Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo - Who made Gaming better?

We were "saved from DRM" because of Sony. I have to get up off my couch to change games out now because of Sony and we won't see steam like sales on consoles because of Sony. I can't access my whole game library on any console I am play on because of Sony. I can't lend games to friends and family because of Sony.

Online DRM (as opposed to disk based like consoles have now) is great, ask anyone who uses Steam will agree (and the Xbox One DRM was more relaxed than steam)

Sony on par with nintendo.

Nintendo revived the industry.

Sony made gaming "cool", popular with PS1 and PS2. And they saved gaming from DRM this year.

I'd say the Playstation 1.

That sucker put Nintendo in a rock and a hard place. A spot Nintendo has yet to recover from.

Playstation made everyone a gamer, even when the ps1 and 2 were selling millions, they did not stop giving the kind of games we wanted, m$ on the other hand is the cancer of gaming industry, but they can redeem themselves if they continue to bring out quality new ips and exclusive with x1, I couldnt care less about the other stuff

PS1. I used to be a bored little SNES gamer. I wasn't into all the super mario, donkey kong stuff... PS1 saved me with MGS1, Resident Evil, Syphon Filter, Dino Crisis, GT, FF... way better games. It was like if Sony made the industry grow up lol

In short...

Nintendo - memories... no games

Sony - Single player

Microsoft - Multiplayer

Valve - PC(both) mostly multiplayer and CO-OP

It's hard because Nintendo, and Sony both made huge contributions to gaming, so has Microsoft. If I would pick, I would have to say Sony. They really made gaming cool, I was so blown away by the PlayStation when it first came out. There was a more "wow" factor with the original PS, they contributed heavily to the growth of the industry as well.

I would tend towards Nintendo if we're talking solely games, ancillary would go to MS and Sony easily.

Nintendo, hands down. Their contributions to the video game industry are much larger than both Sony and Microsoft combined...

Nintendo revolutionized gaming over the past few decades, from Donkey Kong's platformer gameplay, to the NES's D-pad, to Super Mario Bros' side-scrolling platformer gameplay and Legend of Zelda's action-adventure gameplay, to the Game Boy's popularization of handheld gaming, to the SNES and its shoulder buttons, to the N64's analog stick and Mario 64's revolutionary 3D game design, to GoldenEye and Ocarina of Time taking big steps forward for their respective genres, to the GameCube's Wavebird wireless controller, to the DS's touch-screen controls and Wii's motion controls which expanded the market.

Overall?

1. Nintendo

2. SEGA

3. Sony

In that order.

They have all made significant contributions, Right now Sony and Microsoft are the most important but i still like Nintendo, even though they piss me off sometimes.

Where is the option for all three?

Nintendo because, since the 80's, all subsequent evolutions the industry has made has been made thanks to Nintendo. Without Nintendo the console market would have remained dead, and they were ultimately responsible for the creation of the PlayStation also.

@Jacobistheman:

Sony never 'saved' us from DRM, mainly because if DRM was to start dominating consoles it would have taken more than Microsoft to do it. Nintendo never made any attempt to enforce DRM either. Sony just said what we wanted to hear and it worked out well for them.

This is sad....even for SW.

Nintendo gave the gaming industry life. Before they came along the gaming industry was getting out of control with the saturation of terrible games and how anyone could develop a game for a console without the console company approval.

Nintendo brought quality control.

I think Nintendo and Sony are on pretty equal footing. Nintendo saved the industry from the crash in the 80's. Sony expanded the market exponentially in the 90's. XBox can go home now. Steambox will be a million times better for gaming than anything MS could come up with.

Nintendo 1985 Video game crash:

+ They helped Video game Industry back on their legs

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Ummm you do know that the video game industry never crashed right? Of course you don't, your a typical American who doesn't know actual fact and just repeats what other americans tell you to without a single bit of thought or research on the actual truth.

The video game industry never crashed. Atari took over gaming in America and then ruined itself, meanwhile in the rest of the world video games were thriving and growing all the time. Atari was Americas only real source for gaming for a short while was atari because the industry was still new. But in the rest of the world there was gaming also and it never failed. So in the grand scheme of things Americas "game industry crash" in the sense of the world only effected about 10% of gaming as a whole and it was localized to America only.

But that's a typical American, they think because something happened to them that it happened everywhere else also as if America is the center of the universe and only they matter.

