Retro The Nintendo Playstation.

[CastletonSnob]

As we all know, Nintendo and Sony were working on a SNES add-on, but Nintendo made a deal with Phillips, and that led to the PlayStation.

I hear about how Nintendo betrayed Sony, but why is Nintendo in the wrong? Sony was going to get the rights to Nintendo's characters. It's not like Sony was completely innocent.

 

[Maxrunner]

That's not quite right.

 

[Guaraná]

As we all know, Nintendo and Sony were working on a SNES add-on, but Nintendo made a deal with Phillips, and that led to the PlayStation.

I hear about how Nintendo betrayed Sony, but why is Nintendo in the wrong? Sony was going to get the rights to Nintendo's characters. It's not like Sony was completely innocent.

there's not good buy nor bad buy; it's just business.
30 years later, both are doing fine.

and the thing about sony getting rights to Nintendo characters is not true.

 

[CastletonSnob]

That's not quite right.

What do you mean?

 

[Maxrunner]

Betray is a strong word. Sony would have full rights for the CD part of I'm not mistaken. Nintendo saw that the deal was bad for them or something along the lines.

 

[DarkField]

It was an agreement, it's not like neither of them knew what they receiving in the negotiations. I think Nintendo panicked about technology they didn't know and didn't care to understand, just like they do now, they take advanced tech very seriously, just like Sony don't care about it, they go for the advance technology even if it shoots back.
And I believe that Nintendo roasted Sony, and it was Nintendo's fault, Sony wanted to be part of the business and they offered what they thought was best for it to get a good profit of it.

 

[Skittzo]

Nintendo knew what the contract said when they agreed to it, they essentially had second thoughts and instead of confronting or renegotiating with Sony they decided to blindside them with no warning by working with Phillips instead.

Sony definitely overreached with the initial contract but Nintendo's reaction was pretty shitty. Both of them screwed up.

 

[DrDave]

The thing is Nintendo didn’t just tell Sony they were turning down that deal. They showed up at CES (IIRC) and announced publicly, to Sony’s surprise, that they were going to partner with Phillips for a CD add-on to the SNES.

 

[WestEgg]

It was an agreement, it's not like neither of them knew what they receiving in the negotiations. I think Nintendo panicked about technology they didn't know and didn't care to understand, just like they do now, they take advanced tech very seriously, just like Sony don't care about it, they go for the advance technology even if it shoots back.
And I believe that Nintendo roasted Sony, and it was Nintendo's fault, Sony wanted to be part of the business and they offered what they thought was best for it to get a good profit of it.

I can never tell if people actually think Nintendo is completely ignorant and afraid of technology rather than they just don't believe the cost/benefit analysis is not in their favor versus a cheaper or more conservative approach. Like, this is now and was then a massive tech company, they knew what CD Roms were.

As for the deal itself, it had nothing to do with Nintendo being "afraid" of new technology. They found the contract's stipulations that Sony be given control of the software made for the joint system and able to reap more favorable royalties unacceptable, so they went with Phillips, who was also offering CD technology, before reevaluating their strategy again, going with a cartridge based system for piracy and bandwidth concerns. The MSI powered chipset in the N64 was more cutting edge tech at the time than CD Roms.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Don't forget we also got the Philips CD-i out this. Compact Disc Interactive. Mad Dog McCree, Dragon's Lair, Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda's Adventure and The Apprentice. FMV games galore.

What a time.

 

[CastletonSnob]

Don't forget we also got the Philips CD-i out this. Compact Disc Interactive. Mad Dog McCree, Dragon's Lair, Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Zelda's Adventure and The Apprentice. FMV games galore.

What a time.

As bad as the Mario and Zelda CD-I games are, at least we got YouTube Poop out of them.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

The deal wasn't favorable for any of the parts; but the issue here is that Nintendo publicly announced their partnership with Philips, so Sony "felt" betrayed; but at the end of the day, neither were happy how things were going internally


but hey, took us a little bit, but we finally have a good compromise

see, Nintendo and PlayStation.

 

[DarkField]

I can never tell if people actually think Nintendo is completely ignorant and afraid of technology rather than they just don't believe the cost/benefit analysis is not in their favor versus a cheaper or more conservative approach. Like, this is now and was then a massive tech company, they knew what CD Roms were.

As for the deal itself, it had nothing to do with Nintendo being "afraid" of new technology. They found the contract's stipulations that Sony be given control of the software made for the joint system and able to reap more favorable royalties unacceptable, so they went with Phillips, who was also offering CD technology, before reevaluating their strategy again, going with a cartridge based system for piracy and bandwidth concerns. The MSI powered chipset in the N64 was more cutting edge tech at the time than CD Roms.

