It’s a miracle that the ps1 was a huge succes

[johannesmutlu]

It’s a huge miracle that sony’s ps1 became a huge success because,

1,sony had yet no experience in the videogame market other then developing chips for nintendo and sega systems and for those cartrides,

2,sony had yet no mascotte

3,at the first glance game developers were sceptical to develope games for it,also since sony’s dev-kit was sooo expensive compared with that of the 3DO system,

4,the stand alone ps1 was not supposed to exist at all other then the hybrid standalone 2 in 1 snes 16bit playstation as well as the 16bit playstation addon,

5, i hardly can believe that many game-devs jumped from nintendo and sega to the ps1,all because of the N64 still using cartrides while the sega sayurn was hard to prgram for,also since there were other competitors as well,

6, there were many competitors such as the 3DO,CD32,pcfx 32,apple puppin,sega saturn and the marty fm town ,but they just couldn’t compeat against the playstation all because or they came too early with game developers and no gamer prepared for it with little amount of games for it and being too expensive,or they came just waaay too late when game developers jumped on the ps1 bandwagon and everybody already bought a ps1,

hack even both nintendo and atari despite being 1 generation apart tryed to compeat against the ps1 ,with their 64DD or jaguar CD addon,but they failed miserably against sony,

also if we count the combined sega CD & 32X along with the sega genesis to form together a 32Bit power of tower with some 32X CD games for it, then the ps1 faced a whopping 7 competitors with their own 32bit CD system and if we include both nintendo 64 and atari jaguar ,that’s a whopping 9 systems,not including the 32bit pc and/or the saturn module for pc’s.

 

so that’s the reason why i consider it magic how the f!ck sony was able to not only brutally strike against there competitors but even broke the sales of the nes,HOTDAMNIT,

now for years i didn’t care about the ps1’s success untill i looked at it and i tout “mmm what if the ps1 was inspired from the snes because it had a similar color sheme,similar looking controller ports and similar controller button layout”

and guess what since i was always a huge snes fan(i still am) but since i readed about that struggled deal between sony & nintendo about the snes PlayStation addon for snes including a hybrid 2 in 1 system of it back in 2002 in a magazine,i become sooo wightfolded i was like TROUGH WHAT NOOIO IT CAN’T BE HOTDAMNIT”

and since then it annoys my to no end why sony’s ps1 had to be a success, WHY? Why sony? Why not sega,nintendo or atari also since they had their own ip’s and alooot of videogame experiences as well,it makes me just wonder what sony would,ve done had the ps1 failed,would they have give up,would they have co’operated with atari after the failed attempts with both sega and nintendo??

or would they have wait and give it another try ??

also what if the snes PlayStation addon was released but flopped the same fate as the sega CD and famicom disksystem,could it be that sony still had eventually decided to go alone and recall their standalone game system the gamestation?? Maybe,

 

now please note: that back in october of 1995 when i saw the playstation first in store shelves in germany stacked on top of each other,i first tout that these were new nintendo consoles untill i saw the sony brand name on it,i was like huh what,but i didn’t matter or care about it,i was just amezed by the demo with that huge dinosour,BUT i also immediately realized that those cool awesome 16bit days were over for once and for all and for good,life would be never ever be the same again,so late 1995 and early 1996 formed a new beginning not only in the game-bizz but also in general as well including my life,from that time i believed that absolutely nobody cared about the nes anymore and that the nes wasn’t worth any penny anymore as well and that if you would still play on the nes that you would be left in the dust,

 

and that’s why as a huge snes fan i am one of the biggest anti playstation guy’s you will ever met,also because the ps1 did come at a time when things started to change in general,i got bad memory’s from early 1996 i hated and hate that time for the most.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 24, 2022 by johannesmutlu

[DragonGrafx-16]

PCFX failed even to its predecessor the PC Engine which I am sure was still outselling the PCFX, so I don't think Sony was worried about it. Same with 3DO which was so expensive. And Apple Pippin? That thing is a joke... same with the CD32.

 

PS1 destroyed the Saturn because it was much cheaper. I prefer the Saturn over the PS1 any day. Though I do own both.

