FTC makes console market without Switch
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It's official: Nintendos are toys for babies and not real games ;)
Ninendo's evolution would make a fascinating study in business school. I would love to see internal documents and the decision making behind their pivot to their current incarnation.
They were clearly the market leader in hardware power at the time of introduction of the NES and SNES. Choosing to go with a cartridge-based N64 instead of fallowing through on their partnership with Sony was a huge mistake in hindsight. Then even though the GameCube fell between PS2 and Xbox power wise, the choice to use smaller discs and not have DVD playback capability set them apart from Sony and Microsoft, and they were already starting to be seen as "not a gamer's console". This was also the last console they released that directly competed with Sony and Microsoft and shared most of the same games.
With the Wii, and their focus on handhelds, Nintendo seemed to abandon any pretense of competing with Sony and Microsoft and chose to carve out a niche as the fun/family/kids console maker. It sounds like it's working out for them profit-wise, but as someone who grew up with the NES and SNES, seeing Nintendo drop out of the top tier console market has always been weird to me.
I know some stuff. They went to cartridges out of fear of Sony. It's completely unknown what it was, but Nintendo ran as hard as they could from the company as they could. Even at bad negotiations Nintendo will leave and come back. They'll even work with military contractors and the mob. This time, they stayed away. Whatever Sony was doing was too much. Even historians who know the truth stear clear of the subject.
Also, the sales numbers for PS1 when compared to game sales show it was more evenly matched with the 64. The hundred million ps1s don't make sense compared to the top selling game being at 12 million.
I saw a show on the history of video games that said Sony and Nintendo were pretty far along and they're negotiations to release the PlayStation as a Nintendo console. They had pictures of the early versions which were basically a PlayStation with an SNES controller attached.
According to the show, the way Nintendo backed out of the deal was to let Sony believe that they were going to publicly announce the partnership at E3, and then they got on the stage and snubbed them. Regardless of how bad Sony maybe is, that sounds like bad form to me. After that Sony negotiated with Sega who also showed interest but later backed out, without the public humiliation aspect.
So, Sony released the console themselves, and the rest is history.
I've actually played the early form, it was a super Nintendo with a CD player.
I don't think it was bad form. I think Nintendo stumbled onto something that made them realize a lot was in danger. I actually work with those kind of historians and there is a lot of speculation on what it could be. This is especially after interviewing Nintendo employees who were scared to even talk about it.