We live in the better timeline I'm sure.
A Sony + Nintendo joined at the hip sounds like it would lead to a stagnant, underdeveloped market to me.
Another problem was the way Nintendo handled cartridge orders. You had to pay for all the cartridges you ever wanted up front. There was no lower risk flex option, like ordering 200k and then being able to order another 200k if your game flew off the shelves - you had to go to the back of the line and wait for your next order of carts to be made, missing your sales window.
If they had allowed third parties to make their own cartridges or enlist other fabs with a license then it would have largely solved the issue, but of course they decided to make it as convoluted as possible. So third parties either couldn't make enough to make good on sales interest, or had to order so many carts the game lost money or broke even.
IIRC the entire reason THPS 3 even happened on the N64 is because Activision was able to buy out Nintendo's outstanding inventory of cartridge shells when they decided to move on to the GameCube.
If they had allowed third parties to make their own cartridges or enlist other fabs with a license then it would have largely solved the issue, but of course they decided to make it as convoluted as possible. So third parties either couldn't make enough to make good on sales interest, or had to order so many carts the game lost money or broke even.
IIRC the entire reason THPS 3 even happened on the N64 is because Activision was able to buy out Nintendo's outstanding inventory of cartridge shells when they decided to move on to the GameCube.
This thread has some Nintendo fans all worked up over a meaningless poll. It is quite hilarious yet sad at the same time.
Nintendo fans ITT might want to read this:
https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/23/...f-sony-and-how-it-created-its-fiercest-rival/
https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/23/...f-sony-and-how-it-created-its-fiercest-rival/
Yep. Now we have a PlayStation powerhouse and marketleader. It's crazy how it all started.
This thread is comedy gold. Like.... it's really hilarious ;D
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I think Nintendos biggest mistakes were launching 2nd and not convincing 3rd parties to get on board.
Most games could of worked on the N64, while it did not have the storage space of CD, its kart system did provide other benefits.
I know he's biased but miyamoto did say at the time that he could not of made zelda ott the way it was without kart.
Most games could of worked on the N64, while it did not have the storage space of CD, its kart system did provide other benefits.
I know he's biased but miyamoto did say at the time that he could not of made zelda ott the way it was without kart.
I'm not trying disagree with you or anything but I'm interested where you got your prices for 50gb blu ray discs and 32gb micro sd cards.
I know Nintendo and Sony will buy in bulk and get far cheaper prices, but on amazon I found a 32gb sd card for like £4 and 50gb blu rays were £33 for 10 or £3.30 each.
So the switch karts can't be that much,
Maybe £1-2?
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It's a mathematical fact that Blu-ray Discs cost way less than flash cards. Otherwise how do you explain publishers not wanting to invest in 32GB switch cards for their games instead opting for 16GB at the most? I don't know the specifics but I know the difference is significant. So much so that some multi platform games ended up costing $10 more on switch. The difference can't be £1.
Sony will enter anyway in the busisness as a solo player. Nintendo's decision only made Sony doing it sooner, nothing more.
But not only sticking to cartridges was a mistake, Yamauchi looking at all third parties as competition and not helping them to make better use of the hell of hardware that was N64, that as a whole was a way bigger mistake than betraying Sony.
But not only sticking to cartridges was a mistake, Yamauchi looking at all third parties as competition and not helping them to make better use of the hell of hardware that was N64, that as a whole was a way bigger mistake than betraying Sony.
The cart issue in addition to Sony being extremely friendly with 3rd parties was all those companies needed to give the middle finger to Nintendo. The big N was a juggernaut in the NES days, and many of those Japanese developers held some pretty serious grudges against the company - and I don't blame them. Nintendo was a very shitty company to deal with back in those days.
Carts are an easy call. In exchange for Miyamoto not having to see loading screens after jumping into a painting in Mario 64, Nintendo lost the leading support of almost the entire 3rd party industry.
It is almost unfathomable what a shocking collapse this was compared to the Super Famicom era. We can't guess how well Sony would have managed to retain 3rd party exclusivity for various games if Nintendo had put out a comparable platform to the Playstation. At the end of the day, publishers like money. If there was no technical barrier, they might all have eventually put every game on N64 as well.
It is almost unfathomable what a shocking collapse this was compared to the Super Famicom era. We can't guess how well Sony would have managed to retain 3rd party exclusivity for various games if Nintendo had put out a comparable platform to the Playstation. At the end of the day, publishers like money. If there was no technical barrier, they might all have eventually put every game on N64 as well.
Nintendo Switch Game Cards are not SD Cards, so you can't compare the two. Just think of them as smaller game cartridges.