 

Also this thread would make more sense in the Classic Consoles subforum and not in offtopic. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by DragonGrafx-16

[johannesmutlu]

On 4/24/2022 at 2:30 AM, DragonGrafx-16 said:

PCFX failed even to its predecessor the PC Engine which I am sure was still outselling the PCFX, so I don't think Sony was worried about it. Same with 3DO which was so expensive. And Apple Pippin? That thing is a joke... same with the CD32.

 

PS1 destroyed the Saturn because it was much cheaper. I prefer the Saturn over the PS1 any day. Though I do own both.

 

Also this thread would make more sense in the Classic Consoles subforum and not in offtopic. 

True that.

[zzip]

They may not have had the expertise, but they had the money and a reputation for quality products.   They also seemed to get their act together rather quickly, in contrast to many of the companies who entered the console space over the years that seemed to fly by the seat of their pants and make bizarre product decisions...   The Playstation division seems to run like a well-oiled machine.

[Frozone212]

and you forget that the Saturn was harder to program for, having a bunch of processors that made development difficult.

The 32X was rushed to market

The 3DO was way too expensive ($700!!)

The CD32 was...awful

Don't know enough about the PCFX

Jaguar wasn't a true 64 bit console, CD add on tanked

Sega CD required it's own power supply

 

The PS1 was cheaper, easier to program (I'll let wikipedia explain) and most importantly, Bernie Stolar was MIA so the PS1 got some Sweet 2D games.

 

Now, onto the saturn:

 

(From Wikipedia):

 

The Saturn's hardware, with two main processors and six other processors, made it difficult to take full advantage of the console's maximum performance, as the parallel design was too complex for many game developers and still is today. Yū Suzuki is said to have said about the difficulties of programming two main processors:

"Although the processors start at the same time, there are still delays when one has to wait for the other to catch up. I would have preferred a single very fast main processor. So I think that only one in a hundred developers knows how to program Saturn really fast."

– Yu Suzuki

Game developments from other manufacturers were also inhibited by the fact that no usable software development kits (developer environments) were available. As a result, many Saturn games had to be written in assembly language to achieve adequate performance with the hardware – a decidedly tedious way of developing. Often, programmers used only one main processor to avoid difficulties in programming for Saturn.

The Saturn soon fell behind the PlayStation; although it had more than twice the polygon power, this performance was rarely achieved due to programming difficulties. In the 2D area, however, the Sega Saturn was for a long time in the upper class – thanks to the ability of some games to access the 4 MB RAM expansion.

A special Digital Rights Management (DRM) was used, which was only cracked in 2016. ^[2] Until then, it could only be bypassed by means of a mod chip or special import modules (with which import games that use other region codes can also be played). Another option is to quickly change an original CD for a burned one. The system is started with the burned one. If the laser moves outwards to check the copy protection of the CD and thus the authenticity, the CD is exchanged for an original with the load open and Saturn running. If the laser moves back again, the burned version must be reinserted. This is called the "swap technique

 

Which would you rather have: The saturn, with a measly six to eight games and no 2D games, Or the PS1 which was cheaper and more developer friendly. 

Also, the saturn lacked Twisted Metal 2 or Metal Gear.

 

PS1 wins

[Slikatel]

At the time, arcades saw a rebirth with fighting games. Around here none of us played console games anymore, just arcade games. The PSX was the same thing as the arcade's Namco System 11. If you were a Tekken player, or other Namco arcade game player, it was a must have. The PSX came out and home games were approaching arcade perfect.

Saturn was nice for Sega and Capcom arcade games. But you often needed ram carts and such. Good games were not easy to come by around here. A lot of importing and crazy prices. I realize there is more to it all, but this is what I remember experiencing at the time.

I actually got lucky and got a shit ton of Saturn games from a grocery store that rented them and decided to stop and sell them all for next to nothing. Just rental discs only, no cases or manuals, but I snagged all the good ones. My PSX had a mod chip, so we could copy and burn any game we got our hands on. PSX was the clear winner by leaps and bounds in my circle of friends.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Slikatel

[Hwlngmad]

I would say that it wasn't a miracle that the PS1 was huge success.  I would say that it was surprising given the amount of competition that was in that particular generation of consoles.  However, apart from the PS1, all of the others had some kind of major disadvantage and/or some other aspect of its design that really limited it.  Sony was able to put together a machine that was as powerful as anything out there, easy to program for, (relatively) affordable, true 3D graphics, and lots and lots of cash behind it.

