13th August 2003, 6:21 PM
It was luck and good marketing... but luck most of all.
What luck? Sony didn't choose by choice to release their console when they did. That happened that way because it just happened that by the time their system was ready for launch after they started working on it once being dumped by Nintendo the strength of the competition was probably at its weakest point since 1984...
It was Sony's great luck, and not great strategy, that Nintendo AND Sega had BOTH just messed up really badly right around the time they came out with their system! If either Nintendo or Sega had had their act together it never would have happened like it did... but neither one did, so they were there and ready to exploit the other's troubles.
It wasn't Sony's great strategists that got Sega to make the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn in quick succession, all flawed in the eyes of the public, destroying their credibility... it wasn't Sony's brilliant engineers who designed the N64 to use carts... no, that was just stupid moves from the competition that they were all too happy to exploit.
Marketing? Sure, that helped a lot, and Sony certainly did a good job of selling their system. But they were selling it to a public ready for change... which wasn't a fact of their design, for sure.
So yes, I would say that Sony got leadership of the industry through luck.
Call it stupid moves from the competition and good advertising if it makes you happy, though.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with great hardware design.
What luck? Sony didn't choose by choice to release their console when they did. That happened that way because it just happened that by the time their system was ready for launch after they started working on it once being dumped by Nintendo the strength of the competition was probably at its weakest point since 1984...
It was Sony's great luck, and not great strategy, that Nintendo AND Sega had BOTH just messed up really badly right around the time they came out with their system! If either Nintendo or Sega had had their act together it never would have happened like it did... but neither one did, so they were there and ready to exploit the other's troubles.
It wasn't Sony's great strategists that got Sega to make the Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn in quick succession, all flawed in the eyes of the public, destroying their credibility... it wasn't Sony's brilliant engineers who designed the N64 to use carts... no, that was just stupid moves from the competition that they were all too happy to exploit.
Marketing? Sure, that helped a lot, and Sony certainly did a good job of selling their system. But they were selling it to a public ready for change... which wasn't a fact of their design, for sure.
So yes, I would say that Sony got leadership of the industry through luck.
Call it stupid moves from the competition and good advertising if it makes you happy, though.
And it had absolutely nothing to do with great hardware design.
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