My analysis of the PS1's success.

Ozzie666 said:
Saturn design was trouble from the start and no true Sonic for americans.
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Urgh this was a big one for me.

While PlayStation impressed me more early on there were a few reasons why I went with Saturn in summer 1996 instead…

- Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Panzer Dragoon Zwei showing promising 3D

- Big price drop (think it was £199)

- Japanese controller bundled in instead of the hideous American one)

- Sonic X-treme being announced and looking amazing in magazines

I spent half my time on MegaDrive playing Sonic games and other great platformers like Dynamite Headdy and Rocket Knight, safe to say platformers were my favourite genre.

That game appeared on all the schedules right up until the end of 1996. Then it was abruptly cancelled with Sega saying "But don't worry, we have a port of Sonic 3D and Bug Too! coming in the new year"

Fuck off Sega!

S1RqEj4BwwxPvtcn.jpeg




Sega would continue to let me down throughout 1997.

- Fighters Megamix being buggy

- Virtua Fighter 3 being announced and then disappearing

- Sega Touring Car being a shit port

- Tomb Raider II being cancelled

- Bernie Stolar's "Saturn is not our future" at E3

By the end of 1997, despite having a collection of excellent 1996 games in my possession I'd been let down far too much and I grabbed a PlayStation with Tomb Raider II, Resident Evil: Director's Cut, Final Fantasy VII, WipEout 2007 and Soul Blade
 
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SenkiDala said:
And that's why they're still at the top now. Those kid grew up, they are us, they keep buying PlayStation products, our kids grow up with PS stuff too.
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No one has dominated home consoles like Sony, not even close.

The fact that even the black sheep of the family, PS3, sold a whopping 87 million units is testament to that.

The only other dedicated home console that wasn't a PlayStation to breach 100m is the Wii.

PlayStation's global brand is huge.

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RetroGamingUK said:
While PlayStation impressed me more early on there were a few reasons why I went with Saturn in summer 1996 instead…

- Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Panzer Dragoon Zwei showing promising 3D
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The console market at that time was managed differently for example, Sega had a target for the launch in North America, and since they couldn't meet the target, the console was rejected by consumers, for fair reasons, they started to manufacture fewer consoles in the next batch.

This created a logistical problem, so they lowered the price to empty the warehouses, lying is part of the game . However, Sega and Nintendo's defeat was only a matter of time because Sony lobbied with the main third parties. Although it's not official, Square is or was to Sony (for free) what Activision Bethesda is to MS (but MS had to buy it). So Sega never had a chance, but it could have done better than it did. It's impossible to compete alone against a syndicate of three or four publishers.
 
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Younger lads might not know this, but Sony had a very cool brand image when PSX dropped. It gave gaming some street credit, or rather "cool credit". Once that got people in the door, the games were good enough to keep them hooked. Idk if there is a brand that could pull off that kind of allure today. There just isn't one positioned how Sony was then.
 
Geometric-Crusher said:
The console market at that time was managed differently for example, Sega had a target for the launch in North America, and since they couldn't meet the target, the console was rejected by consumers, for fair reasons, they started to manufacture fewer consoles in the next batch.

This created a logistical problem, so they lowered the price to empty the warehouses, lying is part of the game . However, Sega and Nintendo's defeat was only a matter of time because Sony lobbied with the main third parties. Although it's not official, Square is or was to Sony (for free) what Activision Bethesda is to MS (but MS had to buy it). So Sega never had a chance, but it could have done better than it did. It's impossible to compete alone against a syndicate of three or four publishers.
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Sony really put the effort in to courting developers.

Going back and reading old issues of EDGE and Next Generation it's clear then (we're talking late 1994) that developers clearly favoured the PlayStation, even Yu Suzuki was expressing what a pig the Saturn was to develop for and he's the man behind the Saturn Graphics Library.
 
simpatico said:
Younger lads might not know this, but Sony had a very cool brand image when PSX dropped. It gave gaming some street credit, or rather "cool credit". Once that got people in the door, the games were good enough to keep them hooked. Idk if there is a brand that could pull off that kind of allure today. There just isn't one positioned how Sony was then.
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Many aspects of to this, especially in the UK

- Aiming all marketing at 20 year olds

- Demo pods in nightclubs (Ministry of Sound, Cream etc)

- Sponsorship of large music events

- WipEout music (Chemical Brothers, Orbital, Prodigy etc)

Saturn's first party games had a style that Sega fans loved, but to most people (especially in the UK) they just appeared stuffy.
 
RetroGamingUK said:
Tomb Raider II being cancelled
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The game was cancelled because "Sony money", nothing else. It was in development. Core was always a great supporter of SEGA consoles (as well as many European and Western developers, by the way), but Sony bought exclusivity.
 