[Austin]

If Sony didn't launch the PlayStation when they did, I am not sure if they would have been able to get a foothold in the industry in the way that they did. Total "lightning-in-a-bottle" situation for them, "right place at the right time" sort of thing.

 

Initial enthusiasm for the PS1 was helped by the industry pushing towards 3D and the console excelled at that quite a bit. It was also marketed pretty aggressively, had competitive hardware pricing, and quality launch-window titles that got people interested. However, it can't be understated how much its competition stumbling likely helped it. Sega for instance basically fumbled with the Saturn right out of the gate in the West and it was dead on arrival. Nintendo with their limiting cartridges and high manufacturing fees led many developers and publishers to the PS1, where storage space was much greater and profit margins were significantly higher.

 

I do sometimes wonder what an alternative timeline would have looked like, had Sega had their ducks in a row and if Nintendo went with compact discs instead of carts.

 

Regarding Sony "being new to videogames" at the time, people tend to forget they had a videogame publishing arm (Sony Imagesoft) that had already been around for a while. So with that and the fact they already had hefty experience in the manufacturing of electronics, experience in the creation, distribution and promotion of film, music and games, going all-in on the videogame industry was a natural fit.

[Lostdragon]

28 minutes ago, Austin said:

 

 

Regarding Sony "being new to videogames" at the time, people tend to forget they had a videogame publishing arm (Sony Imagesoft) that had already been around for a while. So with that and the fact they already had hefty experience in the manufacturing of electronics, experience in the creation, distribution and promotion of film, music and games, going all-in on the videogame industry was a natural fit.

Sony had been one of the staunchest supporters of the MSX format and  designed and manufactured the SNES soundchip as well. 

 

They didn't need that much games design experience when they had the likes of Pysgnosis, Namco, Capcom, Square etc clambering over themselves to develop for the Platform. 

 

They completely understood the consumer market, people with high end disposable income, who'd buy designer clothes, mixing decks etc, they went after not just the Gamer, but the people that bought the hottest new consumer goods and had previously never touched a games platform. 

 

The sheer amount of resources Sony could call on and throw at marketing the PlayStation was astounding at the time. 

 

 

It couldn't fail to be a success. 

 

 

Sega had burnt too many bridges with consumers, 3DO was overpriced, Nintendo still clinging onto the SNES for as long as possible and writing had been on the wall for Commodore and Atari for years. 

[Tanooki]

4 hours ago, Austin said:

I do sometimes wonder what an alternative timeline would have looked like, had Sega had their ducks in a row and if Nintendo went with compact discs instead of carts.

 

Regarding Sony "being new to videogames" at the time, people tend to forget they had a videogame publishing arm (Sony Imagesoft) that had already been around for a while. So with that and the fact they already had hefty experience in the manufacturing of electronics, experience in the creation, distribution and promotion of film, music and games, going all-in on the videogame industry was a natural fit.

Honestly for years having seen how things played out, and well before all the me-too over opinionated youtube rambling set in going back to even the PS2 era when I used to be in that field the belief was had Sega not blown their good will on lame ass poorly executed expansions and handled the Saturn better, and largely so had Nintendo ignored that old senile addled bastared Yamauchi and went with optical Sony had a very very strong chance of going down the path largely if not quite exactly like NEC and Microsoft(in Japan to be clear) did.  They would have been a third tier system, had some of their own games, got a few ports of notable quality as things got largely shared then too.  But Sony didn't put out a huge amount, and some they did do got bankrolled off the PS1 slam dunk market share.  Nintendo and Sega were utter beasts until they landed as far as license deals, market share, and the rest went.  Sony were as you said, excessively lucky with the lightning in a bottle situation.

 

It took the 2 giants making 2 giant grade A f-up decisions that let Sony win.  Sony didn't win it on their own, the others lost it for them.  Nintendo also didn't cling to the SNES too long, the N64 had r&d issues that put them back a year, as did the going with carts which sliced them from a lot of developers turning and bailing or not bothering and they couldn't release with nothing in 95.  It was a 1995 system, fell into 1996 due to an internal shit storm.  They would have popped that thing out right when Saturn and Sony did theirs, not a year late.

