Source: Aifaner
Authors: Zhou Yizhi, Xiao Qinpeng

If you were to ask the most famous console game manufacturer in the world, the vast majority of players would answer without hesitation:$Sony Group (6758.JP)$versus$Nintendo (7974.JP)$.

Most of the time, the two companies sang against each other due to their different ideas and directions. Players are already used to this, but what is less known is that at the end of the last century, the two companies almost reached a partnership that changed the game landscape.

Yesterday, it was announced that a “Nintendo PlayStation” controller will be auctioned in August, according to the Heritage auction house:

The familiar Super Nintendo gamepad has the dark gray “SONY PlayStation” logo engraved on the front. There are some small dents on the back, but the handle is in very good condition, but it is impossible to confirm whether it can be used properly because the prototype game console that comes with it is very scarce, and based on this, the winner of the auction will not be able to return it.

Today, any young console game enthusiast would be unbelievable when they see this scene: they can even see the Sony logo on Nintendo hardware, and even Sony's iconic “PlayStation”!

In fact, this is the second time that the Nintendo PlayStation prototype and its accessories have appeared on the auction market. It first appeared on the Reddit forum in 2015. A user discovered it in his father's trash, and in March 2020, he commissioned it to the Heritage auction house to sell it for $0.36 million, making it the most expensive game console auction item ever.

And all of this is inextricably linked to its special status.

A product of the collapse of cooperation

At the end of the last century, Nintendo sought Sony to develop a CD-ROM game add-on for its Red and White console and the subsequent Super Nintendo, using floppy disk technology to solve the problem of insufficient cassette game capacity.

After signing the contract with Nintendo, Sony will build two devices: a Super Nintendo add-on called SNES-CD, and a Sony console called PlayStation, which can use traditional Nintendo cassettes and is capable of playing CDs designed by Sony.

The PlayStation prototype manufactured by Sony was exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show in May 1991, the same day exhibition. Howard Lincoln, senior vice president of Nintendo in the US, revealed to the public that Nintendo collaborated with Philips.

Since Nintendo president at the time, Hiroshi Yamauchi realized that this contract with Sony would essentially destroy Nintendo's long-standing game distribution channels. At the time, Nintendo completely controlled the production and manufacturing process of game cartridges and increased revenue through this. Sony was greatly involved in the production and distribution of games through optical discs and CDs, which would have a devastating impact on Nintendo's cassette control. This is certainly completely unacceptable. As a result, Nintendo secretly cancelled the collaboration with Sony and all development plans for SENS-CD, and only then did it have such a funny scene.

Nintendo handed over the development of related components to European electronics company Philips (which was not launched in the end), and learned the lessons, retaining all rights to games on machines developed by Nintendo.

On the biggest and most public stage in the world, Nintendo backstabbed one of Japan's largest and most respected electronics companies, and the partnership unquestionably broke down.

After the partnership failed, Sony once sought to cooperate with Sega to produce game consoles, but was rejected. After putting it on hold for a period of time, Sony followed Nintendo's collaboration to refine the design into a complete game console compatible with Super Nintendo. As a result, it was sued by Nintendo, which prohibited Sony from releasing a game console named “PlayStation” because Nintendo believed that the name belonged to it until a federal judge finally determined that Sony had the right to use this future Legend ID, so in October 1991, Sony announced the game console, and a formal agreement was reached with Nintendo at the end of 1992.

This game console has seen the whole story, but it's quite short lived and unlucky, because everything was ready at the end of 1992, and Sony thought Nintendo's hardware was out of date in early 1993, so it immediately discontinued production, discarded all design plans, removed the Super Nintendo game card slot, and started all over again. When we saw the name again, we were already familiar with the Sony PlayStation.

In theory, this “Nintendo PlayStation” was discontinued after only around 200 units were produced. Even before the car came out in 2015, the public had hardly seen it in person.

A one-size-fits-all backstabbing changed the console game landscape

Whether it's the cassette dispute between Nintendo and Sony, or today's dispute between Epic and App Store digital stores, in the end, it's a battle over game distribution rights. In order to guarantee their dominant position and the appeal of their own platforms, game manufacturers built distribution rights into a wall to strictly defend against all enemies that attempted to rise to the wall.

Sony's intention to get involved in game distribution failed, so it followed the trend and went from being a bystander to an author, launching the first PlayStation and betting on CD games; with the success of FC and SFC, Nintendo launched the N64, and gave high hopes for its performance in the next generation to defend its cassette glory.

The two consoles went head-to-head at the end of the century, and eventually ended with PlayStation selling almost 3.5 times that of the N64 in mainland China. Since then, the game market has had an extremely strong competitor, and with a different game concept, it became Nintendo's biggest competitor in the next 30 years.

This backstabbing has long been drowned in the vast history of console games. In the eyes of back then, it was just a “little episode” that players relished after a meal, but when it came to the console game landscape, it shook its wings like a butterfly: diverse game choices and rapid technological progress all stemmed from the humble breakdown of cooperation back then.

Editor/Somer