I get it, but contract stipulations aren't a one sided thing, they are an agreement. It's not like Sony lied or Nintendo didn't know, they didn't care about CD tech and that's a fact, they panicked and run to Phillips arms (well I'm exaggerating a bit) xD. But the fact is that they kicked out Sony after they agree to everything they both stipulated in agreement.

 

[Dcubed]

Sony were going to gain the rights to all royalties on CD-based 3rd party Nintendo Playstation games; while Nintendo were due to earn zilch from hosting these games on their platform (and dealing with the costs of dev kits, development support etc). Nintendo were going to get done dirty by Sony, so they reneged on the deal when they found out what Sony had snuck into the contract.

 

[Jersh]

so they reneged on the deal when they found out what Sony had snuck into the contract.

Which was in turn doing Sony dirty, from what I understand; they didn't even give Sony the chance to renegotiate a more acceptable deal, as Sony found out after the Philips deal was done.

It's certainly an interesting part of video game history. I don't think either side regrets what happened now. Sony certainly doesn't; Nintendo might wonder what a market without Sony as a direct major competitor looks like, but it's hard to predict how long that partnership would've lasted and what Sony would've done afterwards.

 

[CastletonSnob]

Which was in turn doing Sony dirty, from what I understand; they didn't even give Sony the chance to renegotiate a more acceptable deal, as Sony found out after the Philips deal was done.

It's certainly an interesting part of video game history. I don't think either side regrets what happened now. Sony certainly doesn't; Nintendo might wonder what a market without Sony as a direct major competitor looks like, but it's hard to predict how long that partnership would've lasted and what Sony would've done afterwards.

There's no real guarantee the SNES add-on would have even succeeded, given the failure of the 3DO, the Atari Jaguar, and the Sega CD.

 

[WestEgg]

I get it, but contract stipulations aren't a one sided thing, they are an agreement. It's not like Sony lied or Nintendo didn't know, they didn't care about CD tech and that's a fact, they panicked and run to Phillips arms.

They very much cared about it, they literally courted two separate CD developers before settling back on cartridges, and then developed and launched their own that only released in Japan for the Nintendo 64. Multimedia was seen as the future in the 90s, it was too big for anyone to ignore, even the famously “lateral thinking with seasoned technology” Nintendo. And by the next generation, they had fully adapted the current multimedia technology (yes, GameCube disks are mini DVDs).

As for the agreement, yes it was a breach of etiquette on Nintendo’s part against Sony, which Nintendo saw as retaliatory for the disproportionate control Sony had tried to sneak past them. Neither side was clean here, but at the end of the day it’s all just business.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

As bad as the Mario and Zelda CD-I games are, at least we got YouTube Poop out of them.

In between the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive & Nintendo 64, I had the CD-i, it was the 'future' back then according to my family due to it having games 'with real people', there was also an influx of 'edutainment' games on the CD-i and was actually not 1, but 2 other 2D Mario game being developed for it not many people knew about that got canceled.

The name of that game?

Mario Takes America.

Mario Takes America (lost build of cancelled Philips CD-i edutainment game; 1992-1994) - The Lost Media Wiki

lostmediawiki.com

In 1992, Toronto-based developer Cigam pitched a CD-i game featuring Mario to Philips, who were impressed and funded the game.

The game was to be an educational game featuring Mario visiting various locations in the United States, Mario Takes America.

Premise |​

In this game project, Mario arrived in New York and traveled across the country in various vehicles to reach Hollywood so he could star in a feature film. It was to use full-motion video footage, some of which was already recorded, featuring shots taken from helicopters, cars, and speedboats. It used 2D sprites and animation, inspired by the recent Mario television cartoons.

In case of the developers couldn't use Mario anymore, sprites and sequences depicting Sonic the Hedgehog as well as original characters named Metal and Heavy were produced and coded into the game as "backups."[1]

The fact that they just threw Sonic the Hedgehog in there 'as a backup' just shows how batshit insane they were haha.


Then there was also another 2D Mario project (titled 'Super Mario's Wacky Worlds', a sequel to 'Super Mario World') in development that also got canceled:

Super Mario's Wacky Worlds is a cancelled 1993 Phillips CD-i sequel to the 1990 SNES game Super Mario World. Developed by NovaLogic, only 30% of the game was complete before the game was cancelled.

Only three prototypes of the game are known to exist, and a ROM of the game has been available for some time now and can be downloaded below.

