We Got Up Close and Personal with the Nintendo PlayStation

Imagine if this prototype was actually finished. I wonder what games would be on it.

Games will be only for children, every game will be censored, dvd and bluray will not happen on console, it will be all cartridge, final fantasy 7 will be a very different game, forget 4k we will be lucky if games can have 720p graphics in 2016, truly dark times..

@Neato-Burrito Mario, zelda, metroid. Forever...

Wlow if only that could still be a still be a thing.....

Nintendo have a habit of revisiting old tech, maybe one day they will revisit this.

@wiiware Sounds like someone's been playing Battlefield 1, what with all that triggering...

There would be no 'console war' & the galactic empire of Microsoft would have enslaved the galaxy by now.. shudder

"House of Mario" often comes of as a sly insult, mostly due to context granted.

Lemme try for Sony. House of.... oh. They never stick with anything.

I'm not going to jump on the hateful side here, I'd like to think we might have had the best of both companies - games released in a finished state that don't need large day one patches, DLC kept to a minimum and microtransactions non-existent, a variety of new IPs that catered for a mix of ages, the best of what Japan has to offer while still catering to 3rd parties. It could have been great.

Either that or people would have recognised the genius that was the Dreamcast

@NintendoFan4Lyf not sure about your definition of dominate. The SNES sold 20 million less over its life than the NES did (and then the N64 was 20 million less than the SNES, and the GC was about 11 million less than the N64). Thats hardly dominating. Thats sliding downhill. Sure they sold more than their biggest competitor by the end, but it was pretty close during that time frame.

I am torn. I think that Nintendo (post SNES) is mostly just garbage, and love Playstation, but I still hold the SNES as the best console of all time. If I could have both of my favorite things, melded into one mega thing...I like to think that it would have been an unstoppable collaboration.

I like to think if this happened, maybe we would have Crash in Smash Bros.

Still, it is nice to be able to actually see the thing.

Nintendo didn't like Sony having control of IPs so they decided to work with Philips instead and now we have Zelda CD-i and PS-PS4

@BLPs You make "Never stick with anything" sound negative, when I see it as "always come up with new creative IP's rather than rehash the same tired IP over and over" When Nintendo branches out and creates a new IP, they do quite an amazing job (see Splatoon for example). I do not want a console with a mascot, I want a console with a wide variety of unique and interesting titles. This means that there will often be duds (thats what happens when you try something new) but it also means that there are going to be those games that make you wonder why someone didn't think of this sooner.

I always thought this looked very cool! A part of me would love to see an alternate reality where this happened out of sheer curiosity...

That is so cool. Amazing piece of gaming history. Would we have had adult gaming without Playstation? Who would of identified that market and addressed it? I never warmed to the N64 in the same way I did Ps1. Goldeneye and M64 made me get one. Ps1 hit at the sweet spot of my mid teenage years.

Nice, now if nintendo was with sony then thats means sega would have still ended up with Microsoft essentially creating the sega box.

@Rudy_Manchego If by adult gaming you mean games that should only be played by adults (Just because there isn't swearing or gore in something like Pikmin or Mario doesn't mean I, as an adult, can't enjoy them more than those 'adult' games) then yes, we still would have had those games. They were around on computers with games like Doom releasing in 1993 and being very popular. If Sony hadn't tried that market, someone else would have - people growing up with consoles like the NES, Megadrive and the like meant there was an obvious market to tap there. Sega would likely have gone that way had they not had a few poorly timed console releases and pretty terrible marketing.

I've always thought about this, and could only imagine how big the companies would be. True, that nintendo would have more say over the console, but imagine both companies IP's on one machine? To people that think nintendo is all childish, they have made M rated games, there's just no audience there for them...now, if both were together, there would be a huge collection and a larger install base. Sega probably wouldn't even stand a chance to try and compete and Microsoft wouldn't even be around. If these two were together, I think no other company would really stand a chance...and just imagine what the portable world would be like...a 3DS VITA combined. Too bad nintendo didn't do a CD version for N64, or this would have been a thing.

