Sony PlayStation - 20th Anniversary of Japanese Release

[Shozuki]

Y'know if I end up failing this week I'll end up buying one of those nin-nin ones...

[Colin]

Unbelievable. In a ridiculously predictable fashion.

[Shozuki]

Unbelievable. In a ridiculously predictable fashion.

Yeah, I know - hopefully I'll get one at normal price. I really want one.

[Jay]

Oh I don't dispute that. Every major commercially successful console has had it in small degrees.

It exploded on the PS1 though - look at the full list of PS1 games released. This cannot be denied.

By shovelware, I mean cheap-to-produce software for the mainstream that the "core" readily dismiss as being crap.

Yep, the 2600 had this by the bucketload. Everyone jumped on board the videogame gravy train when they saw the success Atari were having and just threw whatever they could out there. It's not the only similarity that console has with the Wii - it was also marketed as a family item, designed for the living room (not a teenager's bedroom).

[Nu-Eclipse]

Yep, the 2600 had this by the bucketload. Everyone jumped on board the videogame gravy train when they saw the success Atari were having and just threw whatever they could out there. It's not the only similarity that console has with the Wii - it was also marketed as a family item, designed for the living room (not a teenager's bedroom).

Circumstances were somewhat different though. The 2600 played host to a plethora of bedroom coders and that was something Atari initially encouraged until things obviously came to a head with the early 1980s videogame crash in North America.

PS1 and Wii had devs with far more resources and know-how churning out shovelware.

[Brad]

Back then no consoles were marketed for a teenager's bedroom; houses rarely had more than one TV!

[Nu-Eclipse]

Back then no consoles were marketed for a teenager's bedroom; houses rarely had more than one TV!

You still had one-man hobbyist developers making games for the 2600 though. And the (lack of) quality showed.

[Shozuki]

The only thing I would add though, personally I'd say the shovelware on the systems were exponential. Totally in accordance to the size of gaming at their respective times.

In all walks of like, there's always going to be people jumping the bandwagon so to speak. Not sure you can blame Sony for that per-se...

[Jay]

You still had one-man hobbyist developers making games for the 2600 though. And the (lack of) quality showed.

Kind of. They still needed company backing to get them made into cartridges. It wasn't like the 8-bit computer era where you could easily get stuff on tapes and sell it mail order. So while you're right that these were often one-man projects, they weren't really bedroom coders.

[Mayhem]

Some were, as witnessed by games that have come out of the woodwork in the last five years or so that no one really knew about prior, but yeah, for the most part, you worked for a reasonably sized company that had contracts with production plants to manufacture the boards, chips and boxes for your new 2600 game.

And don't think the lack of ROM space made developing easier or quicker. The average development time at Activision for its 2600 titles was in the six month region...

[Asura]

Sony approached Sega right after the Nintendo deal fell through. Sega rubbished it as they felt Sony knew nothing about the home console business. Pretty ironic considering the fact that Sega saw the Saturn and DC lose them money hand-over-fist.

In fairness, during the machine's main development (after it became clear that it was going to be Sony's own machine) Sony went on a spree, recruiting people from all parts of the industry who did know their stuff. Then, shortly after, they did a similar thing with a load of developers and third parties.

I wonder how whether the formative experience of Sega's rejection fuelled that.

[Goemon]

Don't know if this has been posted yet, but much like the Megadrive Megatron 30 year anniversary they're doing a transformer Optimus Prime/Playstation 30/20 year anniversary

http://www.play-asia.com/transformers-optimus-prime-featuring-original-playstation-paOS-13-49-en-70-88ej.html

[speedlolita]

Got that on preorder...

[Nu-Eclipse]

[speedlolita]

Amazing!