Background |​

The game would've taken place in the real world as opposed to the Mushroom Kingdom, despite the fact that classic Mario enemies like Goombas and Koopa Troopas make appearances in the game. Development started only a few weeks before the game would be presented to Nintendo, and even though the two developers worked 24 hours a day for two weeks, they didn't have much for the presentation. The game was so rushed; it was ported to a disk only four hours before the presentation that would take place. Despite all this, Nintendo was incredibly impressed by the results.

Cancellation and Leaked ROM |​

Due to poor sales of the CD-i, Wacky Worlds had to be cancelled. What remains of the game is functional for something cancelled so early in production. However, the found prototypes have many glitches and bugs; for example, players can make Goombas freeze in mid-air by touching them, and there is no way to swim in the underwater levels because Mario wasn't programmed to swim yet. Many levels have no data in them at all.[1] It is very unlikely the game will ever be officially completed.

Super Mario's Wacky Worlds (found build of cancelled CD-i game; 1993) - The Lost Media Wiki

www.lostmediawiki.com

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

The best explanation I heard was that Nintendo was thinking this would be a multimedia/educational platform for encyclopedias and simple interactive (not game) CD-ROMs. But it would also play cartridge games, and Nintendo gets a cut of every one of those. So they weren’t worried about Sony retaining rights to publish CD-ROM software, since they didn’t see that as competing with games on cartridges.

When it became clear Sony was going to make games, Nintendo wanted out of the deal. But going in they thought it would add value to their platform, like the famicom modem or something.

The fact that everyone calls it a Nintendo PlayStation is always misleading too. It was always a Sony project. Think more Pioneer LaserActive or Panasonic Q.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

We've moved on from discussing the Nintendo Playstation, the "prototype TV game machine" is the new hotness.

It was made at some point in 1970s, and feel into obscurity for many years until Sony decided to display the unit at a museum event.
Reportedly, no one who currently works at Sony has any idea on what it is.

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

Sony & Nintendo:

 

[Pokemaniac]

Neither party came out of the situation looking particularly good. While Sony were inarguably trying to screw Nintendo over, Nintendo was very careless to enter into the agreement in the first place without realizing that.

Ultimately the project was probably doomed from the start, but it shouldn't have taken so long for everyone involved to realize that.

 

[Dcubed]

Which was in turn doing Sony dirty, from what I understand; they didn't even give Sony the chance to renegotiate a more acceptable deal, as Sony found out after the Philips deal was done.

It's certainly an interesting part of video game history. I don't think either side regrets what happened now. Sony certainly doesn't; Nintendo might wonder what a market without Sony as a direct major competitor looks like, but it's hard to predict how long that partnership would've lasted and what Sony would've done afterwards.

Sony coming into the industry as a direct competitor to Nintendo was always an inevitability. SNES CD was just a Trojan horse means of doing so; though it didn’t quite pan out as initially planned, it wasn’t far off it in the end.

Nintendo didn’t necessarily create their own worst monster directly, but rather the SNES CD was a catalyst for something that was always going to happen eventually.

 

[Stu Benedict]

Which was in turn doing Sony dirty, from what I understand; they didn't even give Sony the chance to renegotiate a more acceptable deal, as Sony found out after the Philips deal was done.

It's certainly an interesting part of video game history. I don't think either side regrets what happened now. Sony certainly doesn't; Nintendo might wonder what a market without Sony as a direct major competitor looks like, but it's hard to predict how long that partnership would've lasted and what Sony would've done afterwards.

yamauchi was an asshole to the extreme. the guy probably saw it as sony looking down on him and decided the best retaliation was a public 'fuck you.'

 

[Bonejack]

As we all know, Nintendo and Sony were working on a SNES add-on, but Nintendo made a deal with Phillips, and that led to the PlayStation.

I hear about how Nintendo betrayed Sony, but why is Nintendo in the wrong? Sony was going to get the rights to Nintendo's characters. It's not like Sony was completely innocent.

I may be late to the party, but from what i remember reading about this situation, both tried to fuck over the other, so it's not that there's a guilty party here.

 

[MondoMega]

The best explanation I heard was that Nintendo was thinking this would be a multimedia/educational platform for encyclopedias and simple interactive (not game) CD-ROMs. But it would also play cartridge games, and Nintendo gets a cut of every one of those. So they weren’t worried about Sony retaining rights to publish CD-ROM software, since they didn’t see that as competing with games on cartridges.