- Literally a cartridge inside (board+pins+chip)
- Benzoate coating + Product Sticker
- Custom Macronx/Sandisk Flash ROM (probably performs a lot better in transfer rate and latency than most MicroSD)
- Manufacture controlled exclusively by Nintendo.
Many people in this thread know more than that author does. The thing that gets completely glossed over in the "Nintendo betrayed Sony and created their rival!" narrative is that Sony forced Nintendo into a corner by trying to insist they should have licensing fees from even game content on CDs.
That's an insane ask, and from the New York Times article in 1991, Howard Lincoln (of NOA) alluded to the fact that Sony was using the vague nature of their deal signed in 1988 to basically try and fuck Nintendo over.
Nintendo was in the right to want to get out of that deal.
It's actually the article that claims "Sony asserts that it alone controls the rights to profit from software made for the compact disk component of its Play Station." But no quote is attributed. It later states that "industry executives said they were surprised that Nintendo had apparently ceded the right to profit from software on games sold on the Sony compact disk machines." Which makes sense. It's crazy.
As for Howard Lincoln,
"There is a dispute between Sony and Nintendo as to the terms of the agreement," Mr. Lincoln confirmed. He declined to elaborate."
But it's also a story that is a perplexing one, because the spat over licensing should have come up and forced the project to fizzle out before anything was put on paper. The rumor that it was somehow a surprise that Sony snuck in doesn't quite make sense, because Nintendo's legal team would have scoured the language of any agreements that they had made. So why didn't it blow up before it did?
Well it does state that Nintendo did not agree with how Sony was interpreting the terms of the deal.
Isn't there some kind of "code" in Japanese business culture where you don't take things to court and what not?
Nintendo may have felt rather than pursuing the matter in court they would just do the Philips thing as a way of telling Sony to fuck off.
Sony reneged apparently, but I think at that point the damage had already been done. Nintendo couldn't possibly trust Sony at that point.
So you think Nintendo and publishers spend more then retail for there sd cards.
Ok.
But how could it be so vague that it would be open to interpretation when it comes to something as important as how the licensing would work out? It's integral to this kind of deal, and should have been discussed extensively from the beginning. Once on paper, it would have to specific language drafted to hold up to legal scrutiny specifically to avoid a situation like this one. Legal stuff.
What right would Nintendo have had to take Sony to court? It would have been over terms that they had agreed to.
Without seeing the contract it's hard to know. It's safe to assume Nintendo did not agree with Sony's interpretation, and I tend to agree they probably would have to have a point ... there's no way they would just willingly sign over game royalties, it makes zero sense.
But how would anything of this nature be open to "interpretation?" It would have to be spelled out. It does make zero sense that they would have agreed to it. But it also doesn't quite make sense that they wouldn't have known about it.
It's bizarre.
Most playstation games essentially used MIDI as well.
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"hostile" is too strong of a word but you are correct when you say that the main issue for Nintendo during the 32-64 bit generation wasn't really the specs but Nintendo's company philosophy amid a changing industry landscape lead by Sony shifting the balance of importance for a console success from first-party software to third-party software.
Nintendo have always enjoyed to have third-party support (a few examples of third-party hit games on Nintendo consoles: Dragon Quest, Street Fighter 2, Just Dance, Yo-kai Watch) however it also has always put precedence to Nintendo own goals over whatever needs third-party game publishers may have had.
Basically if Nintendo thought that a certain decision that might screw third-parties would benefit their bottom line, they have never hesitate to take it because for Nintendo it is their first-party software what matter and it's their first-party software that make their console successful and that success would lead the way for other third-party companies if they want to profit from Nintendo consoles' userbase.
This way of thinking is a core idea behind Nintendo identity from the '80s that persists to these days.
The 32-64 bit generation was a very crowded one (about a dozen of consoles were launched between 1991 and 1996 and a few were cancelled) and most of them adopted the CD medium.
Indeed taking the CD medium as the end of it all to explain why the generation unfolded they way it did is wrong and sadly too often parroted these days.
The paradigm shift unleashed by Sony run much deeper and CD was just one piece of the jigsaw to achieve it.
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Or maybe Nintendo's lawyers simply missed that? It's possible. There's no such thing as "interpretation" when it comes to contracts. It's terms and conditions that are clearly laid out that you either agree to or don't agree to. Nintendo likely assumed that games produced for the add-on would be Nintendo's and never thought about having to defend the IPs let alone check to see if there were stipulations about the right to sell and profit (after all the logic would be that the add-on is nothing without the base SNES).
Those would have to be some really shitty lawyers, then. Doubly so when you remember that Nintendo was the pipsqueak that went up against Universal Pictures and won.
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I'm amazed by how close this poll ended up being. I made it so I could finally pinpoint which isthe biggest mistake but you guys are just as torn as I was with less than 1% difference between the choices. Incredible.