Nintendo memories... no games? Are you saying the NES had NO GAMES???

@Gargus: Balls thanks Gamespot for deleting my post >:(

Anyway I agree with Gargus, not retyping everything, but the gaming "crash" and resurection by Nintendo is a complete fallacy.

Nintendo by far, they saved the industry and made it what it's today. Sony did a lot with PS2 and the recent DRM and used games. So i would say those two

It's hard to pick any of them since I don't think any of them single-handedly "made" gaming better given much of the credit goes to the devs who made games on them.

As far as how I feel about them.

Nintendo was at their peak when they had Sega to compete with. I like that Nintendo still keeps their same methodologies today, but they slack big time.

Microsoft helped bring a lot of the good of PC gaming to consoles, and I've thoroughly enjoyed Xbox.

Sony I can't really think of doing anything other than making a popular product.

They all had some decent contributions and anyone that can't see this needs to **** off.

Merry Christmas.

Sony for the PS1 and PS2.

@Jacobistheman: we can't do any of those things because Microsoft's marketing team royally screwed the pooch on properly explaining all of those awesome features. It's true Sony pounced on that, but it would have never happened had Microsoft competently explain their new system to gamers.

Microsoft gave us microtranasactions in $60 games, online fees, day one dlc, and lots of shooters.

Sony, on the other hand, continues to provide gamers with world class, barn bursting exclusives and for $50/year, great online service that gets you access to many incredible games at no extra charge.

Nintendo rehashes the same games over and over. LOL

Sony is the only thing saving core and regular and standard gaming from stupid trends, gimmicks, and capitalism. THANK YOU SONY.

all 3 have done somehting over the years to make gaming better. If i had to rate it i'd say MS, nintendo, Sony

MS gave us internal storage, PC architecture and graphics, Online gaming network

Sony gave us Disc based systems, dual analog thumbsticks

Nintendo gave us console gaming as a big thing

MS, xbox live is what peeled me away from PC gaming and made consoles a viable alternative in my opinion.

If not for that, i would still be doing 95% of my gaming on PC save for some occasional couch coop.

If not for nintendos divergence into the casual market I think they would have been the obvious answer.

Sony has always offered a strong competitive product but never made any big game changing contributions to the industry.

@Jacobistheman: You made yourself sound very lazy. Also, there's nothing stopping you from buying digital versions of any of the games if getting off the couch really is that big an issue for you.

What shitty options.

Nintendo made gaming

Sony took it to the next level

M$ almost fucked it up

All four of them put together minus everything MS has done mid way through the 360s lifecycle up to this day.

Seriously, MS is a dog that needs to be put down. They haven't done anything good in a while now. Windows 8/8.1, XBONE, Surface, the new ms office is more complicated than it needs to be, that shitty ipod wannabe, kinect, halo 4 etc etc etc.

Nintendo never really contributed outside of being popular. Unless you still believe in fairy tales of them having the magic power to save the world.

People still believe in magic?

This makes no sense.

They are keeping traditional handheld gaming alive. Without nintendo we'd all be playing fuking candy crush and temple run on long train journeys instead of pokemon, super mario and legend of zelda.

clearly microsoft.

they have driven online for consoles. best thing ever. sony still playing catch up and Nintendo still don't understand how internet works

Pretty sure the other competitors would have took their place.

Personally Sony's decision on the Vita was based on the fact that the PSP lost steam outside of japan after the first 4-5 years. It's why the thing is clunky, why they changed everything, why they have mandatory shit, why they use cards and have no BC, or even at least, converting UMD to a DD format to play on Vita.

If PSP continued we would probably see a better system than the VITA. 3DS games with some exceptions are not that far off from IOS etc games anyway. I know there were tons of those types of games taking up around over 50% of the original DS library.

Plus from your post, you act like Nintendos winning, it already lost, it's just trying to capture the DS fanbase. It's not going to get all of them.

how did Sony save gamers from DRM, they have one of the most restrictive DRM measure that allow for only allow downloads to two units now?

The Wii U's internet is better than most devices that have a browser.

On topic, all 3 really have not done much. Other than be popular and get "X' number of games.