When it became clear Sony was going to make games, Nintendo wanted out of the deal. But going in they thought it would add value to their platform, like the famicom modem or something.

The fact that everyone calls it a Nintendo PlayStation is always misleading too. It was always a Sony project. Think more Pioneer LaserActive or Panasonic Q.

Yeah, pretty sure almost none of this is true. We know for a fact that Nintendo, internally, were developing at least one game (actual game, no education software in sight) for the CD add-on; what eventually became Marvelous: Another Treasure Island.

GlitterBerri's Game Translations » Marvelous – Another Treasure Island: Developer Interview

4 or 5 years ago, we started planning the game as a Super Nintendo CD-ROM title. At the time, our intention was to create something that featured animated shorts. We joined forces with Kyoto Animation and whipped one up. Captain Maverick, who doesn’t appear until the very end of the released game, was the main character in the CD-ROM version.

In the end, the plans for an SNES CD-ROM format didn’t pan out, meaning we weren’t able to use the animated short, and the game became what it is today.

You are right that the Nintendo PlayStation was never the official name of the device though, it was just PlayStation; and it was the alternate two-in-one model that included the Super Famicom and Super Disc add-on.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

Yeah, pretty sure almost none of this is true. We know for a fact that Nintendo, internally, were developing at least one game (actual game, no education software in sight) for the CD add-on; what eventually became Marvelous: Another Treasure Island.

GlitterBerri's Game Translations » Marvelous – Another Treasure Island: Developer Interview

You are right that the Nintendo PlayStation was never the official name of the device though, it was just PlayStation; and it was the alternate two-in-one model that included the Super Famicom and Super Disc add-on.

iirc the leaked source code of Super Mario All-Stars shows that early in development that game was called "Super Mario CD". So we can assume All-Stars was also originally planned as a CD game.

Btw, this interview with Miyamoto on the subject is fascinating. He appears to be pretty clueless about the CD expansion and doesn't seem to have any real idea what to do with it, except "Mario! With 1000 stages!".

 

[MondoMega]

iirc the leaked source code of Super Mario All-Stars shows that early in development that game was called "Super Mario CD". So we can assume All-Stars was also originally planned as a CD game.

Oh, huh, somehow I missed this among all the discoveries that came out of the Gigaleak.

That's (probably) two internal CD games, then.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

Yeah, pretty sure almost none of this is true. We know for a fact that Nintendo, internally, were developing at least one game (actual game, no education software in sight) for the CD add-on; what eventually became Marvelous: Another Treasure Island.

GlitterBerri's Game Translations » Marvelous – Another Treasure Island: Developer Interview

I was referring to this reporting by Chris Kohler in 2018: https://kotaku.com/the-weird-history-of-the-super-nes-cd-rom-nintendos-mo-1828860861, referencing a translated 2016 interview with Shigeo Maruyama, the former head of Sony Computer Entertainment:

Why would Nintendo allow this to happen? Maruyama said it was because Sony “explicitly told them we were going to focus on everything but video games.” In other words, Sony’s position was that it would make encyclopedias, home karaoke software, and other non-gaming applications using CD-ROMs, and leave all the gaming to Nintendo. But apparently this was not in the contract itself, and once the ink was on paper, Sony had carte blanche.

 

[MondoMega]

I was referring to this reporting by Chris Kohler in 2018: https://kotaku.com/the-weird-history-of-the-super-nes-cd-rom-nintendos-mo-1828860861, referencing a translated 2016 interview with Shigeo Maruyama, the former head of Sony Computer Entertainment:

Ah; that's pretty different from how you described it, to be fair. The idea here is that Nintendo believed Sony would only produce non-gaming software, while they had control over all game software; but this was never on paper so Sony didn't plan on honoring it.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

Ah; that's pretty different from how you described it, to be fair. The idea here is that Nintendo believed Sony would only produce non-gaming software, while they had control over all game software; but this was never on paper so Sony didn't plan on honoring it.

I guess I filled in my own story with Nintendo’s plans to skip CDs since that’s what they ended up doing. But the part about expecting Sony to publish only karaoke discs and encyclopedias was the key part.

That at least partially explains why Nintendo didn’t see it coming and backed out late.

 

[Dcubed]

Secret of Mana was another one that was originally designed for the SNES CD before having to be heavily scaled back to the cartridge format.

 

[Instro]

The entire saga of the SNES CD by and large has Nintendo looking pretty awful and incompetent from all the details I've read.

 

[CastletonSnob]

The entire saga of the SNES CD by and large has Nintendo looking pretty awful and incompetent from all the details I've read.

Why is that?