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How Nintendo is doing now doesnt matter to the topic at hand. Those two mistakes were just that, mistakes. The fact that they learned from them and/or recovered is completely irrelevant.
Nintendo's biggest failing was not being able to re-position itself in the Western market until it was way too late.
N64 and carts, the failure that it was, could have been recovered from, but NoA poorly positioned its hardware to the point where it cemented a narrative which it's only now crawling itself out of about 15 years later.
THAT was their biggest mistake. But it doesn't fit handily in a forum poll.
N64 and carts, the failure that it was, could have been recovered from, but NoA poorly positioned its hardware to the point where it cemented a narrative which it's only now crawling itself out of about 15 years later.
THAT was their biggest mistake. But it doesn't fit handily in a forum poll.
I'd argue that sticking to the deal with Sony would have been a bigger mistake. Nintendo might not exist as an independent entity today if they respected the terms of their deal with Sony.
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Thats fair, vote for the other mistake then. Era is divided right in the middle here.
I couldn't have planned for this poll results even if I wanted to.
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Yeah, following the N64 with a purple lunchbox complete with a handle and getting rid of your most successful developer outside of Nintendo themselves (Rare) that made the second best selling N64 game ever (Goldeneye) did not help at all positioning themselves in the west.
Your position now is a reflection of your decisions in your past.
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Neither was a mistake because they are fine.
Please put neither in the poll and see how many agree.
I've done a lot of things in my past that I thought were mistakes at the time. Now that I am where I am, I wouldn't do things differently; as those experiences helped me to get to where I am today.
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Well, I was referring more to mini-discs restricting what could be produced on it and the perpetuation of certain stereotypes you still hear iterated on this forum to this day, particularly that they have no desire or intention to work with 3rd-parties in any meaningful capacity or couldn't sell their product. The "kiddie" shit that was the root of the "purple lunchbox" talk was ridiculous in that era and continues to be ridiculous now more than ever, so I don't really factor that into the discussion.
I don't consider the Rare departure to be as big of a loss as others on this forum do, because Rare wasn't exactly going to dig them out of their perception hole.
You look at where they're at now and it was really the right product in the right moment that made a lot of this perception problem melt away.
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In the post-Halo era where split screen FPS were all the rage Nintendo sold their only developer that was known for making high quality FPS games with focus on multiplayer, not to mention all the other best selling games they did other than those. I'm sorry but they sold Rare at the worst possible moment and left a tremendous void the size of a Halo they never really filled out again.
And the purple lunchbox I agree shouldn't have been a factor but the fact is it was. It was a bad decision image wise like it or not.
That was NOA/Howard Lincoln though, presumably the Playstation deal was cooked up by NCL lawyers?
Third parties escaped to Sony due to the treatment. The cartridges were a symptom of the treatment.
Nintendo escaping Sony on the other hand made sense. As pointed out countless times in this thread.
Despite its reputation for being difficult to program for, the cd allowed the Saturn to receive a healthy number of multiplats.
Nintendo ditching Sony made sense, the 'deal' was terrible and they would have been idiots to go along with it.
Picking carts was the bigger mistake, IMO if they had gone with CDs I think the PSX wouldn't have ended up as big a factor.
So in that sense, as far as this poll goes I don't think the ditching Sony 'mistake' would have mattered as much if they hadn't gone with the cart mistake so it's easy to determine which one was bigger.
Picking carts was the bigger mistake, IMO if they had gone with CDs I think the PSX wouldn't have ended up as big a factor.
So in that sense, as far as this poll goes I don't think the ditching Sony 'mistake' would have mattered as much if they hadn't gone with the cart mistake so it's easy to determine which one was bigger.
Nintendo didn't "betray" Sony, Sony tried to be clever and Nintendo wouldn't have none of it. That made sense.
The real mistake of Nintendo was treating third parties so poorly during the NES/SNES era, with huge restrictions if they released games in other consoles and all that shit. When Sony came and offered them a better deal, they jumped the ship, obviously
The real mistake of Nintendo was treating third parties so poorly during the NES/SNES era, with huge restrictions if they released games in other consoles and all that shit. When Sony came and offered them a better deal, they jumped the ship, obviously
Umm Nintendo sued Sony over the Play Station after Sony decided to release the device on their own as a standalone game console, and Nintendo lost. You don't sign a contract without having read and discussed the contents. Nintendo didn't think the CD add-on was going to be successful so they decided to allow Sony the games rights to the add-on because they figured the cartridge sales was going to be more successful and they were kinda right, all the CD add-ons we're terrible in my opinion. That's my take anyway.
The contract was signed in 1988, even before the Super Famicom was released, so who even knows what was in there. My guess is it was probably a little vague on certain terms.
