Does Nintendo still regret creating their worst enemy?

Everyone knows the story, Nintendo and Sony made a deal, Sony was backstabbed, PlayStation was created and made Nintendo's life a hell since then (in consoles department, not handhelds, of course).

Do you people think Nintendo still regrets that?

Nah..... Nintendo lives life with no ragrets.

Competition is good in the gaming industry. Means Nintendo has not slacked off with their games. Also Theres been countless great exclusives on the Sony platforms

@calvincfb: Maybe, but I would wager that Nintendo’s stubborn insistence on relying on cartridges would have still been their downfall. Huge epic games like FFVII would have simply ended up on the Saturn instead.

It may have been a monumental miscalculation by Nintendo, which they still regret, but I'm certainly glad it happened. Sony has proven itself to be just as talented as Nintendo when it comes to creating great consoles and games. Pretty much the same reason that I'm happy that Microsoft were able to succeed with the Xbox, competition is a good thing, and it's nice for us gamers to have more choice in what we get to play.

And hey, Sony did very well in the handheld market with the PSP. I am sure they could recreate that success in the future, if they are able to make some better design choices and actually support it this time (looking at you Vita).

I thought the premise of the Nintendo Play Station was to use CD's instead of expensive cartridges?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_CD-ROM

No I don’t think so. If there were any regrets I’m sure that they’ve long since passed.

I don't care what Nintendo thinks. Their move ended up creating something good for the industry. The PS2 helped to expand the video game market like no other home-console before it.

Missing the fact that even Sony had a slimy move planned for their part of the deal/

I think SEGA dying gave SONY an extra leg-up too.

Of course they do. Sony basically has eaten their pie for 3 out of the 4 generations since. Worst desicion in gaming history.

I highly doubt Nintendo has regrets right now when they've been top of the sales charts for a while now.

Every company will have their downer years. PS3 was a downer, Wii U was a downer, Xbox One is a downer. For every shortcoming these companies manage to come with something bigger...except for Sega.

It would have been nice if Sega still made consoles. They can't afford to make new consoles anymore. Sega isn't dead, they make 3rd party games now.

@calvincfb:I think Nintendo probably does regret that, I mean you'd kind of have to. They probably wouldn't ever want to actually admit that though. Fact of the matter is, they basically helped create a major competitor, one that would go on to directly influence Nintendo's approach to games to focus less on power and more on different experiences.

Nintendo is at fault for reaching an agreement with Sony that they weren't happy with. They could have discussed things more. But to do that and then to turn around and partner with one of Sony's greatest competitors... It makes sense why Sony would have been leery of continuing working with Nintendo.

I think the thing on @Johnny-n-Roger's link that surprised me the most was to learn that the prototype system that was recovered in 2015 could only run games in both formats at about the power of the SNES. At that point the only benefit you're getting is that the games on disc would have had more storage space, otherwise they would have just been slightly bigger Super Nintendo games. Sony was able to completely push gaming forward and compete with Sega's systems because they backed out of their dealings with Nintendo.

@so_hai: Yeah that's true. I think part of why Sega went under is that they had that tough competition from Sony though. Sony ended Sega, and Sega ended Sega.

@mandzilla: I agree with this. For all of the downsides of losing sales to a competitor or falling behind a competitor, having competition can be a good thing. After all, at many points these different companies considered working with each other. Microsoft liked the Playstation and wanted their XBOX to compete directly with it. Likewise, Ken Kutagari wanted to get into game development at Sony after seeing the NES. There is some level of appreciation and respect among the console devs, and they realize they're all a part of the same industry.

From a business standpoint, possibly. But the amount of bad blood Nintendo created through its policies and practices with other developers/publishers would have inevitably spilled over and someone would have come along to capitalize on their failings. What I wonder is how long would it have taken before one of the major tech companies got involved and - without a PlayStation - if the market would have been up and swallowed by forces far greater than Nintendo.

This is not exactly how it happened.

PlayStation was actually a joint project from both Nintendo and SONY. However, Nintendo decided to opt with the Ultra64 concept (which later became the N64). What actually fueled the PlayStation for SONY was the plethora of bitter developers that were cutting ties with Nintendo over their decision to not only keep their cartridge format, but also requiring them to pay the manufacturing costs for cartridge housings. And no one took this more personally than SquareSoft, who at the time was a second party developer for Nintendo. SquareSoft actually wanted to remain with them and offered to continue making games by manufacturing their own cartridge housings. But Nintendo wouldn't allow it and told them that all their games would require official Nintendo 64 cartridge housings purchased directly from them at $35 per unit (versus $0.99 for SONY's CD format on Playstation). SquareSoft felt like they were being ripped off. This led to a very bitter break up between Nintendo and Square, not to mention a mass exodus of third party developers who were also feeling taken advantage of.

Of course, it was a very different time back then. The entire industry was being dictated by Nintendo. In those days, developers felt like their games needed to be on a Nintendo console in order to sell. Nintendo was a company that greatly took advantage developers, retailers and even consumers. The decision to jump ship over to SONY was a big scary gamble. No one felt good about it in the beginning. Some were even expecting to run back to Nintendo if things didn't work out on the PlayStation. But what we all learned from that era is that Games are what drive hardware, not the other way around.