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cireza said:
The game was cancelled because "Sony money", nothing else. It was in development. Core was always a great supporter of SEGA consoles (as well as many European and Western developers, by the way), but Sony bought exclusivity.
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That may well be the case

Fact is it was my most anticipated game release for the whole of 1997 and I had to have it, whichever console it was on

My loyalty to Sega was well and truly exhausted by the time it came out in late 1997
 
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cireza said:
The game was cancelled because "Sony money", nothing else. It was in development. Core was always a great supporter of SEGA consoles (as well as many European and Western developers, by the way), but Sony bought exclusivity.
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As far as I know, Sega needed a '64x add-on' to run this game.

Hideki Sato forever, I really love this guy
 
SamuraiEdge said:
PlayStation 1 is easily the best console of all time for how much it influenced the gaming scene all the wya up to today. Without Playstation we wouldn't have a lot of the incredible series we love and enjoy today (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Metal Gear, and so on).

Truly was ahead of its time and a remarkable piece of kit. So many great games and easy to pick, plug, and play for so many people across the globe.



God I love these setups.
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I'm an N64-first kinda guy -- but PlayStation came in and blew the doors off of everyone. Can't believe it's been almost 30 years here in the States. Loved my Saturn (because, yes, I wanted the Capcom ports and 2D gaming), but PS totally flipped the script.
 
Geometric-Crusher said:
The console market at that time was managed differently for example, Sega had a target for the launch in North America, and since they couldn't meet the target, the console was rejected by consumers, for fair reasons, they started to manufacture fewer consoles in the next batch.

This created a logistical problem, so they lowered the price to empty the warehouses, lying is part of the game . However, Sega and Nintendo's defeat was only a matter of time because Sony lobbied with the main third parties. Although it's not official, Square is or was to Sony (for free) what Activision Bethesda is to MS (but MS had to buy it). So Sega never had a chance, but it could have done better than it did. It's impossible to compete alone against a syndicate of three or four publishers.
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IIRC, Squaresoft actually did consider Saturn development at one point, so they must've gotten a look at devkits and overall system specs. However, they rejected the platform for not having an elegant-enough design (which was true). That certainly made it a lot easier for SCEJ to court Squaresoft for PS1 (alongside Nintendo still sticking with cartridges & being late with N64).

Others like Namco, I think just didn't want to feel like they were playing second-fiddle to SEGA's own 3D arcade releases on Saturn, which would've likely certainly happened. Probably a result of the intensifying rivalry between them in the '90s for 3D arcade games. Sony had no arcade presence of their own and needed something equivalent to SEGA's 1P arcade efforts, so Namco likely naturally aligned much closer to that platform than Saturn.

Take into consideration, that SEGA could have technically gotten more major 3P support, if it weren't for their mistakes with the 32X and rolling out the Saturn outside of Japan. Many 3P like Capcom & Konami had 32X games in dev that were then forced to be cancelled or reworked for other platforms. That's time and money sunk into supporting a platform which died in six months, when those resources could've been better served on more promising, true 32-bit systems. It's easy to imagine a lot of these 3P had increased trepidation towards the Saturn after seeing what happened with 32X and seeing their sales decline heavily on Genesis/MegaDrive (more so than they were on SNES, where games like DKC helped revitalize software sales to a big extent going into 1995).

So that syndicate you're speaking of...well part of that was SEGA's (and Nintendo's) own making with various bad decisions which pushed those 3P to what seemed like greener pastures. If you were looking for something outside the SEGA/Nintendo sphere, you either had an impending failure of the PC-FX, an overpriced 3DO, a struggling & bugged Jaguar, a stifled CD32 (they couldn't even release it outside of Europe due to running out of money), a mostly-done FM Towns Marty, a dead CD-i...or the PlayStation. Needless to say, only the PlayStation looked like it had any real future, and it still had an upward battle to prove itself against SEGA & Nintendo.

That's why the Japanese & American launches were so critical for the system, and I imagine they did a lot in helping Sony get a lot more 3P support afterwards.
 
The PS1's success was due to:

1: Great marketing
2: Aggressive pricing
3: Amazing games

Look at the recent Wipeout topic to see what they did with regard to club/rave culture and essentially making the Playstation "cool" for adults.

The games speak for themselves, between 95-97 you had the likes of:

  • Tekken 1&2
  • Ridge Racer
  • Tomb Raider 1&2
  • Resident Evil
  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Twisted Metal 1&2
  • Destruction Derby 1&2
  • Gran Turismo
  • Grand Theft Auto
  • G-Police
  • Colony Wars
  • Soviet Strike
  • Suikoden
  • Die Hard Trilogy
  • Alien Trilogy
  • Pandemonium
  • Crash Bandicoot 1&2
  • Cool Boarders
  • Air Combat
  • Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
Not all were exclusive but the lineup was incredible over those early years and as was stated above, Psygnosis was pivotal to the overall success of the system.

With the launch price of £299, that was the icing on the cake.



 
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