In hindsight maybe Nintendo should've just let Sony release the stupid thing and let it flop and moved on.
But even still if they had not used CD-ROM for the N64, they would have lost to the Sega Saturn IMO (yes Sega Saturn). Even if you remove Sony, once the Saturn got games like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid that couldn't run on an N64, it would've changed the trajectory of Sega's fortunes and put them in the driver seat of the market.
My understanding was that the Saturn had some addition problems. A Black Falcon Is the history guy for that.
Had Sony, say, released the PlayStation as a moderately unsuccessful SNES addon and then given up on videogames at least for a while, what would have happened... hmm.
Well, I think that in the US the N64 probably would have benefited the most. The N64 did well here as it was, and Sega was a mess at that point for its own reasons and was going to fail unless they dramatically changed things (which is a whole different set of hypotheticals that usually end with Sega giving up on gaming anyway by the '00s because they were a so much smaller company), so yeah, N64 would probably have won the generation outright. Games like FFVII and MGS, even if they had been Saturn games, would probably have released too late to turn that system's trajectory around. It would have sold a lot better than the Saturn did here, but my guess is it'd definitely have been second to N64.
In Japan, yeah, Sega would have benefited a lot. The biggest question would be, had Sony not released the Playstation, would that mean that Square would go to Sega? Square never showed any interest in supporting Sega platforms, after all; Square never released a game for any Sega console as far as I know. Would they have changed that based on really wanting to make games on a CD format? Maybe, yeah, and in that case yes, the Saturn definitely would have won Japan. That would have helped the system a lot in the US too, but I think the early failings here would have hurt it long term. A best case scenario... uh, maybe like the PS3, with early bad failure but later success? The problem is the fifth generation wasn't going to be as long as that one was, though, so you probably would not see a 'PS3 eventually actually outsold X360 worldwide' moment. Worst case scenario would be things going pretty much like how they did, with Sega being flattened.
And here's the wildcard -- would Square have considered going to 3DO instead of Saturn? The 3DO did sell somewhat decently in Japan for a while, after all. Now, by the time Square moved to releasing PS1 games in summer '96 the 3DO was in its last months as a platform with new games releasing so perhaps not, but who knows, maybe. I just checked, the final 3DO game released in Japan in June '96, a few months before Square's first PS1 game that August. Even so though, if Square wanted to continue not supporting Sega ever, 3DO was pretty much the only other option. Maybe they could have tried convincing Panasonic to release the M2 as a console? That would have been pretty interesting if successful. No Playstation would probably have made Panasonic and 3DO much more interested in releasing another console, too, so it's a definite possibility. In fact, given Square's total lack of interest in Sega (I do not have any idea why), this might actually be my guess. Who knows though; maybe they'd have stuck with the N64 despite disliking carts, you never know!
Addition problems? What do you mean?
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Saturn? 3DO?
Are you serious guys?
See this is why it's a mistake to think CD was the only deciding factor in the 32-64 bit generation.
This line of thinking completely omit what Sony have done to push their platform to make it successful.
They aggressively courted third-parties with co-marketing deals, exclusive publishing deals, better development tools, developers acquisitions, lowest turn around for reorders.
They aggressively pursued a price war that made Sega shed blood.
They went so far that in Japan Sony became the distributor of every PlayStation game meaning that it was Sony that was buying quantity of games from Namco, Capcom, Square etc. to then resell them to retailers while Sega was still dependent on the obsolete Shoshinkai organization.
Of course Sony was also manufacturing such games within their factory owned CD plants which meant that Sony was in complete control of every phases from production to the sale to retailers thus could shift strategy accordingly to the information they could gather from the channel quicker than the competitors.
Oldie chart from me about the early years of the 32-64 bit gen "war":
Are you serious guys?
See this is why it's a mistake to think CD was the only deciding factor in the 32-64 bit generation.
This line of thinking completely omit what Sony have done to push their platform to make it successful.
They aggressively courted third-parties with co-marketing deals, exclusive publishing deals, better development tools, developers acquisitions, lowest turn around for reorders.
They aggressively pursued a price war that made Sega shed blood.
They went so far that in Japan Sony became the distributor of every PlayStation game meaning that it was Sony that was buying quantity of games from Namco, Capcom, Square etc. to then resell them to retailers while Sega was still dependent on the obsolete Shoshinkai organization.
Of course Sony was also manufacturing such games within their factory owned CD plants which meant that Sony was in complete control of every phases from production to the sale to retailers thus could shift strategy accordingly to the information they could gather from the channel quicker than the competitors.
Oldie chart from me about the early years of the 32-64 bit gen "war":
It had issues but so did the PS2. Content is paramount, with CD-ROM, they'd be the only console capable of running a lot games.