This all happened more than 22 years ago. And although everyone from that staff who made those decisions is long gone, Nintendo has never fully recovered from it. But a couple of good things did come out of all this: SONY became an established Console Manufacturer, the personnel responsible for what is widely hailed as Nintendo's worst business decision quickly left the company and Nintendo became a stronger first party developer by putting more focus into the quality of their own games, thus keeping themselves relevant and profitable over the past two decades despite waning third party support. I don't think there's another company out there who could survive this way as long as Nintendo has.

As far as regret, you'd have to ask the team that made those decisions two decades ago. I'm sure the answer would be a resounding YES. But as stated, nearly everyone from that team left the company and sold their stock well before the end of the GameCube era. The team that took over afterwards has been cleaning up their mess ever since.

While I do agree with you that competition is definitely a good thing, Sony entering the console market also helped to kill some of the competition in the industry. If the Playstation had never existed, Sega might still be making consoles. And personally, if given a choice between having Sony making consoles or having Sega continuing to make consoles, I would rather have Sega continuing to make consoles.

This is not the thing that Nintendo should be regretting. The deal that they had with Sony was a very bad deal for them, so they were wise to end it. The thing that Nintendo should really be regretting is how they mistreated their 3rd parties. If Nintendo had treated their 3rd parties better then they would not have jumped ship to the Playstation and without those 3rd parties jumping ship then Sony would have never taken over the industry.

Nintendo regrets everything they do.

@calvincfb: seeing how profitable Nintendo has been since then I doubt they care

I doubt it. They always seem to make a way.

@NFJSupreme: you do know that everything since the snes and before the Wii was a flop, right?

If anything, it might have given Nintendo more of its edge.

Sony coming into the gaming world caught Microsoft's attention, who didn't want to make a gaming system at first, they just wanted Sony to use DirectX APIs, which they offered for free, in hopes that it would encourage more cross platform development with PC, to help secure Windows as the dominant OS with a stronger gaming consumer base than their rival, Apple. Sony wanted no part of this, so MS felt compelled to make the Xbox, and in ways MS succeeded in what they wanted, the kind of bridging between console and PC development really took off during the 7th gen. All three markets, aside form their exclusives, push for more powerful hardware and share a redundant library of multiplatform titles.

Considering in the 7th gen that Microsoft and Sony spent more producing their systems than they sold for (at least at the start), Nintendo wasn't in a position to play into an arms race with the other companies. Instead they had to innovate, stand apart somehow. This was okay though, Nintendo was not new to trying new things, unconventional things. Didn't always work, the Virtual Boy for instance. Even the Wii was a gambit, but it paid off. I'd say considering the height of their success with the Wii, the DS, that the misfortunes that would follow afterwards were more by their own hand for how they approached things than as a direct consequence of their participation in the advent of the PlayStation.

I heard that Nintendo did it on purpose and is secretly the puppetmaster behind playstation. They give the illusion of being different companies but bought our Sony's entertainment division years ago just to enrage and confuse gamers with System Wars mindsets

Yeah I think you are absolutely right in what you're saying. Even if Nintendo had kept to their original deal, there's no guarantee that Sony wouldn't have ended up releasing their own console at some point anyway. They obviously had developed an interest in doing so, and had ambitions towards competing directly. Oh certainly, there's no doubt a high level of respect and appreciation among the different companies... well more so than you see here on system wars anyway lol.

Ah, yes very good point. Sega was to a certain extent a victim of Sony's success in the end. ? I also wish they were still making consoles. The Dreamcast was truly innovative with many great games, and deserved far more success than it actually received. I suppose we are lucky that they're still producing games, and can only cross our fingers for the future. I mean Atari are planning a comeback with the Ataribox, so anything's possible!

Id say M$ refusing to work with Valve when they approach them with the idea of steam.

I'll give 'em a call and ask, hold on.

Man that would have been great. Sega would still be in the business then. So it's all Nintendo's fault...........

I doubt now... at the time I think they did. I mean Playstation before they rebrand it PSOne had a lot of 3rd party jump ship and go with them instead of Nintendo.

Like Squaresoft they didn't publish anything on N64 and almost everything exclusive to the PSOne. At that time they were a juggernaut of the RPG world.

It also started the waste land that is Nintendo. a few jems every gen that you can count on one hand ... so it is long between good games ... but they were memorable. While on Sony they had a lot of crappy games but there were so many it was impossible to not find something cool.

If I made that call to backstab Sony, I'd STILL be pissed at myself. It cost Nintendo just about everything. It's amazing they survived the PS and PS2 era.

Think this is one of those forever regret..thing..you can't do anything about it but to move on...but if someone brings it up I am sure Nintendo would yea..its one of their big **** up. :P

That's not true. The N64 might not have been #1 in market share, but the N64 was still a very popular console that was profitable for Nintendo, so it definitely was not a flop.

But also don't forget, Sony had a slimy edge in their deal, which is what made Yamauchi and Lincoln act as they did.