[homerhomer]

Nope not a miracle at all.

1. As mentioned above, Sony had a reputation for quality back in the day. They had Sony branded electronic stores in malls back then.  It's was pretty well regarded that if you bought a TV, stereo or any other electronic equipment from Sony it was going to be good.  Sony was pushing the Playstation as a high end video game system and you could buy it at these specialty shops.   

2. $299 for the PS1 vs $399 Saturn was a big difference back then.  I just wanted next gen gaming system.  Either Sega or Sony would have fine. But as I was saving I started to hear how awesome the PlayStation was.

3. There where Kiosks everywhere playing Namco arcade games and they look awesome.  I don't remember playing one Saturn Kiosk.

4) The Namco games looked pretty much arcade perfect and the games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat look perfect at the time too.  I can remember seeing Daytona on the Saturn and it look bad and then seeing  Ridge Racer looked so much better.  Virtua Fighter on the Saturn looked meh but Tekken on the Playstation looks so much better. 

4. The playstation and Wipeout were in the 1995 movie Hackers. Wipeout also had some super hip Chemical Brother track on it.  LOL.

 

In hindsight, I like the Saturn more. It has better 2d games and the controllers don't suck.  But as far as Sony winning it perfectly makes sense to me. 

 

[Koopa64]

On 4/23/2022 at 6:14 PM, johannesmutlu said:

 

1,sony had yet no experience in the videogame market other then developing chips for nintendo and sega systems and for those cartrides,

 

This is wrong. Sony had a development studio called Sony Imagesoft, they released quite a few SNES and Sega CD games before the launch of the PS1. Sony Imagesoft was rolled into Sony Computer Entertainment.

[youxia]

It's a miracle people still reply to these troll topics, which read as if they were written by a drunk "nevah forget" teenage SNES/MD fanboi during their first week on the internet circa 2005.

[+GoldLeader]

 

 

N O T ! ! 

[TheGameCollector]

The marketing probably has a lot to do with it. If you make commercials that make your games look the best, you win. That catchy "Play-stat-ion" voice at the end of every commercial. It's impossible to forget once you hear it.

[Keatah]

On 4/25/2022 at 4:15 PM, zzip said:

They also seemed to get their act together rather quickly, in contrast to many of the companies who entered the console space over the years that seemed to fly by the seat of their pants and make bizarre product decisions...

It was those bizarre product decisions that killed off so many other consoles of the era.  Volumes could be written about them.

 

PS1 had a good number of games I enjoyed, such as Ridge Racer Type 4, or Xevious 3D/G. And so much more.

[Austin]

8 hours ago, TheGameCollector said:

The marketing probably has a lot to do with it. If you make commercials that make your games look the best, you win. That catchy "Play-stat-ion" voice at the end of every commercial. It's impossible to forget once you hear it.

That's the thing though, you need all of it. Quality hardware, quality games, and killer marketing. PlayStation had all of it. Saturn on the other hand had atrocious marketing, haha (in the States at least; it was pretty clever in Japan).

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, Austin said:

That's the thing though, you need all of it. Quality hardware, quality games, and killer marketing. PlayStation had all of it. Saturn on the other hand had atrocious marketing, haha (in the States at least; it was pretty clever in Japan).

The holy Trinity. 

 

As for Sega of Japan's marketing, it followed the Atari approach:

 

 

".. It is a "32-bit" console, marketed in such a way that it appeared to be an evolution of the "16-bit" era of video gaming dominated by the Mega Drive and Super NES (which in turn succeeded the "8-bit" Master System and NES, respectively).

This description, however, was initially fabricated - Sega of Japan originally claimed the Saturn was a "64-bit" console.. and some within Sega even chose to call it an "128-bit" machine.. a number arrived at by cumulating processors rather than simply picking the main CPU."

 

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn#cite_note-:File:SegaSaturn64BitJPCatalog.pdf_p3-16

[Keatah]

The advertising of "bitness" may have been a detriment for sales to some demographics or enthusiasts.

