Were they lucky or just did everything right?
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/capcom-veteran-says-nintendo-was-the-only-one-making-steady-revenue-from-nes-game-carts-capcoms-profits-really-took-off-with-the-ps1/>“Let’s say a Famicom cartridge sold for 10,000 yen at retail. Out of that, 3,000 yen went to the retailer. 4,000 yen went to the software developer, like Capcom, and 3,000 yen went to Nintendo. Out of Nintendo’s 3,000 yen share, about 1,500 went to manufacturing contractors. Since Nintendo got paid upfront for the exact number of copies, manufactured the cartridges, and delivered them, what happened after that didn’t matter to them. In other words, only Nintendo had a guaranteed profit,”>But for companies like Capcom, who were new in the industry and didn’t have a lot of cash on hand, paying 3,000 yen per unit upfront was a big financial burden. The only solution was to take out bank loans to pay Nintendo. After receiving payment, Nintendo took between 1.5 to 3 months to deliver cartridges. Then, Capcom would send them out to distributors and issue invoices, but instead of getting paid immediately, they’d get a promissory note that would only turn into cash 90 days after a product was sold. >So, between the 3 months it took for production and 3 months of waiting on payment, Capcom would rack up 6 months worth of bank interest. When that interest was combined with development costs, marketing costs and other expenses, the company would, according to Okamoto, be left with a paper-thin profit margin. >“Let’s say Capcom paid Sony 1,800 yen per disc. The manufacturing cost of the CD was 200 yen, and the remaining 1600 yen was Sony’s share.” However, if Capcom were to return unsold CDs, Sony would give back the 1600 yen they took as their share, only charging the 200-yen manufacturing cost. Nintendo did not do this, which made leftover stock such a big expense for third parties. Sony won because Nintendo were greedy bastards
>>12632327Having infinite marketing money helps a lot
>>12632327Sony spent untold hundreds of millions of dollars astroturfing the Playstation and Playstation 2. For several years around 2000 you would be assaulted by shills if you said anything bad about PS2 or - more importantly - good about competing systems. It was very obnoxious and soured me on Sony gaming for decades.
>>12632357>Having infinite marketing money helps a lotYeah that's why Xbox won...
>>12632327Their graphics were even worse than the Dreamcast. The purple lunchbox mogged it, let alone the Xbox.
>>12632327Both. They did everything right and had the money to do it, and both Sega and Nintendo went full fucking retard and handed damn near the entire home console market to them on a silver platter for two whole generations. They would've won regardless because of their moves and money, but probably not dominated to the extent they did had the competition not shit itself with bad move after bad move.
>>12632362The "system seller" game was always what mattered the most with console popularity. XBox had Halo which was tremendously popular.
>>12632363neither of those were contemporaries, retard
>>12632334>PLEASE STOP DISCUSSING RETRO GAMES AND CONSOLES ON MY RETRO BOARD!!fuck off back to /v/
>>12632363>>12632403Playstation came out like 9 months before the N64 in the USA and it had already been out in Japan long enough to amass a big library of games. N64 had expensive games and very few when it first came out. Saturn was too expensive and mangled the marketing. Playstation basically won that generation by default.
>>12632359at the end of the day it's your loss
>>12632413>your losssure, but not really. "missing out" on playing some sony video games was not a significant negative factor in my life. I barely played my Dreamcast after a year or two either I was busy working and having a girlfriend and going out to shows and parties.
>>12632362It sure helped the Xbox brand to have outlived Sega in the hardware market
>>12632424post you, your gf, your shows, and your parties
Mix of both. Nintendo made some less than optimal decision, Sega made much worse decisions, while Sony made a lot of very good decisions, so a smart player got a lot of room while the two previous kings fumbled.Nintendo could afford their fumbles, because they had so damn much prior success, and their handhelds still sold extremely well, but Sega didn't have the same coffers to fall back on, and it cost them dearly.>>12632351Sony are also extremely greedy, they were just smarter about their greed in some ways.>>12632359Yeah, nobody ever actually LIKED any PSX or PS2 games ever, it was all just marketing and shills, I totally didn't have both an N64 and a PSX at the time.There's a lot of shit you can say about Sony, absolutely, but just like with Nintendo, they were greedy and underhanded bastards who also knew how to deliver products which people wanted, which is why they made money on it.>>12632363It only makes sense to compare the Dreamcast to the PSX when the Dreamcast actually launched and the PSX was nearing the end of its lifespan. Yeah, no kidding it's more powerful, the PSX was from fucking 1994, and the Dreamcast was a next gen machine released in 1998 (tech moved fast back then).The Dreamcast was also a good machine, and it could probably have lasted its generation if Sega hadn't gone broke and were forced to give it up early.
>>12632445I'm not going to doxx on a 4chan board like that, sorry brutha! I know times have gone to shit but in 2000 it wasn't remarkable for a young guy to go to parties, see live music, and have a girlfriend. I am also fairly attractive and I'm sure that helped.
>>12632424>w-well i had better things to do than play video games!
>>12632476I did then! Now, not so much, which is why I'm here talking about old video games.
Why don't you ever make this question in regards to the NES or SNES? why is it always the implication that Sony was lucky but Nintendo hard earned its merit?
>>12632370Agreed Xbox 360 only had an edge at first because Sony fucked up. But if Sega or Nintendo didn't shit themselves, would've knocked down Sony since Microsoft failed? we will never know.
