If Nintendo Hadn’t Ended Its Collaboration with Sony, PlayStation Wouldn’t Exist, Says Shuhei Yoshida
Thirty years have passed since the launch of the original PlayStation, and former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has shed new light on what really happened in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
Yoshida, who retired this year, has been part of PlayStation’s history since its very beginning. In fact, he was closely involved in the collaboration project with Nintendo.
The Split Between Nintendo and Sony
Nintendo pulled out of the partnership to avoid paying royalties to Sony for Super Nintendo PlayStation games. As is well known, the company made the decision public during the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, signing instead a new deal with Dutch giant Philips — which also didn’t end well.
The break with Nintendo was seen as humiliating for Sony, which at that time had struggled to gain a foothold in the growing video game industry. However, that event ultimately turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the company.
According to Yoshida, that breakup — along with the failure of Sega’s Mega CD, an add-on for the Mega Drive/Genesis — showed that adding optical media to 16-bit systems was not the right path forward. Yoshida explained that the project was “very limited compared to the actual PlayStation” and that “it was almost helpful that Nintendo cancelled the project – otherwise the Sony team would have been stuck as part of a Nintendo system.”
How This Led to PlayStation’s Success
History proved him right. Once Sony was free from Nintendo and eager to prove itself, Ken Kutaragi was given the green light to turn the PlayStation idea into a complete console. Today, we talk daily about the PlayStation 5, and there are already rumors about the PlayStation 6 .
“Nintendo created their big competition, Yoshida said. “But competition is always healthy. Now, Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation seem to be going in very different directions, and I think that’s great for the overall industry.”