 

Having gotten in on the early 8-bit rigs like the VCS and Apple II, we quickly understood that "bits" were expensive. 16-bit showed up as the ST/Amiga. And 32-bit, the tower-of-power, PS1, and, ungodly expensive PCs.

 

Then that 64-bits Jaguar thing that looks like an infant toilet seat? Yikes! That would have cost several PCs! C R A Z Y ! ! But when it didn't, we automatically assumed they had to do some serious cost-cutting to make it work. Serious cheapening of something in the console. Not full featured by any means. To put 64-bit power in a department store was more absurd than Blast Processing (which we understood BTW). Advertising around the Jag was non-sequitur.

 

PS1 didn't have that problem. And that Sony was making a videogame console in and of itself was an intriguing idea. Piqued interests and generated plenty of curiosity. What would it be like? What would the games play like?

 

After seeing Atari regurgitate itself to death in the mid/late 80's we were happy to see something fresh. Something different from constant cost-cutting and re-hashing of old IP.

[turboxray]

It definitely wasn't a "miracle" haha. But it was the right place at the right time. Which you could also say about the Genesis, etc. PS1 hardware and dev software was good, and Sony was a big company, but the rest was just really luck.

Edited May 7, 2022 by turboxray

[zzip]

On 5/7/2022 at 3:15 PM, Keatah said:

Having gotten in on the early 8-bit rigs like the VCS and Apple II, we quickly understood that "bits" were expensive. 16-bit showed up as the ST/Amiga. And 32-bit, the tower-of-power, PS1, and, ungodly expensive PCs.

 

Then that 64-bits Jaguar thing that looks like an infant toilet seat? Yikes! That would have cost several PCs! C R A Z Y ! ! But when it didn't, we automatically assumed they had to do some serious cost-cutting to make it work. Serious cheapening of something in the console. Not full featured by any means. To put 64-bit power in a department store was more absurd than Blast Processing (which we understood BTW). Advertising around the Jag was non-sequitur.

"bits" is the perfect term for marketing because few people can explain what it means, but bigger numbers are better, right?

 

A jump in bits isn't some magic bullet as its made out to be,  it's what benefits come with it

the 8->16 bit jump was massive because 8-bit systems were so constrained for memory and 16-bit allowed much more easily accessed memory.

The 16->32 bit jump was less important itself, but on PC it happened to coincide with the addition of "protected mode" which made the architecture much more useful.

The 32->64 bit jump on PC didn't bring much performance gain,  in some cases it performed worse and created larger code sizes.   Most programs gain no additional benefit from using 64-bit integers over 32-bit.   So it took years for people to finally adopt 64-bit OSes on PC.  In the end the main thing that drove it was it got you past the 4Gb RAM barrier in a clean way.

 

For the Jaguar, I "did the math" and could never figure out how it was 64-bit.    It was all a bunch of 32 and 16-bit processors,  they say its because the bus was,  but is that really what defines the "bitness" of a system?  At the time it was obvious to me that 'bits' was becoming a slippery marketing term.

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

"bits" is the perfect term for marketing because few people can explain what it means, but bigger numbers are better, right?

Absolutely right.

 

6 hours ago, zzip said:

A jump in bits isn't some magic bullet as its made out to be,  it's what benefits come with it

the 8->16 bit jump was massive because 8-bit systems were so constrained for memory and 16-bit allowed much more easily accessed memory.

I was wowed enough by 16-bits to go and get an Amiga. Mainly for the expanded color palette and resolution. Not so much for speed. I was "big" into collecting hi-res pictures of all kinds back then. Boxes and boxes fulla disks. We saw 16-bit as a whole new frontier of possibilities. I personally wasn't too impressed with 68000 home games. More impressed with 68000 arcade games though.

 

6 hours ago, zzip said:

The 16->32 bit jump was less important itself, but on PC it happened to coincide with the addition of "protected mode" which made the architecture much more useful.

I didn't know shit about any protected mode anything. Not till I learned some x86. Not till I actually owned a 486. And then it was no big deal. Just how things were done. Still slapping myself for having stayed mired in the 16-bit world for so long. But it worked out.