@Thegentleman Sega ended before Microsoft, so they would probably be bought by Nintendo/Sony. I don't think we'd even hear of an X-box if the two were together, and if sega joined them...forget anyone else. We'd probably be dealing with just one console and a few other companies trying with no success. Atari definitely would have tried still, but would have failed...Sega would still have gone down under with the Dreamcast and who knows who else would have tried.

@Dichotomy Man oh man, I wish you had been about to give tech investment advice to my parents back in the 90's!!

Firsty, I meant games targeted at mature gamers. I am not suggesting that games not rated as mature cannot be played by adults.

Oh and I don't totally agree with your comments. Doom was a very popular PC game but PC gaming was not mainstream and Sony brought games aimed at mature audiences to the mainstream more than any other company. There were some great mature titles on PC, there were even a few on other platforms however Sony marketed a mainstream console at an older audience. They saw a market in players that had been children in the 70's/80's and had grown up with gaming. That was against conventional market wisdom. You say obvious market but this was only obvious in hindsight. Would Sega have exploited it? Maybe but that was a company having a hard time targeting any one thing. Something would have come along, sure but who, what and when... No one knows. That's what makes it a great what if story.

IF new Nintendo doesn't sell well, can Nintendo become a 1ts party for PlayStation for next gen?

@NintendoFan4Lyf

There were analog sticks on game pads prior the the N64. Given the rise of 3d gaming, it was only a matter of time until it was a required controller addition. I don't think that the N64 was any more instrumental in this than any console would have been. In fact I think the Playstation was more instrumental because they did dual analog sticks. If the two companies had combined forces, maybe the N64 would have had a better controller, with dual analogs (which are now the defacto standard).

The Move/WiiMote technology is not really a good example of a successful push forward with the industry. Nintendo has abandoned the WiiMote idea with their latest system, and the Move didn't work out very well for Sony. The PSVR would be better fit with tech designed specifically for it rather than tech that was repurposed.

"Mario 64 changed the standard for 3D games"
While I absolutely love Mario 64, I think this is hubris. It is definitly a shining example on what a 3d game should be, but Playstation and PC had quite a few 3d games before Mario 64 (remember PS1 had nearly over a year and a half lead on the N64). Nothing Mario 64 did really changed any of it. Even the games that launched within the same year as Mario 64 had to have had most of their development and design done by then.

@thedevilsjester
He said mario changed the standard for 3D gaming which it most certainly did, although it wasn't the first 3D game obviously. Certainly ocarina of time could be considered the pinnacle of that gen.
Regarding analogue control, the first time I saw or used it was nights into dreams on Saturn. Sony had a dual analogue controller sure but it wasn't used for camera control at that time. It was used to capture rogue simians in that all time classic ape escape! 😉

@BLPs Sony house of whatever game Naughty Dog happens to be making at the moment.

@Tasuki Nice little article!

@NintendoFan4Lyf I understand where you are coming from, but you are making a huge leap. Assuming that X or Y game (or hardware) would not have ever been created or thought up if some event occurred is a huge stretch in logic (assuming the event is not, you know, nuclear war). Its the classic butterfly logic, but reality is hardly ever as simple.

Maybe those games might not have existed, but by that same logic, maybe there are better games that we are missing out on because those exist. You can follow that rabbit hole indefinitely.

I think that a Sony + Nintendo collaboration would have ended up with a partnership moving forward (not a one-off deal). The SNES was great in part because of the audio chips done by Sony (which is why Nintendo approached Sony to begin with) and Sony has the electronics arm while Nintendo has the software arm, and together they would be unstoppable.

Somewhat Glad it didn't hsppen because microdoft would be dominant with the (some) dull exclusives! Took 3 consoles and 5 halos to get me to buy one, sunset, forza hotizon brand, recore and gears 4, oh yea snd jetset radio were cool! As long as. That brand has been out those are the only appealing titles they have to me!