>>12632327It’s simple, Nintendo was being a count to third party, sega had infighting, so Sony had a clear vacuum to fill. I think it was skill and luck in equal measure.
>>12632359>>12632362*ahem*
>>12632602Nintensissies... How do we respond without sounding mad??
>>12632602>G VectorOkay you could make a (poor) argument for some of those Shiturn games but this one is irredeemably horrible
>>12632602Holy based
>>12632327The Snoy Shitstation
Fagstation
>>12632327>Were they lucky or just did everything right?We already had this thread in 2013 and in 2025, OK here is what happened in 1994-2003:PiracyFIFAISScolin mcraeridge racerf1 gamesrally gamesgames in frenchgames in deutschgames in italiangames in portuguesegames in spanishgames with subtitles in Finnish, greek, norge, what ever speaks in Holland, etc...
>>12632327The way you succeed in consumer market is to spend a LOT of dosh on marketing. That's what they did RIGHT. The console itself as well as 95% of the games are largely forgettable.
>>12632359Wrong, sony shills didn't existed until 2006-2007 when xbox360 won seventh generation. Before 2006 everyone was playstation supporter, your precious "shills" didin't existed until Sony "took over" "playstation" brand a la "Disney with Marvel films".
>>12632825>Wrong, sony shills didn't existed until 2006-2007>Before 2006 everyone was playstation supporternever happened
>>12632327Both.
>>12632327Luck did play a role, they had the perfect start in the form of SEGA 32X causing the Saturn to completely face plant before the race had even begun.
>>12632327Initially, the PS1 sold as well as the Saturn, but it quickly gained the upper hand thanks to its price and Sega's brand image, which hadn't suffered much with the Mega CD and 32X.In 1994 and 1995, there were more games released for the Saturn than for the PS1, but after that, the tide turned.For the PS1, Ken Kutaragi ensured that game development was quick and inexpensive. It was $7.50 in royalties, while Sega's were $18 and Nintendo's $19 (plus the cost of cartridges).Since PS1 development was inexpensive, it was less risky in case of failure.Then, compared to the N64, there's the difference in terms of game release dates and prices.All the other reasons mentioned above came later, but it was this that later made it possible to reach 100 million machines sold.>Ken Kutaragi do the right thing with CD product and royalties.
The market was there for the taking and Sega + Nintendo's fumbles meant Sony was just printing free money
>>12632327Judging by how bad the Saturn and the N64 are, Sony just did everything right
OP's pic made me suddenly wonder.Do people who never played PS1 in the 90s feel anything special when seeing the PS1 startup sequence?
>console is cd based>3d is the primary focus>affordable>easy to develop for>fully took advantage of sony's deep cash reserves to blitz marketing and first party titlessony made stumbles but they got everything reasonably within their power to foresee correct.
>>12633703things like >>12632351was huge as well, far lower risk for devs/publishers as welli can't really think of anything sony did particularly badly... maybe the original cd mech being made of plastic and dying often enough that later models needed some of it replaced with proper metal parts?
>>12633648the playstation startup sequence was not the first time a console had one, but i still consider it the most memorable.i started with the psx so i'm surely biased, but to my knowledge the only other really "flashy" startup sequence i know of is the sega saturn one, which is also pretty cool.something that's always confused me a bit is why the N64 has nothing like it, no startup sequence at all, no controller pak menu, no error messages, nothing at all. practically speaking it's cool that if you turn the console on with a game inserted the game boots in a literal split second, but nothing at all with no game installed was always a bit weird to me. then again i happened to have only used systems previously that did do something before using an n64 (playstation, gameboy, master system...).n64 guys will know part of it is to hide the cd loading time, which is true, it takes some time to spin up the cd, check the security wobble, and load the game's main executable before it can display anything from the game. it would be strange to have 15 seconds of black screen before anything happens
>>12632327they did a lot of things right but mostly just lucky their competition shot themselves in the foot this generation many times over in unique and creative ways.
>>12632327They played it just right. Sure Atari and Sega had disc-based consoles first, but Sony invented the CD and owned the factories making them, so Sony could offer lower production costs with better profit returns than anyone else. Plus the capacity over cartridges was a no-brainer.
>>12633879the playstation didn't do anything special, no. not fucking up was by itself better than what their competition was doing.the n64 i think would have been better off as a cd-based system. it was being developed during that cross-over period where the costs of larger carts vs. slower cd's reached a critical point where cd's only just started to become the better option, so i don't blame them too much.the saturn... the saturn was complex to develop for and consumers were soured over things like the sega cd and sega 32x. people don't want to drop hundreds on a console that won't see years of support. the playstation being the first system by sony was of course entirely unproven, but sony was a trusted brand at the same time in other sectors. sony had something sega didn't at the time; hope. it was also significantly cheaper and had much better advertising.
>>12634023>the playstation didn't do anything specialWhat's the point of lying when i already prooved why Sony won? >>12632351
>>12634023>playstation didn't do anything specialBut Sony did:>treated developers with respect, giving them a fair share and freedom>didn't exploit its players with abusive prices, shitty games, shitty addons>designed and engineered a console capable of evolving and withstanding years without upgrades or expansions paks>genuinely fomented the gaming industry like never done beforeYes, Sony saved gaming