Sure, microsoft pushed the online on consoles and changed the ecosystem so that PC games would finally be able to be put on a console, which failed almost every time before. As well as having world wide multiplayer and tons of extras and downloads for a nice service. but even then there most important was clearly bringing almost all types of games together and breaking the PC/Console power line so that at a time consoles were stronger in most areas, and are still not that far behind, especially for the average consumer who wants to game on a LT or PC.

And that's probably the only thing I can think of. I mean sure, Sony offered the first Double Digit multimedia cosoles that sold over 10 million with the PS2 (before even the Xbox sold 10 million) so in a way that is a very big achievement.

So that's two.

What else is there? Nothing else really happened unless you believe in magic. Most big contributions were to the PC and passed on to consoles. Or losing consoles that did not make a big market splash but inspired everyone else. The mainstream companies of today have really not done much in terms of impactual contributions with 100% benefit.

You do realise that most modern developers site Nintendo as inspiration for their work? That in itself is a huge contribution to game design. I could go on, but this is the most overlooked contribution.

People throw around the term DRM way too loosely... EVERY form of digital media has and has always had DRM to some extent. Sony saved gamers from not allowing used games

A lot of them years later did usually when Nintendo Hardware is doing poorly, but either way that still does not mean anything, i don't count inspirations for Data Easts, Capcoms, Sega, etc. work. or no one else really. I mean you act like that contribution is exclusive to Nintendo.

Also "most" is a random assumption.

The NES did not even come out over the U.S. until 1986. Which by then the gaming industry was already saved from OTHER CONSOLES before the NES, and the fact that the 7800 and SMS, mostly the former, sold with the NES equally (even with articles saying they sold out and NES's were still on the shelves) makes you magic puffy smoke go visshhh.

It's all a well written fairy tale that is still having an issue being a very big belief. The fairy tale writers did a good job. At least the Atari started gaming consoles thing is dead now.

I am sure that I do more physical activity and exercise more than than either of you and probably most of the people on here (I commute on my bike either 25 or 50 miles a day, ski about 30 times a year, hike a few times a month (during summer), and lift on a semi-regular basis)

I own the majority of my games on the 360 and my PC digitally, but with the massive games that blu-ray allows on the PS4, Xbox One and PS3 can take a long time to download without very fast internet and it is nice to have a disk for data distribution, but that not the point. There is no reason in 2013 that we should ever have to use a disk--that can get scratched or destroyed--for a license key. Having online DRM opens up so many more possibilities. Sure Microsoft didn't do a good job of marketing those possibilities, but it was the superior system. We were not "saved" from it, we were robbed of it because people are scared of change and Sony capitalized on that.

Nice poll choices, I had a hard time choosing between these 3:

-Nintendo : I grew up on their games in the 1980's, after getting introduced to gaming via my Atari 2600.

-Sony(PS1 & PS2): They are widely known for pushing gaming into the mainstream with the PS1, this continued to some extent with the PS2 I guess. Also, one of my favorite games ever(Castlevania SoTN) was an unforgettable PS1 experience for me.

-Microsoft: They took the very horrible online gaming beginnings(for me that was online gaming on the PS2.....that's when I started getting jealous of my Xbox friends who had Halo), and made it into something enjoyable, and even competitive depending on the game(Halo). On top of all that, you could actually voice chat pretty clearly with others, and strategize.....at the time, this was revolutionary for me and a massive step forward for gaming in general.

In the end, I chose Nintendo, because they were there before Sony and Microsoft, and had I not been exposed to their games early on, I might not even be a gamer today. I cannot forget the incredible experiences I had with some Mario, Zelda, and Metroid games, and I think a lot of games that came later on from MS and Sony were probably inspired in some way or another by Nintendo.

But do you even lift? Also, when will you start the PS4 montage?

Nintendo saved the industry from the '85 video game crash and the NES and SNEs were great consoles so I give them some credit.

Sony however made gaming cool with the PS1 and PS2. If it wasn't for them I would have stopped console gaming by now because I was getting tired of Mario games from Nintendo in the mid 90s and SEGW died in 2001 more or less. They then went further and saved us in 2013 from casual crap hardware (WiiU) and DRM (Xbone). Overall I would say Sony has done the most for modern day gaming ever since Nintendo lost themselves after the SNES.

MS is the cancer of the industry, they made DLC popular, paying to play online and shitty DRm. Only positive thing they brought was making online gaming popular in consoles. DC and PC already had online long before XBox.