 

6 hours ago, zzip said:

The 32->64 bit jump on PC didn't bring much performance gain,  in some cases it performed worse and created larger code sizes.   Most programs gain no additional benefit from using 64-bit integers over 32-bit.   So it took years for people to finally adopt 64-bit OSes on PC.  In the end the main thing that drove it was it got you past the 4Gb RAM barrier in a clean way.

In many applications and programs I never saw a tangible performance increase. They say a 64-bit proggie can perform less than its 32-bit equivalent because of cache. Using 64 vs 32 means half the cache is available. Cache is often caching nothing in the other half. And cache is a HUGE part of CPU performance. Tons of die space is always reserved for it.

 

6 hours ago, zzip said:

For the Jaguar, I "did the math" and could never figure out how it was 64-bit.    It was all a bunch of 32 and 16-bit processors,  they say its because the bus was,  but is that really what defines the "bitness" of a system?  At the time it was obvious to me that 'bits' was becoming a slippery marketing term.

As bitness increases overall it becomes less important. Any system nowadays is going to have all kinds of bus widths. I don't even know how wide my graphics cards are, nor do I care much. But that wasn't always so. When 3D cards first hit the market I was careful to be sure I didn't get a castrated 64-bit budget bus instead of the full-size 128-bit.

 

I don't expect any fanfare beyond product roadmap slides from Intel when we move into 128 bit processors. Shit. With multi-cores, do we even need to go that route other than for memory access? Or perhaps making room for more instructions? There's AVX 512 now, so one could argue it's a 512-bit processor..?

 

 

[zzip]

21 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I was wowed enough by 16-bits to go and get an Amiga. Mainly for the expanded color palette and resolution. Not so much for speed. I was "big" into collecting hi-res pictures of all kinds back then. Boxes and boxes fulla disks. We saw 16-bit as a whole new frontier of possibilities. I personally wasn't too impressed with 68000 home games. More impressed with 68000 arcade games though.

I used to get a few magazines each month, and I remember when they started printing screenshots from ST/Amiga.   It was jaw dropping the kind of images these machines could produce compared to what we were used to.   The extra bits on a 16-bit system allowed you to have 32-64K framebuffer,  to produce such images.  The 8-bit systems can only spare around 8-10K for framebuffer + sprites.  That's why they all had to resort to basically hacks to increase the number of on-screen colors.

 

29 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I didn't know shit about any protected mode anything. Not till I learned some x86. Not till I actually owned a 486. And then it was no big deal. Just how things were done. Still slapping myself for having stayed mired in the 16-bit world for so long. But it worked out.

I learned x86 programming in college before I had my own, so I was fully aware of the memory segmentation.    When I started coding DOS programs in C on my own, I would only write 32-bit protected mode apps because I just didn't want to deal with segmentation.  

 

For the non-programmer the benefit was you could have real multitasking OSes,  not the pre-emptive Win 3.1 kind,  and you could kiss EMS/XMS and low 640K issues goodbye

 

35 minutes ago, Keatah said:

In many applications and programs I never saw a tangible performance increase. They say a 64-bit proggie can perform less than its 32-bit equivalent because of cache. Using 64 vs 32 means half the cache is available. Cache is often caching nothing in the other half. And cache is a HUGE part of CPU performance. Tons of die space is always reserved for it.

Makes sense.  compiling 64-bit code generates larger executable sizes.  It's no wonder people weren't in a rush to get to 64-bit

[Keatah]

I started my Apple II Hi-Res picture collection when I learned what bitmap graphics were. Not by conscious choice, but because it was intriguing how an afterimage from a game (when you pressed Control-Reset) would remain in the memory, or at least parts of it would. And they would show up when another game was setting up or clearing the screen in preparation.

 

I figured I could save them and make a slide show. Or save them and gussy them up into a more advanced more modernized version (of the game). It was interesting to see pictures and drawings of real-world stuff show up on a computer screen. A big step up from the VCS' abstract blocky graphics where squares and rectangles re[presented obects.

 

That and tediously plotting mathematical constructs via Applesoft BASIC. An all afternoon affair at 1MHz to be sure. Interesting to look at and ponder the nature of it all. But it took forever, so saving the hi-res screen to disk was again magical. Could view them within seconds!